What did you forage today?

[Woody girl]

Good, but sour. Puckered up like Pat Butcher eating these


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My tayberries are still green, those look like they need another week to ripen properly, need to be a deeper colour, almost purple.
Good find though.
I'm currently keeping an eye on a wild gooseberry Bush. Hoping to harvest sometime this the week. Its cat and mouse with the local council who love to cut things back with a strimmer just as the berries ripen, and deny my harvest. I've been quietly cutting back stuff around it in the hedge, so that it doesn't need a short back and sides like last year.!
Harvested some nettles for cordage, and drying the leaves for nettle tea.

 

[Danceswithhelicopters]

In no particular order on the JOG Trail this past week: blueberry, bilberry, lingonberry (not quite ready), fuschia flowers, water mint, watercress, sea rocket (bitter) cherries and a new one to me... Salmonberry.

 

[Toddy]

Today; wild strawberries, raspberries, fuchsia fruits. Bitter cress, dandelions, heartsease, meadowsweet, bistort, wood millet.

 

[Woody girl]

Stop hiding, and come to mama!
Picked a cupfull, perfect for my breakfast bowl in the morning. They realy are in a hedge, not a garden. Must be escapees.
had to battle brambles and nettles to get them. My eagle eyes spotted them from across the road while I was walking and chatting to a local dog walker.

 

[Nice65]

Dunno where to put this, I foraged a rock, and it’s an odd one. It’s flinty Chert type stuff but has ‘bloomed’ in a weird way.

Soil type is where South Downs chalk makes a change to sandy soil. Species growing are predominantly Hazel, Beech, but with the beginnings of Oak and Silver Birch. I find flint proper everywhere on chalk, and the browner stuff too, but never formed like this.



Also, ran the metal detector around the bar area of the local wood fair after the event. Dark wooden shed bar, wood chip floor, drinks drunk = a few dropped coins. As well as a bunch of cash and about 50 bottle caps, I turned up this button. It’s a 1914-1918 WW1 Officers uniform button.

 

[Toddy]

That looks like chert to me.
We have a lot of chert, but not much flint this far north.

Technically flint is a type of chert, but we differentiate it because flint is a really good quality 'chert' to us.
Good chert is as useful as flint, but it's rarely as fine right through, and the nodules are nowhere near as big as you find where you live.
Quartz, agate, chert, and jasper, which are high in silica content, are all cherts, just we use the name for a quality/type too.

 

[Falstaff]

Does finding and trying stuff growing in your garden count as foraging?
There's a self-set plant, pale green smooth largish leaves, vaguely cabbagely but grows quite tall, no idea what it is. I found the leaves are very palatable raw. I also tried what I thought were dandelions, turned out to be the early leaves of some giant thistle-type plant, but tasted very nice, not so the root. Ordinary dandelion leaves were not nearly as nice.

 

[Chris]

Does finding and trying stuff growing in your garden count as foraging?
There's a self-set plant, pale green smooth largish leaves, vaguely cabbagely but grows quite tall, no idea what it is. I found the leaves are very palatable raw. I also tried what I thought were dandelions, turned out to be the early leaves of some giant thistle-type plant, but tasted very nice, not so the root. Ordinary dandelion leaves were not nearly as nice.

I have to say this is a very risky approach - there are deadly plants that can grow in gardens. The recommendation is never to eat something unless 100% sure what it is, and that it's edible.

 

[Woody girl]

An oil lamp.
Walked past someone's door today as they were loading a car with boxes of stuff for the charity shop. Stopped and asked what they wanted for an old victorian lamp, and they said, have it, so I did! It needs a shade, though I had a spare chimney at home that fits perfectly. Wick is in good condition, so a good find all round. Just needs a jolly good clean and polish up. Must admit it looked a sad prospect, but it will look great on my hallway victorian bookcase, and light the hall in a power cut.
Not bad for a freebie.

 

[Toddy]

Does finding and trying stuff growing in your garden count as foraging?
There's a self-set plant, pale green smooth largish leaves, vaguely cabbagely but grows quite tall, no idea what it is. I found the leaves are very palatable raw. I also tried what I thought were dandelions, turned out to be the early leaves of some giant thistle-type plant, but tasted very nice, not so the root. Ordinary dandelion leaves were not nearly as nice.

