3 "Weeds" to Leave in Your Garden (Until they're big enough to eat)

(lambsquarters close up)

There are common garden weeds which are not only edible, but are highly nutritious whether served in salad or cooked lightly as one would spinach. The trick is to learn to recognize them at all stages of their life--as tiny young plants or as flourishing adults. That's a young one is the pix above.

We live in southern Indiana, so I'm talking about my bioregion, which would include a lot of the Midwest (though maybe not the prairie areas). If you live in the Northwest, Southwest, your biogregion is no doubt quite a bit different. But if you're in most of the continental 48 states, then you could find lambsquarters in your garden, since it is common pretty much all across the country. Lambsquarters likes disturbed soil--as you find in gardens and other border areas where mankind lives. It grows in cities, in the country, and is one of those ubiquitious fellas who are found all over the place. Once you learn to identify them, you'll see them everywhere.

So check your garden! We're lucky to have lots of little lambys growing. I'm letting them get big enough to eat and then I'll pick them. But for now, they're welcome to grow. In former posts, I've written about lambsquarters here and here as well as lots of other places in this blog. Just look under the category lambsquarters. They are highly nutritious and tasty (not to mention, grow without any effort on your part and FREE).

A few days ago, I "weeded" our Amish friend's garden, which had a whole slew of lambsquarters. In fact, the LQ basically covered the area where they had planted celery! So I was lucky enough to pick all that. I processed it all by taking the leaves off the stems (edible but tough), then blanching or scalding them in boiling water, then drainging, cooling, and packaging them up for the freezer. So far I have 7 quarts in the freezer, with one more big batch of lambsquarters left to go. If you're lucky to find big areas of lambsquarters, do freeze them. They keep well and they're very welcome in the wintertime.

Purslane is another "weed" I let grow in the garden. I've talked about purslane in both the links I posted above for LQ. Also highly nutritious, purslane has the added benefit of being a great plant source of Omega-3. I like these as a salad green and we eat a lot of it in the summer. They don't freeze well, but you can pickle the stems. I haven't tried to dry it, but I might try that this year. You can find lots of pictures of purslane by going to Google Images and typing in purslane. That's what I do when I need to see a pix of a plant--very useful for identifying plants. It grows in gardens mostly--that's where I've seen most of it anyway. It's another plant that grows all over the country, north to south and east to west. It's very tasty and makes a really nice addition to salads. You can eat it as a potherb too, but I prefer it in salads. In Turkey, it's a national dish. Try it in a dish of browned ground beef, pork or lamb, rice, tomatoes and add a bunch of purslane. YUM.

The other of the three weeds I mentioned that I leave in the garden is woods sorrel. It's a light, lemony kind of plant. You can find a good pix of it, as well as other edible wild plants in this article of Wildman Steve Brill's. Check it out! This article includes mushrooms, berries, and a bunch of wild greens. I've written about woods sorrel here (among other plants). I find it in the garden all the time. And it is one of those I definitely leave til it's big enough to eat.

When it comes to weeds, if you can't beat 'em, eat 'em! These three, lambsquarters, purslane, and woods sorrel are all delicious and very good for you. If you keep an organic garden, as we do, then you don't have any worries about pesticides, herbicides, etc. Just wonderful, free food. As the world crashes down among us, these are good guys to keep your eyes open for. They'll help keep you alive and healthy.

Onwards!

HM

Lambquarters, Plantain and other miscelleanny

"There’s been an almost complete loss of cultural information from generation to generation in a lot of poverty communities. A lot of strategies of their parents and grandparents, the younger generation simply isn’t aware of. Just one example is lamb’s quarters. It grows pretty prolifically in every poor neighborhood on the street and very few people pick them and eat them. And they’re very tasty — I call them Oklahoma spinach. They’re very tasty and a good source of vitamin C and other things that you get in green vegetables, but people just don’t recognize that as food, they think of it as a weed, and so they don’t take advantage of the fact that they can get it for free, basically, just by picking it."

