500k subscribers right in time for Pokeweed season?!
To each and every one of you who is part of that number, thank you. Thank you for caring about foraging and wild food and taking part in this community!
I didn't really know what to expect when I started this channel. I just knew that I wanted to make it my life's work to share all the amazing wild edible plants and mushrooms growing around me with anyone who would listen.
So thank you for listening.
If you have a favorite moment from my videos over the past years, let me know what that is!
Also, I wanted to take this time to highlight one of my favorite wild vegetables that so many people are overlooking, Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). The tender shoots of this plant are one of the best vegetables in the entire world, and so few people eat them. They need to be cooked in a certain way to eat, and you can search "pokeweed" on my channel videos to see my full long-form video about how to do it! (It's way easier than you might think)
I apologize that it's been so long since I've posted more of my long-form videos. My foraging app has demanded almost all my attention over the past year and a half. I do have several videos planned for this year that I'm very excited to share, and I've been posting shorts in the meantime as well!
Answering your questions about Sochan! (Rudbeckia laciniata)
First, I just wanted to say how excited it makes me to see so much interest in this plant. Iād easily put Sochan in my top five criminally underrated wild foods, so itās nice to see it getting more recognition! (And I just posted a video about another member of that top five today)
Question #1: What zone are you in?
Iām guessing people are asking this because they want to gauge if it grows in their region and what its season is.
Iām in Zone 8a, but I have a far better way for you to determine its timing! I made a foraging app where you can enter your location, and it will show you seasonal windows for wild species like Sochan that are *tailored to your specific area,* so no more guessing!
The link in my channel bio will get you a whole free month-long trial!
Question #2: Where does it grow?
Iāve included a screenshot from my app of the range of this plant. It primarily grows in eastern NA, but also pops up in the Rockies, particularly around Colorado.
I donāt know if this is a natural distribution or if it was human spread. āSochanā is the English way of pronouncing the Cherokee name of the plant. It has been and still is an important food plant to the American tribes who live where it grows, so I wouldnāt be surprised at all if it were spread through trade.
Getting more specific than just its range, in my area, it really prefers creeksides and floodplains (as do many other food plants). Thatās where I would try to find it first! Speaking ofā¦
Question #3: How do I find it?
If you want to find it easily, you should employ what I call āflower scoutingā as itās super easy to find and identify when it is flowering. It flowers in late summer to early fall, and yes, my foraging app can tell you the exact time this happens in your area! š
Question #4: What is its nutritional content?
I really wish I could tell you, but North American native wild food is pretty much non-existent in āmainstreamā health, so at the time of writing, Iām not aware of any nutritional analyses that have been done. (Maybe we can figure out how to do this ourselves?)
Thatās all I have room for now, let me know if you have more questions and Iāll try to answer all of them in another post!
Nature produces millions of calories in the form of wild food that most people in North America walk right by without realizing it.
In this free online class, we'll learn the most important wild edible plants that grow East of the Rockies in North America, for both emergency and long-term survival situations. These are the species that can give you vital calories if food were more difficult to acquire than it is today.
Further, you'll discover that many of these species are far from the 'survival gruel' that people may expect them to be. In fact, a fair number are quite delicious!
We'll also discuss vital tools and techniques that you need to know in order to process these plants into high-quality food with efficiency.
As you guys know, I've been sharing a lot on this subject over the past couple of years in the 'Never go Hungry' series on this channel. I put a ton of effort into each of those videos, and while I love the final product, each takes at least a month (and usually more) to put together.
I feel like I need to share everything I've learned sooner rather than later, and this class here is where I'll do it. Though the title is just 'emergency' wild food, in reality, we will spend much more time going over 'long-term' survival food. I call these 'staple' wild foods.
This subject (staple wild food) is far more important for the average person to know. Despite that, I see very little information about these edible wild plants released online! My class will aim to change that.
I'm looking forward to seeing you there! Even if you cannot make it, if you sign up, you'll be sent a recording that you can use forever; it will never go away.
I hope you never need the knowledge you'll gain from class, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
And it would mean a lot if you could share this class with a friend or neighbor who might be interested!
"You might see this tiny, delicate early-spring wildflower and think it is just a pretty forest decoration.
But hiding beneath the deep earth is an incredible secret of ancestral winter survival.
