How to use dead nettle for tea or medicine.

Good evening! I wanna find out how I use dead nettle for tea or medicine. I recently harvested some today at my community farm. This is new to me. Most folks considered all weeds invasive, but it's not true. Please shoot me back if you need me. Good night!

I got a bunch of volunteer dead nettle in my pots that grew overwinter and my plant ID app. didn't mention we could make tea out of the flowers, but a close friend mentioned it to me recently.  We didn't choose to do it, but we have enjoyed our dead nettle friends for pollinators, pretties in my hair, and vase flowers, the flowers are so cute!  The last of it is in a vase presently, the flowers last a long time on the plant in the ground, like a month.

I couldn’t find anything in my herb books but Plants for a Future has some details. Especially that they have been used for stopping bleeding. https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Lamium+purpureum

This contains some information on the culinary/medicinal value and usage of dead nettle: Grow Network Article: Henbit and Dead Nettle

Of the two main edible weeds that pop up every Spring on my property - purple dead nettle and goose grass (AKA cleavers) - I find the goose grass much more palatable.  When the goose grass is young, I chop it and make fritters with it or else blend it into fruit smoothies.  Once goose grass is bigger and older and going to seed, I dry it and powder it.  I've read that it is richer in silica as it ages, which is a rare but important mineral for bone and tooth health.

Both weeds have a flavor I would best describe as "inoffensive."  That is to say they don't taste bad, but they don't taste like anything particularly great either, just neutral or perhaps "grassy."

Dead nettle might be okay if you harvest it very young, but it quickly gains little spikey seed balls that I find unpleasant in my food.  Thus, I only ever dry dead nettle and add it to herbal tea mixes, typically with mint and lemon balm that have naturalized in my food forest.  I've never tried brewing pure dead nettle tea, but I imagine it would be fairly devoid of taste.

I think their true value is early bare ground cover that turns to mulch to protect the next plants to sprout from seed, rhizome or bulb.  For a long time they had a permaculture relationship with my raspberries covering the soil until the canes were fully leafed out and shaded the ground.   There are several others like chick weed that are in this early flower and  seed for next year category that are permaculture worthy.

Maybe this is a question for Hans: every spring any beds left bare, and even some that had cover crops, fill up with purple dead nettle and chickweed and cress; I don't try to use it for anything (but the bees certainly do), but I appreciate it for being easy to remove, like a guard on the beds against more obnoxious weeds. What I've wondered is whether it has any other cover crop virtues aside from just covering the beds--I don't suppose it fixes nitrogen but does it add  organic matter significantly to the soil, or pull up minerals?

Good questions  Mary.  I don't have any scientific evidence but using the science available we can extrapolate that they may put sugars back into the ground to feed the soil life that feed their quick growth.  The volume of biomass may seem small but could be significant due to it's timing.  Not that it is an accumulator of nutrients but a keeper of nutrients in place.
Let me tell you about Permaculture on our homestead in the 1850's.  It was known as Rodale's organic gardening and farming back then.  The barn where the manure came out ended above the small valley that went down to bay. the whole bottom of the valley was market garden and orchard close to the water.   The leachate from the manure pile would infiltrate the garden soil all winter and by planting time the chickweed would be a foot ore more thick.  Like you said it is easy to remove; we would hook the horse to the spring harrow [ large curved springs ] w ich would roll the weed up and deposit it at the upper end of the garden.  the garden then was ready to plant and the biomass mulched around the blueberry plants along side.
We have not answered the original question about medicinal value but I chose to point out it's value as a permaculture  plant does not depend on our direct consumption.