This is a quote from Bob Waldrop, a food activist in Oklahoma City. He works with the Catholic Workers to help feed, house, clothe people. Hen and Harvest has a very interesting interview with him on how food prices and availability are affecting poor people.

Lambsquarters is currently doing its seed thing. As I mentioned in a previous blog, you can harvest the seed, and this week I plan to do just that. The plant produces a large amount of seed--the trick is to use a paper bag to collect the seed, then separate seed and chaff at home by rolling the seed heads gently in your hands. The seed can be cooked into a breakfast cereal or ground into meal and added to other flour. The seeds are highly nutritious and said to be quite tasty. The picture above is what lambquarters looks like about now--check out that seed head!

As Waldrop noted, lambsquarter is prolific and nearly everywhere. But people do not recognize it as food. And they should, and I hope they will, for steamed lambsquarter is absolutely delicious. I've always been a spinach fan, and lambsquarters is better than spinach! It taste is mild, but add some butter and seasoning or pepper sauce or vinegar and you'll have one of the best greens I've ever eaten.

OK, enough preaching about the glories of this plant. If y'all don't want to eat weeds, it leaves more for me and mine!

When we were visiting our Amish friends this Saturday, their youngest son, about a year and a half, grabbed a hornet and found out the hard way why people should not grab hornets. His little hand started swelling right up and he was screaming with the pain. I immediately went out in the barnyard for plantain and picked a bunch of leaves. While Lydia held Chris, Emma, the eldest girl, got some vinegar and wiped his hand with it. I chewed up the plantain and started putting it on his hand. A light cloth was tied around the sting, and gradually Chris settled down. This all took place in about 10 mintues. After then plantain poultice had been on Chris's hand for about 15 minutes, the sting, the pain, and most of the swelling was gone.

When a hornet stung Michael earlier this year, I didn't think of the plantain quickly enough, and his foot stung like hell and swelled up--it stayed swollen for about two weeks! Plantain is a wonder herb for stings, rashes, bug bites, small wounds. Look around you--if you have enough, use some to make an oil or salve for the winter. You'll be glad you did.

Hmmmm. I just read in Just Weeds by Pamela Jones that the Indians gathered plantain leaves for use in the winter, greased them, and wrapped them in bundles. Then, when a leaf was wanted, it was pulled from the bundled and either put on the wound, or wiped off and used in a tea.



An infusion of plantain leaves was used in England as a treatment for ameobic and bacillary dysentery. Take 3 - 4 ounces of the root and leaves, bring to a boil in a pint of water, boil for 5 minutes, then take off heat and allow it to infuse for 10 more minutes. Drink as much of this tea as often as desired. Given that water will have to be carefully filtered in our near future, and no doubt mistakes will be made and dysentery will occur due to bad water or food, knowing about plantain for this common but devastating problem is a real benefit.


My hair has had a difficult summer with lots of hot sun in the garden, and general neglience. Yesterday I decided to condition it. I used the raw shea butter I mentioned earlier. Got my hair wet, and applied the butter directly to my hair, working it into the roots and out to the ends. I was afraid it wouldn't wash out when I was done, but it did, and I couldn't be happier with the conditioning job it did. My hair is soft and shiny and looking good today. I'm glad I found another use for the raw shea butter. The more multi-uses I can find for something, the better.

Another tip, but for ladies only: The best facial mask I've ever used is cream and baking cocoa. Both are very rich in butterfats, and your skin will drink them up. I used this yesterday as I hadn't done any "girl stuff" for ages. I used an egg yolk, heavy cream, and the cocoa. Mix together in a little bowl, then apply to clean skin for about a half-hour. It is great for the skin--the next day it feels as smooth as a baby's bottom, which is saying something for my sun-browned, cranky old skin.