Meet Spring Beauty Fairy Spuds."
Okay, that's where the AI-slop ends, š and this is where real human information begins.
Recently, I made a video calling out an AI-slop page for their awful posts on wild food.
But their style of post seems to be getting a lot of attention, so I thought I would steal it and replace it with real photos and real info!
Hopefully, this will help to combat their information.
Okay, let's talk about Spring Beauty (Calytonia virginica).
They do indeed produce edible tubers that are delicious. They taste just like potatoes to me.
They grow in Eastern North America, and other species grow out west!
But you wouldn't want to rely on this plant alone as a staple. It grows too slowly.
I call it a wild food "battery". They don't really take up much space and only emerge for a month or two in the spring before going dormant. So I plant a bunch of them in my yard to begin to 'charge' the battery.
That way, if I ever need to, I can pull from the 'charge' that I've stored up as they grow.
Most spring beauties produce relatively smalltubers, smaller than a quarter. However, some produce much larger ones, which are pictured on the right. These are the ones you'd want to transplant, propagate, and protect if you find them.
Only take some from thriving populations.
I made a whole long-form video showing you everything you need to know about foraging spring beauty. It's on my YouTube channel if you're interested.
Spring beauty season is actually just starting right now in my area!
To find out if they grow near you and when you can forage them, you can use my foraging app, Gather. The link is in my bio!
Save this post for reference and share it with a fellow human!
Too often, I find people equating āsustainableā quantities with small quantities. But nothing could be further from the truth!
A sustainable amount of wild blueberries is not necessarily a small amount of blueberries. A sustainable amount of wild elderberry is not a small amount of elderberry. A sustainable amount of American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), pictured here, is not a small amount of lotus. In fact, it probably would have been more sustainable if I had gathered even more! (I'll explain that a little later)
A sustainable amount is simply the amount that a given population can āsustainā year after year, without negative impact. So, that amount changes depending on what you are foraging for.
A sustainable amount of wild lettuce greens is quite literally as much as you can possibly gather, because as a weedy biennial, the plant produces hundreds, even thousands of seeds, you couldnāt cause negative impacts to their populations if you wanted to.
A sustainable amount of Wood nettle greens would obviously be far fewer because they cannot reproduce as prolifically.
Thatās why itās imperative you understand the biology of what you are foraging before you go foraging for a lot of it.
Letās keep this rant going.
āJust forage invasive plants!ā is something I hear a lot. Should you forage for invasive plants? Yes. Should you help remove them, too? Also yes. But that is not the whole picture at all. You SHOULD also forage for native plants.
Letās talk about animals. āWhat about the animals?!ā
Yes, a lot of them are dying off, insects too! Why? Because we keep destroying their habitat for shopping centers and (this is the key) agricultural fields.
Every calorie that I gather from a wild, diverse habitat that supports a myriad of species is a calorie that I donāt need to purchase from big Ag, a calorie that a habitat didnāt need to be destroyed for. Thatās why even more lotus is even more sustainable.
To armchair āenvironmentalistsā complaining about foraging sustainability, get off your keyboard, go outside, and eat some wild food!
Until then, youāll never understand the abundance of nature.
This is Americaās secret, forgotten wild spice! You cannot find them at the grocery store, but foraging them is easy. Hereās what you need to know!
Literally called Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), the fruits ripen to a vibrant red in late summer to early autumn, and you do NOT want to miss them.
The spice you can make from the fruits is amazing, both unique and familiar at the same time. It has a combination of complex spicy notes along with flavors of citrus and black pepper.
Here is what you need to know if you want to forage them yourself, including lookalikes and processing.
First, we donāt like to use the whole fruit for making spice. In my experiments, Iāve found that the large inner seed is slightly astringent and bitter, so we separate them.
The soft fruit flesh on the exterior is easily removed from the seed inside, though it can be a little time-consuming, but itās worth the effort for more than just the removal of bitter compounds!
Separating them can be quite meditative! You can also just do this while you listen to a great audiobook. (I recommend Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson š)
After that, you MUST dry them thoroughly! Spicebush fruits are very high in fat, so they will go rancid quickly after harvesting if left untreated. This isnāt a foraged product to get to later that week, itās one to get to tonight!
