Eating dandelions. (Foraging thread!)

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If your parsley is happy it will reseed,it's a bi-annual.It also is food for some butterfly larvae.
There is flat leaf parsley,which is more flavorful than the curly leaf kind.
When I was a kid I loved the book My Side of the Mountain,I think it got me interested in foraging.

This stuff apparently is an invasive terrible weed (Cow Parsley, Wild Chervin.) But the little ones taste really good. I'll have to see how it tastes dried, too. The big stuff at best I think would only work as a boiled green or something. But the fresh little stuff is just wonderful. So apparently the best way to eradicate this terrible invasive weed is just eat it while it's young.

How many raspberries I got today. 95% picked from one bush. Other people are picking the raspberries in that area, though.

Also seeing blackberries coming in, too.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/american-lot ... g-wet-for/

COOL! We have those... Says it might accumulate heavy metals, though.

Today was interesting. I found a white mulberry tree at McDonalds. By white, I mean the berries were white, but still ripe. It was weird. The berries tasted as described online they'd taste, like honey. Not bad, just weird. I'd not mind having more of those trees, too, with the dark purple ones.

There was a bunch of the native Lotus in a farm pond near me,but the property owners sprayed them with herbicide and killed them.Apparently they can take over a pond,there are some in the ponds out front of Mal Wart but they have a big fence around them.I would like a start to transplant to a small Lilly pond here.You can grow them in a tub here.Raintree Nursery has the White mulberries and a mulberry from Pakistan with three inch long fruits.
Silk worms feed on the leaves, and once there was a silk trade in the 1800's in North Carolina,they have a start of this tree called Silk Hope.And a six ft dwarf,Geraldi Dwarf.It's kind of expensive,$34.50 each.I've got my eye on the contorted one,I've got a weeping one.
There are so many deer here ,that now I have to put up a fence around every fruit tree plant.

Oooh, I haven't been in this forum for a while. We eat dandelions too.. and red clover, stinging nettles and elderberry flowers.

So I saw some Japanese wineberries on the side of the road. And I had to have them. WOW! I like these better than black raspberries. They're WAY better than the ones in the store, but not a sorta totally different tasting thing like black raspberries vs red. They're so sweet, they seem a bit less thorny, they look really attractive, and the yields. A McDonalds cup took me only like 10 minutes to pick, whereas black raspberries takes like a half hour. The berries grow in nice big clusters of berries like grapes almost. It's awesome.

Thank you whoever brought this terrible horrible invasive species over.

I have those,but we are in moderate drought and they are shriveled.They do make a wonderful wine.In this area everyone says a salesman for Stark bros got them started here.I don't know if that's true but they are everywhere.I didn't plant mine,I guess a bird did that.
Logee's has a really dwarf mulberry that can be grown in a container,only 2 to 4ft high.
They have cool edible house plants too.

One thing I feel kinda odd about is. What about other people who wanna pick stuff? I picked a good amount of the wineberries yesterday (seriously people, even if you ignore all the other bushes around, if you see red branches and giant red berries by the side of the road, stop and eat some.) I was wondering if any other people are picking them? I know the black raspberries someone actually cleared a path back to get more berries. So other humans may want them. I could care f**k all about the birds and stuff, f**k them, them's my berries, lololol.

But I wanted to like, take ALL the wineberries, because they're so so good. But then I wondered if someone else wanted some. So I didn't. BUT THEY'RE SO GOOD.

Maybe I have a thing for Asian fruit like I do other Asian stuff. These raspberries have like, an orangey kinda taste. I don't understand why these haven't overtake normal raspberries for...everything. I wanna ask why hasn't someone started just selling these? They're easy to pick compared to black ones (no idea compared to normal reds) and they taste great. So those guys had the same plan as me back in the 1800s? But then they escaped into the wild? I don't know, I see money here.

I'm starting to notice the black raspberries are dying. Maybe I should have a last hurrah of black raspberries. I do like them, but the Japanese wineberries, wow.

What else, blackberries. There's a shitton this year. I actually don't like them a lot. I'm OK with them. But there's basically fields of blackberries where I live. I found out a few species of blackberries are federally considered noxious weeds. I can *sorta* see their point, now that I see fields of them. http://i.imgur.com/8pCXHC2.jpg All that red there is blackberries. I'm guessing I'll make preserves or something with all those.