Lacto-Fermenting and Other Projects

Here’s what happening in the Handmaiden’s Kitchen

My Amish friends, kind purveyors of terrific raw milk, butter, cream, eggs and produce, also have a yard for their chickens that is mostly a haven for lambs quarters in prodigious quantities. They don’t eat lambs quarter themselves, so they allow me to go and harvest as much as I like while we’re there. I’ve been freezing it for wintertime eating. When I bring home the bags of these nutritious greens, I take all the leaves off the stems (composting the stems, natch). The leaves get blanched in boiling water for three to five minutes, then poured into a collander (save the water you boil it in--it’ll have lots of vitamins and use it as part of a soup stock or drink it). I run cool water over the lambs quarter and when it is cool, put in it ziplock bags, marking the date and toss it in the freezer. Prodigal Gardens explains it well, and has some terrific recipes too. Actually, I’m feeling a bit guilty about this--I should tell Joaz and Lydia why I harvest and eat the lambs quarters--I don’t think they realize how nutritious it is. As it is though, they have so many vegetables in their gardens that I doubt they have time for this “weed.”

The tomatoes have come in and are doing their best to keep me very busy. I haven’t canned them so far, though I will probably end up doing a batch or three. I’ve been making tomato sauce and freezing that. A basic tomato sauce is super easy to make, mostly because I don’t bother peeling and seeding them. Saute up some garlic and onions, add a bunch of cut up ripe tomatos, some chopped up basil, oregano and parsley (dried if you don’t have it fresh), some wine or water and salt/pepper and cook it til it tastes mama mia good. I have one of those handheld blender things--and what a great tool for the kitchen that thing is!--and so I blend it well when it has cooked enough. Yum. Tomato sauce is one of those universally useful foods to have around. If you’re as poor as we are all probably going to be, some fried corn mush topped with tomato sauce and cheese can make an excellent dinner.

Mostly what I’ve been doing, however, involves lacto fermentation, which is something you should know about. You can read about it here, here and here.

Lacto fermentation is a method of preserving food with the added bonus of making that food extra delicious and healthy for you. Here’s what Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions has to say:

"It may seem strange to us that, in earlier times, people knew how to preserve vegetables for long periods without the use of freezers or canning machines. This was done through the process of lacto-fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrefying bacteria. Starches and sugars in vegetables and fruits are converted into lactic acid by the many species of lactic-acid-producing bacteria. These lactobacilli are ubiquitous, present on the surface of all living things and especially numerous on leaves and roots of plants growing in or near the ground. Man needs only to learn the techniques for controlling and encouraging their proliferation to put them to his own use, just as he has learned to put certain yeasts to use in converting the sugars in grape juice to alcohol in wine."

Lacto-fermentation is ancient, preserves food, and makes the vegetables, fruits and beverages easier to digest while increasing vitamin content and adding probiotics to your diet. If you have a root cellar or other cool place where you can store foods long term, then you should learn how to ferment your own vegetables. If you have a love for pickles and other sour-tart foods, you’ll love fermented vegetables. As Fallon points out, this is a worldwide custom, every culture knew how to ferment vegetables and fruits to preserve them and to make them even more nutritious.

The basic process is this: Pick the best vegetables or fruits available to you--organic if possible. Clean and cut up the vegetable, usually diced or shredded. Put the vegetable in a bowl and pound it to get some of its juices going. Put it in a clean glass jar, then add some sea salt, whey and water. Leave an inch of head space in the jar, then put the lid on tightly. Leave at room temperature (about 70 degrees) for a few days. This gives the lactobacillus time to ferment. When it tastes sour/tangy to you, then you can store it in the fridge or in the root cellar or another cool place. Sally Fallon explains this in her article and her cookbook. It is very simple and cheap and will preserve your vegetables for months. There are recipes available on the web, just google lacto-fermented recipes and you’ll find them. I’ve talked about vegetables here because I haven’t tried fruit yet. I keep my fermented veggies in the fridge for now, but will put them in the root cellar or cold room when we get that going.