I use a dehydrator set to about 125Ā°F running overnight. Separating them from the seeds also makes drying them way easier.
Then I store them whole in an airtight container with a desiccant packet to keep them dry and grind them as needed or use them whole in recipes! Spicebush will work perfectly in recipes that contain spices like allspice or cinnamon. It works amazingly in pumpkin pie to make an extra-American pie!
Now letās talk about gathering, habitat, lookalikes, and timing.
To gather them efficiently, you want to have a gathering container that allows you to have both hands free. That being said, you really only need about a cup or so to last you for at least a year!
Honeysuckle berries, which are inedible, can look similar at first glance, but theyāre very easy to tell apart. Honeysuckle berries lack a single hard seed on the inside with much softer, juicier flesh that is not aromatic. Plus, the leaves of honeysuckles are arranged opposite, while spicebushās are alternating.
We find them in abundance in creekside ecologies (alongside many paw paws, too), but sometimes in drier forests as well! They occur throughout Eastern North America.
To find out when they are ripe, tailored to your *exact* location, you should check out my foraging app, Gather, on your app store or the link in my channel bio.
There, you can also download all this info for offline use, plus our in-depth lookalike guide for spicebush and dozens of other wild foraged species as well!
Start your trial today to find out what amazing species are growing near you!
Elderberry, a wild fruit that is both medicinal AND delicious!
People spend lots of money on imported elderberry products from Europe and Asia, but did you know that elderberry is one of the most abundant wild fruits in America!
Here are some tips for finding and foraging it.
The first aspect is timing. In my area of North AL, elderberry season is winding down, but in many other parts of the USA, theyāre in season! (Iāll tell you how to know exactly the right time in your area in a second.)
Next, for American Black Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), they fruit most abundantly where they are growing close to water. With the western Blue Elderberry, (Sambucus cerulea), this is not the case, though. (Western folks can chime in with any tips on that species if you have them!)
Finally, though this is elderberry fruit season, the best time to find your spots is actually earlier in the year when they put out vibrant white plumes of flowers that you could spot from a mile away! The flowers can be used as well. I love to use them as a flavoring for sparkling wine or to dry them for tea.
Last, there are two (maybe three) lookalikes that you should know about. For flowers, that would be Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata), for fruits, it would be Devilās Walking Stick (Aralia spinosa), and some beginners also could possibly mistake the fruits of Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) for elderberry.
A detailed, distinguishing detail lookalike guide for each of those species is available in my brand new foraging app, Gather. Plus, youāll get timings for both the flowers and the fruit that are tailored to your specific location!
You can also set notifications for them so youāre phone will remind you when itās time to get ready for the season. Youāll never miss it again!
You can see that I am very happy in this photo, because from just ONE incredible bush, I was able to get all of the elderberries that Laramie and I need for a whole year. Weāll use this to make wine, tea, syrup, and one of my new favorites, pie! (With the seeds and all, but more on that later)
I have a video on how to process the berries using the āfreezeā method that Iām going to rerelease a longer version of soon.
Itās difficult to see, but Iām actually in knee-deep water to get to those berries. The water must have been coming from an underground spring because it was very cold even on a hot summer August day in the South!
It feels good to be back! I have something that I want to show you.
By now, many of you have probably seen my video detailing why I decided to take a step away from the channel and from social media for a time in order to pursue the creation of a tool that I fully believe will change the way we learn foraging in the modern world!
(By the way, Iāve been reading all your kind comments, and I just wanted to let you know they mean the world to me and I appreciate you guys so much. š)
That is, of course, my new foraging app called āGatherā!
Gather solves some of the most important difficulties that foragers, especially new foragers, have to overcome.
You input your location, and the app will generate a foraging guide that is completely tailored to you!
The species you are shown are only the ones that grow in your range.
The seasonal timings are calibrated specifically to your location!
And, our lookalikes guide (which is my favorite feature) is there to show you, detail by detail, the differences between edible species and similar-looking poisonous plants. (Check out the app page to see a preview of this, itās so helpful!)
If youāre interested, you can try the app out completely free for two weeks to see if it is something that will be valuable to you! (I want to be upfront, Gather is a subscription app and weāve designed it for people who are serious about foraging or serious about learning foraging!)
