Foraging for beginners...

[Dirty Karlos]

I'm always promising myself to go out foraging for stuff but I never get round to it. My time is a bit limited so I never get the chance to read up on things. However some of my local woods are really quite diverse but I don't know what to pick or what to do with stuff when I get it home!
Can anyone advise on what I should be taking advantage of in my local woods. My ID skills are currently next to zero, one of the few abundant plants that I can identify is wild garlic and I notice that they are in flower at the moment.

Thanks.

 

[Matt Weir]

Hi Karlos,

My advice is to simply look around and look at what gets your attention and take a few pictures of it even if it's a cruddy mobile phone camera. Once you get home you can use whatever books you have and Google images is a superb resource to compare.

Eventually you will build a complete picture of what is in your woods and their uses.

 

[RobertRogers]

A good way to learn is to obtain a book on wild flowers and go from there. I find that flowers are often easy to identify using these books, from which I can go on and learn about the uses of the plant.

 

[Barney]

A bit of a read here to get you started

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/index.php/Table/Food-Foraging/

 

[Dirty Karlos]

Thanks chaps.

 

[subedarmajor]

Try "food for free" it's a harpers pocket gem.

 

[MartiniDave]

There's a discount book chain called "The Works" they are currently doing a deal on "Collins Complete Guide to British Wildlife " for about a fiver, that seems to have nearly all plants, flowers etc etc in it, just about mangable as a field guide, my copy lives in my bimble bag with the binos.
They were also doing the Wild Gourmets book for £3.99.

Dave

 

[Dirty Karlos]

Thanks for the heads up.