Where you get whey: If you can get raw milk, you can make your own curds and whey. Raw milk left at room temperature will sour, but it doesn’t go bad, at least not in the few days you leave it out. Pasturized milk will definitely go bad left at room temp. I leave a quart or two of raw milk at room temp for two to four days (the time varies because “room temperature” can vary). When the milk has separated, you pour the milk through cheesecloth, allowing the liquid (whey) to collect in a pot, and keeping the curds in the cheesecloth. I use a collander lined with cheesecloth, and when most of the whey has gone into the pot underneath the collander, I gently tie up the cheesecloth onto a wooden spoon placed on top of the collander. I allow the when to drip off the curds for 8 to 10 hours or so (overnight) and in the morning, I have a quart of whey, and some cream cheese in the cheesecloth. I store the whey in a quart jar in the fridge, and use up the cream cheese in recipes. The whey will keep for months. You can add a tablespoon of whey to a cup of soup or water for extra nutritional value, but mostly I use the whey in fermenting. In the 19th century, there were lots of whey houses (think coffee houses or oxygen bars) and it was renowned for its health-giving properties.

“Whey is such a good helper in your kitchen. It has a lot of minerals. One tablespoon of whey in a little water will help digestion. It is a remedy that will keep your muscles young. It will keep your joints movable and ligaments elastic. When age wants to bend your back, take whey . . . With stomach ailments, take one tablespoon whey three times daily, this will feed the stomach glands and they will work well again.” Hanna Kroeger, Ageless Remedies from Mother’s Kitchen (p. 87 in Nourishing Traditions)

If you can’t get whey, you can make piima milk by purchasing some good non homogenized whole milk and adding piima culture. I haven’t looked but I’m sure you can find piima culture to buy through google or check your local health food store. Once you have piima milk, you can then make your whey and cream cheese curds--just leave at room temp for a few days until it separates. Note I am not talking about whey powder here--this is the liquid stuff.

Using lacto-fermentation, I’ve made beet kvass, a very healthy tonic drink. Tart and pleasingly sour, it will strengthen your liver and alkalize and clean your blood. This couldn’t be easier: peel two to three raw beets, dice them up, put in a quart jar and add one tablespoon sea salt and four tablespoons whey. Fill the jar with filtered or clean water and let sit at 70 degrees for a few days, then refrigerate. Leave the beets right in the jar. Once you’ve drank all the liquid, you can refill the jar with water, leave out for two days, then in the fridge again. I’ve been reading that you can also ferment herb teas, which sounds very interesting. More on that later.

Another thing I’ve fermented is gundru. This is a survival food from Nepal, “poor people” food. Gundru can be made from spinach or any other green. And it doesn’t require any salt or whey! All you do is clean the greens, cut them up into small slices, then use a rolling pin to crush the greens more and get their juices working. Cram as much as possible into a clean jar and put on a tight lid. Leave out at room temp. Next day, pound on the greens in the jar again using a wooden spoon. Then you leave it out for 10 days. At the end of 10 days, the greens will smell tart and fermented, like they’ve been cured. The lactobacilli on the surface of the greens will have done their job. If there is any excess water, drain it, and then put the cured leaves out in the sun to dry. It took the batch I did one day to sun dry (it was hot as hell that day). I then put the greens into a small jar and I’ll add them to soups and stews. The gundru taste interesting--it is a good addition to the Greens Jar for adding to wintertime food.

Then there’s purlane stems fermenting and watermelon rind, using the basic salt, whey, water method. As well as some Amish cider that is fermenting in a slightly more alcoholic mode.

There’s other projects going on as well, freezing and drying foods, but this has gotten too long. With life and times about to get harder for most of us, I’m trying to learn ways to harvest free, healthy food, and preserve them for my family. Anything we can do to heighten our nutrition will lessen our need for doctors. And if we’re eating a lot of basic rice and beans, it will help that our vegetables are preserved in ways that make them tasty, interesting and good for us. Give fermentation a try--all our ancestors did.