And now, weāre hard at work on the biggest upcoming feature, the integrated foraging journal!
I want to hear from you about what kinds of things youād want in a digital foraging journal so we can make this feature as helpful as possible to you and our users!
Last week I posted about this strange tuber that grows wild in North America and asked you for your guesses!
By far, the most common response was "Jerusalem artichoke" aka "Sunchoke" (Helianthus tuberosus), which is *not* the answer.
Part of why I was so excited to make this video is because the plant it features has largely been forgotten as a wild food.
I initially was going to release the video on Friday of last week, but decided to delay the release to do a few more experiments. I'm glad I did. I think the final product is even better now!
The video will for sure be released tomorrow, April 8, at 10:30 am CDT. It may be the last video that I drop for a while, but more on that later...
Believe it or not, these strange tuber grows wild all across America and they are edible! š„
Can you guess what plant they come from?
This is one of the most underrated wild edible plants in all of North America. The entire plant is edible, itās very nutritious and super delicious! (You can see in the photos some of the larger ones I've found!)
Tomorrow, Iāll post a long video which shows you everything you need to know to find and forage this amazing plant. (Plus how to get them established in your very own backyard)
I've been working on this video for a month now and I cannot wait for you to get to see it! š
When I teach about this plant at classes, Iām always surprised at how few people know about it, so letās change that together!
Feral Foraging
500k subscribers right in time for Pokeweed season?!
To each and every one of you who is part of that number, thank you. Thank you for caring about foraging and wild food and taking part in this community!
I didn't really know what to expect when I started this channel. I just knew that I wanted to make it my life's work to share all the amazing wild edible plants and mushrooms growing around me with anyone who would listen.
So thank you for listening.
If you have a favorite moment from my videos over the past years, let me know what that is!
Also, I wanted to take this time to highlight one of my favorite wild vegetables that so many people are overlooking, Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). The tender shoots of this plant are one of the best vegetables in the entire world, and so few people eat them. They need to be cooked in a certain way to eat, and you can search "pokeweed" on my channel videos to see my full long-form video about how to do it! (It's way easier than you might think)
I apologize that it's been so long since I've posted more of my long-form videos. My foraging app has demanded almost all my attention over the past year and a half. I do have several videos planned for this year that I'm very excited to share, and I've been posting shorts in the meantime as well!
Until the next one,
Jesse
6 days ago | [YT] | 1,077
View 54 replies
Feral Foraging
Answering your questions about Sochan! (Rudbeckia laciniata)
First, I just wanted to say how excited it makes me to see so much interest in this plant. Iād easily put Sochan in my top five criminally underrated wild foods, so itās nice to see it getting more recognition! (And I just posted a video about another member of that top five today)
Question #1: What zone are you in?
Iām guessing people are asking this because they want to gauge if it grows in their region and what its season is.
Iām in Zone 8a, but I have a far better way for you to determine its timing! I made a foraging app where you can enter your location, and it will show you seasonal windows for wild species like Sochan that are *tailored to your specific area,* so no more guessing!
The link in my channel bio will get you a whole free month-long trial!
Question #2: Where does it grow?
Iāve included a screenshot from my app of the range of this plant. It primarily grows in eastern NA, but also pops up in the Rockies, particularly around Colorado.
I donāt know if this is a natural distribution or if it was human spread. āSochanā is the English way of pronouncing the Cherokee name of the plant. It has been and still is an important food plant to the American tribes who live where it grows, so I wouldnāt be surprised at all if it were spread through trade.
Getting more specific than just its range, in my area, it really prefers creeksides and floodplains (as do many other food plants). Thatās where I would try to find it first! Speaking ofā¦
Question #3: How do I find it?
If you want to find it easily, you should employ what I call āflower scoutingā as itās super easy to find and identify when it is flowering. It flowers in late summer to early fall, and yes, my foraging app can tell you the exact time this happens in your area! š
Question #4: What is its nutritional content?
I really wish I could tell you, but North American native wild food is pretty much non-existent in āmainstreamā health, so at the time of writing, Iām not aware of any nutritional analyses that have been done. (Maybe we can figure out how to do this ourselves?)
Thatās all I have room for now, let me know if you have more questions and Iāll try to answer all of them in another post!