Eat the weeds

It tidies up the garden nicely ! and it can be a very healthy addition to the diet too.

I admit I don't usually munch on something I don't know, or have clear idea of what it is, but, well, we live and learn...usually

Maybe have a nosey for brassicas and crucifers and see if you find out more about your plant.
Right now the only thing I have growing like that is Fat Hen...which is very good eating

 

[Broch]

Does finding and trying stuff growing in your garden count as foraging?
There's a self-set plant, pale green smooth largish leaves, vaguely cabbagely but grows quite tall, no idea what it is. I found the leaves are very palatable raw. I also tried what I thought were dandelions, turned out to be the early leaves of some giant thistle-type plant, but tasted very nice, not so the root. Ordinary dandelion leaves were not nearly as nice.

Well, you're alive, so it would be good for you to identify what you've eaten for the benefit of the rest of us.

Have a go at using the 'Seeker' app on your phone - it gets you to the family quite accurately and the species is correct more than often (about 80% I think). When it's pointed you in the right direction it's easier to confirm species in a good reference; I recommend Harrop but there are other good ones.

 

[Falstaff]

I don't really do Apps, although I can see something like that would be very useful. Better than my neanderthal approach.
The old Lofty book did have a method for trying unidentified plants, but I did n't do that either.
I wouldn't try to do that with berries, and I leave mushrooms completely alone.

 

[Broch]

I suggest you don't use that method on umbellifers as well

 

[slowworm]

Chanterelles, fousands of 'em. Well, at least a hundred spread over a decent area. I picked a couple but left most to hopefully spread. Strangely it's an area where I've only ever seen them under a single beech tree but this year they are covering a much wider area and are under hazel and oak as well. I don't know if it is down to the dry spring or last winters flood, but nice to see.I

 

[William_Montgomery]

Chanterelles, fousands of 'em. Well, at least a hundred spread over a decent area. I picked a couple but left most to hopefully spread. Strangely it's an area where I've only ever seen them under a single beech tree but this year they are covering a much wider area and are under hazel and oak as well. I don't know if it is down to the dry spring or last winters flood, but nice to see.I

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Nice find!

 

[demented dale]

Does finding and trying stuff growing in your garden count as foraging?
There's a self-set plant, pale green smooth largish leaves, vaguely cabbagely but grows quite tall, no idea what it is. I found the leaves are very palatable raw. I also tried what I thought were dandelions, turned out to be the early leaves of some giant thistle-type plant, but tasted very nice, not so the root. Ordinary dandelion leaves were not nearly as nice.

Seriously, you are lacking in common sense. DO NOT eat anything you are not 100% certain of.. You might not be so lucky next time x

 

[demented dale]

Today I foraged wild raspberries for dessert and for my salad: Plantains, dandelion leaves, clover flowers, sorrel, young pennywort and chickweed. I added mint and garlic that I grew and drizzled it all in olive oil. It was great and very tasty and all for nothing. DD x
I also came across the charcoal burner. This is part of the russula family of mushrooms and a reasonably tasty edible. The russulas are known as the brittle gills and the gills flake like almonds when you run your fingers across them. The charcoal burner does not have brittle gills but there are other identifying features that make it a good foragable. Here is a link below.

Charcoal Burner – Edibility, Identification, Distribution – Galloway Wild Foods

 

[Toddy]

Still gorging on wild strawberries, but the reedmace is in flower, and the heads are full of pollen, so I rattled them in a poly bag and collected about quarter of a cupful. It's pure protein, it's good to use with ordinary flour in baking....I usually just make bannocks with it
I'll be collecting for the next week from this clump

Salad of bistort, melissa, chickweed, bittercress, fat hen, dandelion, very fresh docken and tea of meadowsweet flourish and red clover flowers with some leaf from the Rosenoble (figwort).

M

 

[William_Montgomery]

Starting to get cherry plums cropping up in a few spots locally. A firm favourite at this time of year.

 

[Woody girl]

What is in the foraging bag today?


Shall we take a peek?
They are BIG sweet and jucy
plenty more on the bush, no phone with me to take a pic, will try tomorrow when I go back for more.


Somehow, those two photos swopped round, but a nice plateful collected in a few minutes.