Summertime Harvesting

June is the summer garden, weeding, watering, feeding the plants that are still a bit too small to be producing. Late July and August are the real harvest months. However, if you garden, you can find nutritious edible weeds growing among your beans and corn and whatever luscious vegetables you have growing.

Every day I work in the garden, which is most days, I bring a couple of plastic bags with me for harvesting the edible weeds. In my last post, I mentioned lambs quarter and purslane, so I’ll write more in depth about these two useful, tasty plants, because chances are, you’ll find them in your garden. If you don’t have a garden, see if your family or friends who do will let you help them weed their garden.. Or ask a farmer--Joaz, the Amish farmer we buy our eggs, butter and produce from lets me out into his oat field whenever I ask. I don’t think he can believe that I actually will eat this hated weed; he probably thinks I’m nuts. That’s OK, I think it is perfectly fine when people think I’m nuts. Tells me I’m heading in the right direction…

Here is a terrific picture of young lambs quarter plants. You can see the plants very clearly in that photo. (Check out the rest of Bobcats Wilder Kitchen with its wild plants and recipes while you’re there.) When it gets older, this is what it looks like. Lambs quarter, also known as goosefoot or pigweed, has a long growing season--you can eat it from when it first appears to about November. If you’re weeding, pull out the whole plant and cut off the roots (so you won’t get tons of dirt in the sink when you’re cleaning it). Voila, you’ve weeded, helping your garden plants along by eliminating the competition, and you’re on your way to a nice salad for dinner.

Lambs quarter’s nutritive value is “not only equal by even greater than that of spinach: besides its large content of iron, calcium, and albumen, lambs quarters is also rich in vitamins A and C.”(From Just Weeds.) It is an herb you can use any way you use spinach--raw, in salads, steamed lightly, served with salt, pepper and butter or a touch of vinegar, or in soups, stews, pasta dishes. We like it right now in salad; as the summer goes on, I will also be blanching and freezing it for winter consumption.

The seeds are also nutritious and edible. Gather them late in the fall by placing a paper bag under the seeds and stripping them off into the bag. The seeds can be eaten as a breakfast mush, like cornmeal mush, or ground and used with flour for pancakes or whatever. I haven’t harvested the seeds yet myself, but that’s what the info has to say.

The other plant to look for in your garden is purslane. We found this last summer, growing all over the garden. I had read about it and recognized it, and so picked a bunch to try. We loved it--it’s very tasty, with an acidy, lemony flavor. We mentioned it to our neighbors who also had garden plots near ours, and they ate it too. Some of the men claimed it made their joints stop cracking and were less sore when they moved. After we told everyone about how wonderful purslane is, it became almost rare in the gardens since everyone was harvesting it. This year I hope they forget--the more for us!

Last year, an article appeared on the web called “The 10 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating.” Purslane was number 6 in that article. It has a large amount of Omega 3 fats, vitamins C and A, iron, phosphorus, and calcium. Purslane was cultivated as a vegetable in the past, but it was forgotten. Now is the time to remember this tasty weed and to enjoy its benefits. When harvesting purslane, beware of spurge, which tends to grow near purslane, and looks a bit similar to it. Spurge’s stem is wiry, not thick like purslane, and gives off a milky sap. These two don’t look that much alike, but be careful when you’re harvesting purslane. Spurge is poisonous.

Purslane can be eaten raw, steamed, added to soups and stews, and the stems can be pickled. The seeds are also edible, but again, I haven’t had the pleasure of gathering and serving them. This year, maybe, although it sounds very labor-intensive to gather these tiny seeds.

Now that some folks are trying to live a more sustainable life, purslane is considered a good choice for edible landscaping. I love this idea myself. If I landscaped, I’d try to have every plant edible or medicinal, both handsome and useful. Rather than spend your time trying to get rid of these “weeds,” lambs quarter and purslane, rejoice when you see them in your garden, because it means extra, free food that is more nutritious than the other garden plants you’re growing.