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 586
View 16 replies
Feral Foraging
Nature produces millions of calories in the form of wild food that most people in North America walk right by without realizing it.
In this free online class, we'll learn the most important wild edible plants that grow East of the Rockies in North America, for both emergency and long-term survival situations. These are the species that can give you vital calories if food were more difficult to acquire than it is today.
Further, you'll discover that many of these species are far from the 'survival gruel' that people may expect them to be. In fact, a fair number are quite delicious!
We'll also discuss vital tools and techniques that you need to know in order to process these plants into high-quality food with efficiency.
To sign up, you can use this link here! - feralforaging.com/emergency-wild-food-class-inviteā¦
As you guys know, I've been sharing a lot on this subject over the past couple of years in the 'Never go Hungry' series on this channel. I put a ton of effort into each of those videos, and while I love the final product, each takes at least a month (and usually more) to put together.
I feel like I need to share everything I've learned sooner rather than later, and this class here is where I'll do it. Though the title is just 'emergency' wild food, in reality, we will spend much more time going over 'long-term' survival food. I call these 'staple' wild foods.
This subject (staple wild food) is far more important for the average person to know. Despite that, I see very little information about these edible wild plants released online! My class will aim to change that.
I'm looking forward to seeing you there! Even if you cannot make it, if you sign up, you'll be sent a recording that you can use forever; it will never go away.
I hope you never need the knowledge you'll gain from class, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
And it would mean a lot if you could share this class with a friend or neighbor who might be interested!
-Jesse
1 month ago | [YT] | 593
View 15 replies
Feral Foraging
"You might see this tiny, delicate early-spring wildflower and think it is just a pretty forest decoration.
But hiding beneath the deep earth is an incredible secret of ancestral winter survival.
Meet Spring Beauty Fairy Spuds."
Okay, that's where the AI-slop ends, š and this is where real human information begins.
Recently, I made a video calling out an AI-slop page for their awful posts on wild food.
But their style of post seems to be getting a lot of attention, so I thought I would steal it and replace it with real photos and real info!
Hopefully, this will help to combat their information.
Okay, let's talk about Spring Beauty (Calytonia virginica).
They do indeed produce edible tubers that are delicious. They taste just like potatoes to me.
They grow in Eastern North America, and other species grow out west!
But you wouldn't want to rely on this plant alone as a staple. It grows too slowly.
I call it a wild food "battery". They don't really take up much space and only emerge for a month or two in the spring before going dormant. So I plant a bunch of them in my yard to begin to 'charge' the battery.
That way, if I ever need to, I can pull from the 'charge' that I've stored up as they grow.
Most spring beauties produce relatively smalltubers, smaller than a quarter. However, some produce much larger ones, which are pictured on the right. These are the ones you'd want to transplant, propagate, and protect if you find them.
Only take some from thriving populations.
I made a whole long-form video showing you everything you need to know about foraging spring beauty. It's on my YouTube channel if you're interested.
Spring beauty season is actually just starting right now in my area!
To find out if they grow near you and when you can forage them, you can use my foraging app, Gather. The link is in my bio!
Save this post for reference and share it with a fellow human!
2 months ago | [YT] | 764
View 24 replies
Feral Foraging
This is sustainable foraging.
People keep getting this wrong!
Too often, I find people equating āsustainableā quantities with small quantities. But nothing could be further from the truth!
A sustainable amount of wild blueberries is not necessarily a small amount of blueberries. A sustainable amount of wild elderberry is not a small amount of elderberry. A sustainable amount of American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), pictured here, is not a small amount of lotus. In fact, it probably would have been more sustainable if I had gathered even more! (I'll explain that a little later)
A sustainable amount is simply the amount that a given population can āsustainā year after year, without negative impact. So, that amount changes depending on what you are foraging for.
A sustainable amount of wild lettuce greens is quite literally as much as you can possibly gather, because as a weedy biennial, the plant produces hundreds, even thousands of seeds, you couldnāt cause negative impacts to their populations if you wanted to.
A sustainable amount of Wood nettle greens would obviously be far fewer because they cannot reproduce as prolifically.
Thatās why itās imperative you understand the biology of what you are foraging before you go foraging for a lot of it.
Letās keep this rant going.
