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.