Weeds: Plants Treasured by Our Ancestors

By the Handmaiden

Many of the wild edible and medicinal plants gathered by today’s foragers were brought to the Americas by the Pilgrims and other early immigrants. These were plants known to be valuable as food and medicine, and naturally enough early colonists wanted these plants around them in the new world.

In other words, plants that are today disdained as weeds, were highly-desirable plants treasured by our forefathers, who knew of their beneficial uses. Think of the “weeds” that herbicides are created to kill--dandelions, lambs quarters, chickweed, plantain--these plants traveled here with people who brought them as seeds or rootlings. They were planted in herb gardens, but being hardy and prolific, they began to multiply and spread quickly. Today, they are all over the country, having traveled with, and in spite of, people’s efforts.

I have a book called Just Weeds: History, Myths and Uses by Pamela Jones. I bought it used through Amazon for about $10. And it is worth every penny for all the entertaining stories about weeds, which are generally the plants we harvest when foraging. Jones gives historical information, herbal recipes, food recipes, discusses what various herbalists and medical men have written about the plants and their properties; she even mentions magical uses, keeping away bad spirits and the like. This is the kind of book you sit down to read rather than a field guide; it informs you as well as entertains.

Jones writes that most if not all of the widely-foraged weeds were brought by colonists to America, that is, if the plant wasn’t already here in various related species. (Poison ivy was already here, it’s a native.)

Here is a list of a few excellent culinary and medicinal weeds with some background information about them (taken from Just Weeds):

Yarrow--an herb used for wound-healing, is an ancient Eurasian plant. It has been carbon-dated back 60,000 years and was probably known to Egyptian, Indian and Chinese healers. Brought over by the colonists.

Burdock--was known in ancient and medieval times in Europe and was brought over by early immigrants. It has both medicinal and culinary uses--excellent as a blood purifier in the spring (the root), crushed leaves can be applied to mosquito bites; and the stalk can be eaten in the spring or the root eaten in spring and fall.

Black mustard, which grows all over the place--you see its yellow flowers in the spring in fields, was mentioned in the Bible as well as in the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon. Everyone knows of the bright yellow mustard condiment, or honey pepper mustard or spicy dijon. Used for food (the Roman army took the plant with them and ate it as a cooked vegetable) and for medicine (heard of mustard plasters?) Grows worldwide.

Shepherd’s Purse was unknown in the Americas before the Pilgrims. These days, it is a weed of ancient lineage, used for food and medicine. High in Vitamin K, it helps to clot the blood.

Lambs quarters: Originated in the Mediterranean region (as do quite of few of these plants). Also known as pigweed, this family of plants has 60 species. Lambs quarters is an incredibly hardy plant--it can grow in poor soil, and seeds found in an archeology site where they were buried 1700 years ago actually germinated! It was grown as fodder for livestock and poultry, and raised for human food by Indian farmers.

Plantain, which became known as white man’s foot to Native Americans, is a plant so common you probably have never noticed it. It also traveled with the Roman army as it tramped around the world. It is very useful for insect bites, rashes, light burns, sores and wounds and antidote to poison. Crush the leaves and apply them as a poultice to the area affected. The seeds, known as psyllium, are widely used as a laxative. The entire plant is rich in potassium salts, and is a very useful herb to know.

Chicory--you know, that spindly plant with the lovely blue flowers you see at the side of the road--has been cultivated for 5,000 years. Thomas Jefferson sent to Italy for chicory seeds, which he harvested for his table and for cattle fodder. The roots can provide a coffee substitute (or be added to coffee when brewed as the French do). You will also find it in grocery stores as endive, a bitter lettucy green. There’s also a forced form, pale and crisp, that you pay top dollar for. It’s been used medicinally for thousands of years.