āJust forage invasive plants!ā is something I hear a lot. Should you forage for invasive plants? Yes. Should you help remove them, too? Also yes. But that is not the whole picture at all. You SHOULD also forage for native plants.
Letās talk about animals. āWhat about the animals?!ā
Yes, a lot of them are dying off, insects too! Why? Because we keep destroying their habitat for shopping centers and (this is the key) agricultural fields.
Every calorie that I gather from a wild, diverse habitat that supports a myriad of species is a calorie that I donāt need to purchase from big Ag, a calorie that a habitat didnāt need to be destroyed for. Thatās why even more lotus is even more sustainable.
To armchair āenvironmentalistsā complaining about foraging sustainability, get off your keyboard, go outside, and eat some wild food!
Until then, youāll never understand the abundance of nature.
7 months ago | [YT] | 944
View 44 replies
Feral Foraging
This is Americaās secret, forgotten wild spice! You cannot find them at the grocery store, but foraging them is easy. Hereās what you need to know!
Literally called Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), the fruits ripen to a vibrant red in late summer to early autumn, and you do NOT want to miss them.
The spice you can make from the fruits is amazing, both unique and familiar at the same time. It has a combination of complex spicy notes along with flavors of citrus and black pepper.
Here is what you need to know if you want to forage them yourself, including lookalikes and processing.
First, we donāt like to use the whole fruit for making spice. In my experiments, Iāve found that the large inner seed is slightly astringent and bitter, so we separate them.
The soft fruit flesh on the exterior is easily removed from the seed inside, though it can be a little time-consuming, but itās worth the effort for more than just the removal of bitter compounds!
Separating them can be quite meditative! You can also just do this while you listen to a great audiobook. (I recommend Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson š)
After that, you MUST dry them thoroughly! Spicebush fruits are very high in fat, so they will go rancid quickly after harvesting if left untreated. This isnāt a foraged product to get to later that week, itās one to get to tonight!
I use a dehydrator set to about 125Ā°F running overnight. Separating them from the seeds also makes drying them way easier.
Then I store them whole in an airtight container with a desiccant packet to keep them dry and grind them as needed or use them whole in recipes! Spicebush will work perfectly in recipes that contain spices like allspice or cinnamon. It works amazingly in pumpkin pie to make an extra-American pie!
Now letās talk about gathering, habitat, lookalikes, and timing.
To gather them efficiently, you want to have a gathering container that allows you to have both hands free. That being said, you really only need about a cup or so to last you for at least a year!
Honeysuckle berries, which are inedible, can look similar at first glance, but theyāre very easy to tell apart. Honeysuckle berries lack a single hard seed on the inside with much softer, juicier flesh that is not aromatic. Plus, the leaves of honeysuckles are arranged opposite, while spicebushās are alternating.
We find them in abundance in creekside ecologies (alongside many paw paws, too), but sometimes in drier forests as well! They occur throughout Eastern North America.
To find out when they are ripe, tailored to your *exact* location, you should check out my foraging app, Gather, on your app store or the link in my channel bio.
There, you can also download all this info for offline use, plus our in-depth lookalike guide for spicebush and dozens of other wild foraged species as well!
Start your trial today to find out what amazing species are growing near you!
#spicebush #gather #foraging
8 months ago | [YT] | 796
View 44 replies
Feral Foraging
Elderberry, a wild fruit that is both medicinal AND delicious!
People spend lots of money on imported elderberry products from Europe and Asia, but did you know that elderberry is one of the most abundant wild fruits in America!
Here are some tips for finding and foraging it.
The first aspect is timing. In my area of North AL, elderberry season is winding down, but in many other parts of the USA, theyāre in season! (Iāll tell you how to know exactly the right time in your area in a second.)
Next, for American Black Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), they fruit most abundantly where they are growing close to water. With the western Blue Elderberry, (Sambucus cerulea), this is not the case, though. (Western folks can chime in with any tips on that species if you have them!)
Finally, though this is elderberry fruit season, the best time to find your spots is actually earlier in the year when they put out vibrant white plumes of flowers that you could spot from a mile away! The flowers can be used as well. I love to use them as a flavoring for sparkling wine or to dry them for tea.
