Friday 15 May 2015

Weeds, aka Wild Edibles

Not-a-dandelion (Agoseris)

Taking a look through NorthernBushcraft.com I saw so many familiar faces it makes me homesick. When I was a kid I was curious about the plants like the one I called not-a-dandelion, but I thought that unless it was a "proper" plant that people grew on purpose there would be very few people who knew anything except how to kill it.

I'm happy to be living in an age where whatever you might be wondering about has at least been mentioned somewhere on the internet. Using the example of edible "weeds", I can now quickly find the healthfulness of many many plants without having to dig out 5 different feild guides and encyclopedias.

With Hugslut's no-kill diet(long story that gets it's own post) I've been looking more and more into permiculture and edible wild berries and greens. If I can harvest wild onions or salad greens that happily grow in areas I'm not tilling, why would I go through the effort to plant their cultivated counterparts? It's a waste of time, effort, and money. I will be planting chives in pots near the house however because my girl loves her chives.

Permiculture has it's appeals too. Just set up guilds around fruit & nut trees on the edge of the forest and all that's left is to protect them from choke weed vines. That wouldn't be our main food supply of course and assuming we have a pig, it might make more sense to house the pig under the fruit & nut trees (unless we can somehow combine the two).

Any readers in BC? What's your favourite wild edible perenial?

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