What can I forage

[Claripup]

Hi,

What should I be foraging for this time of year apart from elderflower.

I've always done the autumn harvest (blackberries, sloes, elderberries, wild rosehips etc) but have recently moved and am looking for new foraging grounds... so while I'm scouting for likely places come september what should I be looking for that is edible now?

I have always enjoyed making Jams etc it is only in the last year or so I have tried to live the "ish" lifestyle and after last years disasterous harvest have decided to rely more heavily on the bounty of the wild

[Cloud]

From the look of my lawn: dandelions

And I've seen burdock on my walks locally - just need a recipe for dandelions & burdock now :D

And I assume nuts, given that I can remember singing about gathering nuts in May when I was young, but I've never ever seen any I could eat, and those seemed to be later in the year (I'm sure we used to 'forage' conkers in the summer holidays).

Nettles too I think. Good for bear I gather (excuse the pun).

[Fizzy Izzy]

Definitely nettles. We had a lovely nettle soup the other day :)

[Claripup]

I found nettle rather icky! although I did only try them steamed and my nettle beer had wild yeast or something working against me!

Nettle soup sounds interesting tho... I'll give it a try :-)

[Cloud]

OH has a trug of nettle stewing outside. I thought it was for feeding the toms, but maybe it's soup.



OMG, I hope it's not soup, it smell like my socks.

[Hedgehogpie]

Choose nettles with care as by now the older patches will be beginning to flower. Towards June they'll get gritty, dry and leggy and won't be fit for eating unless you can find a stand of them that's been mowed and is re-sprouting. You want the young fresh tips, with no flower tassels and nip off only the top few leaves from each stem for your soups & greens. Look out for sow thistle, which makes a good green veg., patches of chickweed (look in moist shaded places where it will thrive as a lush dense mat, in full sun it can get leggy and a bit stringy. Goosegrass or cleavers - just the very soft tips - can be cooked or steamed and go well with scrambled eggs, & if you can find them, young soft hop shoots (top 8" or so) are great in a quiche, likewise hogwed shoots (choose only very young still furled shoots though). Take loads of pictures, ask loads of questions and devour loads of id guides and wild food books and above all enjoy getting hooked on what can become an obsession if you're not careful - but above all....

(*nanny hat on*)
PLEASE take great care over identification - learn the look-alike baddies that will do you serious harm as well as those you want to try and if you're at all in doubt then please, please don't be tempted to go ahead & try stuff till you can be absolutely sure you really can identify your chosen harvest accurately. (*nanny hat off*)

P.S. That nettle brew is deffo for the plants, it does them a power of good so don't worry! And if you think that smells bad, comfrey's infinitely worse believe me...

[Silver Ether]

ooooooh comfrey bosh stinks bad .... has any one made nettle cordial? is it good I have found a nice recipe ...

[Touchwood]

We inherited lots of nettles when we moved as all the veggie plots were overgrown with them.
Tried nettle beer but that grew a big blue fungus on it and I really didn't fancy drinking it Steamed nettles were OK but nothing special but we've enjoyed Nettle Gnocchi (with blue cheese sause). I've tried freezing some as well to see how it keeps.
Tried tying bunches of nettles to dry by the doors (supposed to deter flies) if nothing else the rabbits are supposed to like dried nettles in the winter.
Plus 2 buckets of smelly fertilizer. THink I'm nettled out