Bulk foragables: the Big Box store of your foraging habits.

We have wild mustard greens everywhere here in SE Ariz, and I love them, in soups, salads, or just in my mouth as I'm walking.
I juice the prickly pear fruit, freeze it, then add to mineral water to make prickly pear soda pop.
We have lambsquarters but im.not crazy about the flavor.
Also alot of moth mullein, desert mallow, amaranth, sorrel, wood sorrel, dandelions.
We also have alot of lizardtail. Dont know if its edible to people, but my chickens LOVE it!

Leila Blair wrote:We have wild mustard greens everywhere here in SE Ariz, and I love them, in soups, salads, or just in my mouth as I'm walking.
I juice the prickly pear fruit, freeze it, then add to mineral water to make prickly pear soda pop.
We have lambsquarters but im.not crazy about the flavor.
Also alot of moth mullein, desert mallow, amaranth, sorrel, wood sorrel, dandelions.
We also have alot of lizardtail. Dont know if its edible to people, but my chickens LOVE it!

What do you do with the moth mullein? Are its uses (edible and medicinal) similar to common mullein? Thanks, neighbor!

Moth mullein is a good respiratory tea. I have COPD, so I ad it to the desert mallow, lemon balm and yarrow I have growing and make herbal ice tea.

In TN we have plenty in yard to forage on IF we needed to.
Wild garlic plenty, dandelion (at least two varieties! Carolina, and common), plantain is appearing, purple dead-nettle plenty, hairy bitter crest plenty, chickweed too, along with pesky indian mock strawberry

Michael Moreken wrote:In TN we have plenty in yard to forage on IF we needed to.
Wild garlic plenty, dandelion (at least two varieties! Carolina, and common), plantain is appearing, purple dead-nettle plenty, hairy bitter crest plenty, chickweed too, along with pesky indian mock strawberry

We enjoy the smilax/cat brier shoots this time of year. It tastes kind of like a lemony asparagus. Unfortunately, the frost last week killed off all the new sprouts.

https://greatoutdoordinary.com/2017/03/12/sauteed-greenbriar-catbriar-bullbriar-smilax/

I'm on an island in southern Chile whose climate is a lot like the Pacific Northwest. Wild berries abound:  blackberries and a myrtle berry called "murta," which has a hint of juniper to it. And NO ONE PICKS THEM. Needless to say, I've been taking full advantage of the bounty while being able to maintain physical distance.

I have a couple of contacts in town that might be able to advise me on other forage opportunities: I'll see what they have to say, if anything.

I recently foraged barberries for the first time. They are DELICIOUS!

Since it’s come up on the Daily, here’s our SW Scottish coastal top six foraged edibles:

1) Laver (seaweed) - very similar to Japanese Nori, delicious and highly nutritious, foraged in winter when veg selection is at a low ebb.
2) Wild garlic - early spring, incredible flavour and gives a real boost coming out of winter.
3) Rosehips (mainly R. rugosa) - we eat these through the winter, having harvested in bulk, scraped out the seeds and frozen in portions. They are an excellent alternative to tomatoes for making sauces, in fact I prefer them. We dry smaller rosehips for tea.
4) Nettles (stinging, leaves and seeds) - mainly for tea, sometimes soup.
5) Brambles (wild blackberries) - for jelly and wine making.
6) Watercress - early season soup, we don’t dare eat it fresh because of the potential for liver flukes in the wild stuff.

Interesting to note that all these fall mainly outside of the main fruit and veg season, enriching those parts of the year when things are quieter in the garden.

Edit:
There was some discussion further up about eating garden snails. We do and they’re delicious (our fave is Cretan-style), but it is important to let them purge out the contents of their digestive tract first. There’s no need to feed them anything, just keep them for a week in a secure but not air-tight container and rinse daily.

Siyu-yu man,

Joseph : aren't amaranth & lambs quarters high in oxalic acid? i was juicing amaranth leaves & stems like crazy last month (we're growing it as a psuedograin crop this year) but stopped because i didn't want to overburden the kidneys.

If used raw, yes, they do have oxalic acid, so do most greens like spinach, silverbeet, beets, and other leafy greens, etc.

Simply blanching in or steaming over boiling water, and pouring off the water takes away most of the oxalic acid.

If just blanching, dip the drained, blanched leaves straight into very cold water to stop the cooking process and put in the fridge until completely cold if using as salad.

For cooked greens, steaming or boiling and pouring away the water is enough. Heat destroys the oxalates.

You are right about too much damaging kidneys as Oxalic acid binds with calcium and iron, making these minerals unavailable for absorption in the body

However, heat can break down oxalic acid which will allow the body to absorb higher amounts of vitamins, calcium, iron and fibre.

I find blanching or steaming best as many phytonutrients can get destroyed by a full cooking process.