In this video, I give you 5 tips for making the most out of your springtime opportunities for foraging wild edible plants. I talk about how the Fear of Missing Out can affect people's foraging success. I go out and forage 10 different plants and use them to cook a spring weed omelette - that I am calling my "FOMO omelette" or "Fear of Missing Out" omelette.
There are so many good wild plants to eat in the spring. And spring can come and go so fast, depending on the weather where you are. The Fear of Missing Out can affect how people do their springtime foraging, too -- with an upside and a couple downsides.
On the upside, the Fear of Missing Out can push people to pick plants in poor condition, like picking dandelion greens from plants in stressed condition. FOMO can also push people to pick plants way past their prime, so far past that the plants just won't taste good. And some kinds of plants may have even developed high enough concentrations of compounds that we shouldn't eat them at all.
I've also run across people that are so focused on eating some sort of wild plant that they don't even get a plant identified right, or they just start tasting this plant or that plant because it looks tasty or it looks something like they think they know, without really learning what the plants are.
Here are my 5 tips for getting the most out of your spring foraging season.
Tip 1: Learn a variety of plants. The more plants you really know, the more opportunities you have.
Tip 2: Make a map or notebook of good foraging spots. This means a detailed map or notebook with specific plants and specific locations. In your own yard, it may be a mental map. But farther afield, a real map is better. This works especially well for perennial wild edible plants, like dock, pokeweed, wild asparagus, and Japanese knotweed. Maps and notes let you learn plants at your own pace and be prepared for next spring in a reliable way, because you have more time to confirm identify from flowers, seeds, or fruits.
Tip 3: Learn How to Extend the Foraging Season. I'll make a more detailed video about this topic, but here are a couple tips for right now. One way is to look in areas where plants have to keep growing quickly. That includes shaded areas and in the tall grass. Another way is to learn to prepare wild plants in different ways, depending on their conditions.
Tip 4: Preserve some of the harvest. This is a a great option when a plant is really good to eat, there's a lot of it, it's easy to harvest it, and it's easy to preserve. I mostly freeze my wild edible plant harvests. But I pickle some, I ferment some, and I dehydrate some. I'm not a fan of canned vegetables, but wild greens can be canned just like garden greens. In my omelette, I used the frozen chives and elephant garlic flowers that I had pickled.
Tip 5: Move on. Let it go. Seasons change. That's part of the enjoyment of eating wild plants - something new is always coming into season out there. In my omelette, the bittercress is that last that I will be using this year.
Do you feel like you are missing out on opportunities to eat wild plants? Let me know. I am interested in knowing your tips for getting the most out of your spring foraging season, too. Please let me know in the comment section!
Here are the plants I put into my omelette:
1. Bittercress -- Cardamine hirsuta or C. oligosperma
2. Eastern Larch or Tamarack - Larix laricina
3. American Elm - Ulmus americana
4. Purple deadnettle - Lamium purpureum
5. Chickweed - Stellaria media
6. Dandelion flowers - Taraxacum officinale
7. English Daisies - Bellis perennis
8. Wild field mustard flowers - Brassica rapa
9. Eastern Redbud flowers - Cercis canadensis
10. Yellow deadnettle - Lamium galeobdolon, Lamiastrum galeobdolon
11. Wild Chives - Allium vinale
12. Feral Elephant Garlic flowers - Allium ampeloprasum
Here's a springtime wild salad - It has over 20 different weeds, tree leaves, and flowers in it: • Foraging Wild Spring S...
Here's a video that shows basic cooking of 10 individual kinds of weeds, with a taste comparison: • Wild Greens: Homestead...
My playlist on foraging for wild foods: • Foraging Wild Edibles:...
My channel: Haphazard Homestead: / @haphazardhomestead
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Music: "Guts and Bourbon" by, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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