Foraging in '23 and beyond...

MrsStepford

When we lived in villages, we foraged nettles, dandelions, sorrel, blackberries, elderberries, chestnuts, beech nuts and fennel. 

If you can get to a railway line, you can find apple trees from cores disposed of by passengers, ditto pears and plums plus blackberries and elderberries.  Walks which used to be railway lines can be good for these too. 

Victorian asylums often used to have orchards and www.theorchardproject.org.uk restores them and plants more community orchards. NHS Forest has been planting trees for the Platinum  Jubilee so that's one for the future. London's Olympic Park had fruit trees in 2012 and these might be bearing fruit if they survived. 

goldfinches

I often see apple trees growing by or on roundabouts and alongside canals which I think also spring from discarded apple cores, it pays to spot the blossom in spring, it's very distinctive with its tinge of pink, and then pop back later in the year to see whether the tree has cropped well. 

thriftwizard

Near us, the Blandford bypass is positively festooned with apple trees from flung cores - it's a treat for the eyes, billowing in blossom each spring and dripping with apples in autumn. The A35 just east of Dorchester has a fair few random apples too. I do love "bypass" apple trees; they're a celebration of biodiversity in the face of modernisation!

thriftwizard

Look what I found, on a little tree near the end of our road that I walk past hundreds of times every year & never "clocked"... Medlars! In my freezer now... one was already ripe, though we've not yet had any frost, and very tasty it was too!

goldfinches

Wow, @thriftwizard - brilliant spot. I've never actually tasted a ripe cats bum fruit because they always go mouldy before they're bletted here. I'll have to go and have another fossick under the two trees in our Botanic Garden.

Valli

Not quite foraging but we have a Transition group in our town with a sub group called 'abundance' where they ain to use surplus harvested fruit etc. and a lady contacted them and offered grapes from her garden for wine or grape jelly...so I was over there yesterday picking with her and my first batch of juice is in the fridge waiting to be jellied later; I used apples (from our apple day on Sunday) for pectin.  She has lots left and I am the only person to contact/collect so far!

Valli

thriftwizard said:

. I'd always get some comments like, "But how d'you know they really are blackberries, not something poisonous?"...

reminds me of the time I made Sloe Gin and took it to share at our family christmas and my mum wouldn't drink it until I had had some and not dropped dead because she wasn't convinced I knew what a sloe was!

hannerrbabes

My 2 yr old got into blackberry picking this year and we'd pick them every day after nursery. Whilst on a local walk recently we found an almond tree! I only took a handful to try them out but I'll be going back for more soon I hope!

-taff

There is a facebook group called UK Wild Food Larder which is pretty good for recipes, identifications etc. Also, there is a webiste https://fallingfruit.org/ which lists where stuff is , hopefully near you. You just search or look at the map

Rosa_Damascena

annieb64 said:

Did anyone see Bake Off last night? One of the contestants was a forager. I think she was using wild poppy seeds. Has anyone tried them?

Opium?

I have foraged a bit myself this year - verge lavender (above a certain height of course) which has been dried out in trays and will be used to make lavender bags.