Oddly enough, despite having giant fields of berries not too many people pick them. One guy saw me and my friend picking the mulberry tree and tried one, but it was just a "oh that's nice" kinda thing. I kinda wish more people foraged because it'd be better in general for society, but that'd also mean less berries for me.

What else. Some huge burdock roots are growing here. I kinda wanna dig them up, but it's a lot of work. It might be best to use a big shovel. But burdock actually isn't bad. It's not an "omg my favorite thing in the world" like wild berries, but it's not bad.

What else. Freaked myself out because I tasted a buckthorn berry thinking it was chokeberry. I just put the berry to my tongue and it tasted bad. But yeah, poisonous. Didn't have anything bad happen to me, but yeah, definitely best to basically think a whole day before you think you've IDed something. But comparatively, people are p*****s. Maybe I'm saying this from a high horse kinda thing, but I bought some wild raspberries to my friend and he's like "I won't be responsible if you die, what if those are poisonous?" I'm like "dude there's no poisonous anything in the raspberry family." I dunno, maybe it was my unorthodox childhood, but my yard has raspberry bushes I'd pick and eat and I thought it was entirely normal. Heh.

People here get out and and pick stuff,but this is a pretty poor state so maybe that is the difference.There were these awesome wild plums in South Ark,you tried to get there first ,or people would have them stripped.The best jelly ever.I guess if you are working and have enough money it's easier to go to the store.It finally rained,maybe the last of the berries here will be worth picking.I like the blackberries, but maybe it's from childhood memories of cobblers.If you have dental work some people don't like the seeds.
One reason they probably don't sell the wineberries is they will smash in the carton,some stuff does not ship well.Maybe for local farmer's markets.

So I picked a bunch of rose hips at the beach today. Besides removing the seeds and washing them, if I wanted to make a pie, is it a standard around 2-3 cups of fruit, 1 cup sugar/etc, kinda thing? I've not found any rosehip pie recipes online.

Also, my neighbor has a che fruit tree, my neighbor right across the street! She'll probably let me pick it all I want. Any recipes for those fruits? Online also has like no recipes for that.

Also, I think I have elderberries growing.

Blackberries are mostly dying, but oddly one species seems to be just ripening right now. It has the biggest berries besides the ones growing along the ground (dewberries.) Just those blackberries aren't taking over entire fields like the other ones are. Better fruit than those, though.

Foraging is becoming a larger part of my life now. My main aim was to make some dandelion & burdock pop. Dandelion roots are easy as pie to dig up, but burdock (near me anyway) likes to grow on more stubborn soil, in places that are both overgrown and exposed. So this generally means populations of it will be found in fields just outside a farmer's house, where you don't want to be seen pulling them out. Then pulling them out is tough even with gloves on, as they must be pulled out in small clusters otherwise they snap at the bottom of the stem with no root whatsoever. Annoyingly when I was about to make my pop the roots grew mold and attracted bugs, and now most burdock plants are turning red and I'm not sure if that means they're still safe to eat. Any ideas anyone?

Spent part of today foraging for raspberries. Blackberries aren't anywhere near ripe yet although I found three wonderful, big, precocious ones. Found five bilberries too as I wasn't that high up, and took a strawberry before realising that patch was probably used by the houses across the road for cultivating. Bilberries are great but they're even better at staining, and time-consuming to forage. Much less likely to attract bugs though and they're a local delicacy that few seem aware of.

Gooseberries are absolute top drawer and beat everything else, but they seem so rare. Only found them in the Lake District.

Black walnuts,Maypops,muscadines and wild grapes are out now.When it frosts the wild persimmons will be ready.And if you are lucky,chinquapin nuts.

My sister has gone mad eating dandelions. Nearly every day she picks a bag full and puts a pile on her dinner. I started her off with the forest garden I am doing, getting her to eat the purslane, herb robert etc. Now she has gone mad on the dandies even though I am growing chicory which is a close relative. I won't eat them as it doesn't seem fair to all the rabbits who love them so much, so I scoop up her withering piles of unappetising dandelions and give them to the eager fur people.

I have wineberries in the garden, but I wasn't hugely impressed with them. My autumn raspberries are still going strong and there are a few blackberries left. I have made some wonderful blakberry corn cake this year and we have frozen quite a lot too. I would really like a mulberry tree but its hard to think where it would fit. We have too much shade already. Here there are lots of apples in the hedgerows and hazel nuts if you can get to them before the squirrels. I tried growing burdock but was less than impressed with the taste.

I used to suck on purple clovers when I was bored. They taste very sweet.