Queen Anne’s lace or wild carrot--brought over by colonists. Member of the parsley family, which includes parsnips, celery, parsley, dill and caraway. It also contains poisonous plants such as water hemlock, the deadliest plant in North America. The root of Queen Anne’s lace is carrot-like, and edible. The herb portion (the leaves) of the plant can be decocted and used to wash wounds and boils.

Why Wild Foods?

Why Wild Foods?
By Patricia Neill Boone © 2008

(OK, enough with the copyright stuff or the fancy name. I'll just go by Handmaiden here.)

“We spend millions on herbicides to kill the dandelions in our lawns, while we pay millions more for diet supplements to give ourselves the vitamins and minerals that dandelion could easily furnish.” Euell Gibbons in his essay on Just How Good Are Wild Foods?

In a world that is crumbling before us, and where we might have to live on foods we’ve grown and stored, learning to gather wild foods is an excellent skill to have. It is knowledge that once learned, cannot be taken from you. Even if you lost everything--your job, your family, your prepped gear and foods, you would still be able to eat if you know how to fish and how to forage.

I was reading somewhere how a guy was a POW in Germany in the Second World War. He knew what wild foods to eat and recognized some growing where his prison camp was located in Germany. While many around him died from malnutrition, starvation and disease, his knowledge of the wild nutritious weeds kept him alive.

Wild foods are full of health-giving nutrients, vitamins and minerals. As these elements become more and more rare in our over-processed foods, Americans have become malnourished even as they’ve become obese. We need all the trace minerals, the vitamins, the essential fatty acids, the minerals we can get, and wild foods can give them to you. Here is a wonderful chart of many of the more common wild edibles and their nutritive value.

Purslane and lambs’ quarters, which I found yesterday growing (free!) in my garden, are both high in essential fat, potassium, calcium, phosphorus and vitamin C. We had them in a salad last night. These are weeds, folks, hardy plants that you have to work hard to get rid of. I’ll “get rid” of mine by letting them grow into a good size so that we can more fully enjoy them. With purslane, it is good to just break off the stem and leave the root. The stem will grow back.

These foods, these weeds, essentially, grow all around you wherever you are. Once you learn the plant, you will always recognize it, even driving past a patch of something in a car, you’ll still be able to identify the plant. Learning this skill can save your life, it can provide you with food in hard times, it can be your ticket into a survival group, and best of all, no one can ever take the knowledge from you. Once learned, its yours.

When I go out to forage, I carry a backpack with some essential tools. I suggest you get the tools, keep them in a bag of some sort in your car, and you’ll always be ready to forage wherever you are.

When I first started foraging, I just took a folding knife and some plastic bags for whatever I managed to harvest. As I made more foraging trips, I realized that some other tools would also come in handy. Here’s what I carry these days.

I keep a small backpack in the trunk of my car that holds all my foraging stuff. It’s got bottled water, some Avon Skin-so-Soft bath oil (the best bug repellent in the world), lots of plastic bags, a foraging book with color photos and good ID information and my tools.

The tools are standard gardening tools--a hand trowel, a hand cultivator, a pruning tool, and a root digger. I also have a nifty pruning/gardening multi-tool with two knife blades, one with some saw teeth, a saw and a short root digger. Mine is similar to the one shown in the link, but with less tools. There’s a pair of gloves in the pack as well--you need ‘em for those nettles. I also carry a shovel in the trunk of the car for digging bigger roots.

The book I carry in my pack is Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide by Thomas S. Elias and Peter A. Dykeman. This guide has good photos and good information on each plant, and it isn’t heavy or bulky.

And that’s it--that’s all you’ll need. You don’t have to have the field guide I carry--though I really like this book. Just make sure you have a good guide with color photos and a good description of the plant and its habitat. If you have any doubts about a plant, take a sample--a branch, a shoot, something with the leaves and other key identification aspects, and continue to research it on the web. You’ll soon learn to ID the plants you’re interested in. Good luck and happy hunting!