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Garden Foraging?
NorthernJoe
Posts: 660
I know it's probably just called harvesting in your own garden but do you "forage" in your own garden?
M
aybe you leave an area wild to get nettle for tea or soup, which is no different to growing a vegetable but it's a wild plant and outside of your garden it's called foraging.
We have wild garlic and Hazel. There's yew which we're going nowhere near despite technically if you don't break into the seed then the flesh of the fruit is edible, don't try them unless you really do know what you're doing BTW! I'm sure there's other things. I'd like a Scots pine because I like it's needle tea.
I'm curious that's all. I don't know enough to be sure the wilder areas have much else worth foraging. I'm told we have St John's wort which I understand to have proven medical benefits. Not sure about that as others have said its something else.
So any alternative gardeners who accept weeds with benefits for foraging purposes?
M
aybe you leave an area wild to get nettle for tea or soup, which is no different to growing a vegetable but it's a wild plant and outside of your garden it's called foraging.
We have wild garlic and Hazel. There's yew which we're going nowhere near despite technically if you don't break into the seed then the flesh of the fruit is edible, don't try them unless you really do know what you're doing BTW! I'm sure there's other things. I'd like a Scots pine because I like it's needle tea.
I'm curious that's all. I don't know enough to be sure the wilder areas have much else worth foraging. I'm told we have St John's wort which I understand to have proven medical benefits. Not sure about that as others have said its something else.
So any alternative gardeners who accept weeds with benefits for foraging purposes?
0
Posts
I remember last year on Gardeners’ World some chap had a field devoted to foraging produce and showed to the camera a “delicious” bowl of raggedy weeds he had picked for lunch. Yea right. Just throw on some cat kibbles and call it good. As you can gather, I won’t be eating at Noma any time soon!
So, @NorthernJoe, the response to your question from me is the common as muck blackberries. I have a few brambles in the garden but the harvest is much better on the footpath 50 yards away and, if the drizzle stops, I might pick some this morning.
I remain unconvinced about the tastiness of nettles, dandelions, chickweed, ground elder and young hawthorn leaves.
I would use wild garlic leaves but I don't grow it. I think it can be invasive so I'll not be planting any but just hope I find the odd clump while out and about in spring.
Then forget about what supermarkets have done to our meat especially beef. I'm not talking just about quality or animal standards. I'm talking about colour and flavour. Where they went every butchers have followed. Bright red beef that's fresh as it comes. Not aged and brown like meat was and should be. Now you have to spend a fortune to get the meat how it used to be sold, with flavour and tender due to aging. You don't just hang game to increase flavour.
That's not just about production issues because it's easily possible to scale up aging of beef in climate controlled facilities.
The interesting thing is they've retrained us as a society to see anything but red beef as gone off! How many times have you thrown out brown beef because "it didn't look right/ good!"
Now salads must look uniform with bland, iceberg served chilled straight out of the fridge. Sorry but that just looks sad to me. Like those pubs who sell a nice meal with the need to add a bit of limp lettuce and some slaw. The salad that ends up going back. Possibly not for the first time!
BTW I've never foraged for salad. Only a few teas and infusions. Must admit to buying nettle tea as a household. I'm. More a coffee person. There's no foraging possible in the UK for a coffee replacement I reckon. Damsons, rowan berries, blsckberries