Last, there are two (maybe three) lookalikes that you should know about. For flowers, that would be Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata), for fruits, it would be Devilās Walking Stick (Aralia spinosa), and some beginners also could possibly mistake the fruits of Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) for elderberry.
A detailed, distinguishing detail lookalike guide for each of those species is available in my brand new foraging app, Gather. Plus, youāll get timings for both the flowers and the fruit that are tailored to your specific location!
You can also set notifications for them so youāre phone will remind you when itās time to get ready for the season. Youāll never miss it again!
You can see that I am very happy in this photo, because from just ONE incredible bush, I was able to get all of the elderberries that Laramie and I need for a whole year. Weāll use this to make wine, tea, syrup, and one of my new favorites, pie! (With the seeds and all, but more on that later)
I have a video on how to process the berries using the āfreezeā method that Iām going to rerelease a longer version of soon.
Itās difficult to see, but Iām actually in knee-deep water to get to those berries. The water must have been coming from an underground spring because it was very cold even on a hot summer August day in the South!
10/10 would forage again!
Do you forage for wild elderberries?
#elderberry #foraging #wildfood #gather
8 months ago | [YT] | 671
View 60 replies
Feral Foraging
It feels good to be back! I have something that I want to show you.
By now, many of you have probably seen my video detailing why I decided to take a step away from the channel and from social media for a time in order to pursue the creation of a tool that I fully believe will change the way we learn foraging in the modern world!
(By the way, Iāve been reading all your kind comments, and I just wanted to let you know they mean the world to me and I appreciate you guys so much. š)
That is, of course, my new foraging app called āGatherā!
Gather solves some of the most important difficulties that foragers, especially new foragers, have to overcome.
You input your location, and the app will generate a foraging guide that is completely tailored to you!
The species you are shown are only the ones that grow in your range.
The seasonal timings are calibrated specifically to your location!
And, our lookalikes guide (which is my favorite feature) is there to show you, detail by detail, the differences between edible species and similar-looking poisonous plants. (Check out the app page to see a preview of this, itās so helpful!)
If youāre interested, you can try the app out completely free for two weeks to see if it is something that will be valuable to you! (I want to be upfront, Gather is a subscription app and weāve designed it for people who are serious about foraging or serious about learning foraging!)
Check out the app here - foraging.onelink.me/O5xE/youtube
And now, weāre hard at work on the biggest upcoming feature, the integrated foraging journal!
I want to hear from you about what kinds of things youād want in a digital foraging journal so we can make this feature as helpful as possible to you and our users!
You can complete this anonymous survey here to help us out - docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1OTGg80ghm5MFoBā¦
From the last survey we did, your feedback directly contributed to changing the design of the app for a HUGE improvement. Thank you for that!
We want to do the same thing for this upcoming feature.
Look out for more photo posts like this from me going forward. Letās learn about wild food together!
Until the next one.
(Pictured: some of the times I was able to sneak away from app development to do some foraging!)
8 months ago | [YT] | 762
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Feral Foraging
Last week I posted about this strange tuber that grows wild in North America and asked you for your guesses!
By far, the most common response was "Jerusalem artichoke" aka "Sunchoke" (Helianthus tuberosus), which is *not* the answer.
Part of why I was so excited to make this video is because the plant it features has largely been forgotten as a wild food.
I initially was going to release the video on Friday of last week, but decided to delay the release to do a few more experiments. I'm glad I did. I think the final product is even better now!
The video will for sure be released tomorrow, April 8, at 10:30 am CDT. It may be the last video that I drop for a while, but more on that later...
I'm really excited for you to see it!
-Jesse
1 year ago | [YT] | 1,061
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Feral Foraging
Believe it or not, these strange tuber grows wild all across America and they are edible! š„
Can you guess what plant they come from?
This is one of the most underrated wild edible plants in all of North America. The entire plant is edible, itās very nutritious and super delicious! (You can see in the photos some of the larger ones I've found!)
Tomorrow, Iāll post a long video which shows you everything you need to know to find and forage this amazing plant. (Plus how to get them established in your very own backyard)
I've been working on this video for a month now and I cannot wait for you to get to see it! š
When I teach about this plant at classes, Iām always surprised at how few people know about it, so letās change that together!
I hope to see you there!
#foraging #wildfood
1 year ago | [YT] | 1,024
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