A Foraging Observation

Last week I went over to Suffolk to check out the venue for my next event, Wild Food in a Day and to meet the organiser, Polly Robinson from Food Safari. After a leg-stretching yomp over a corner of the vast Henham Estate, to look for a suitable area for the guided forage, surprise surprise, the best site was no more than 30m from where we had parked the car! I'd forgotten this small but important Forager's Truism: many edible weeds grow in the most obvious places, and many favour recently disturbed ground - if you have a garden, look along hedges, in flower and vegetable beds or in those out of the way weedy places: fat hen, chickweed and smooth sow thistle are all sprouting nicely! A word of warning about wild food plants in very public places: your chosen foraging site should be clean and free from rubbish, away from high usage areas such as footpaths and entrance ways and obviously away from roads and vehicle pollution: those are three very good reasons for allowing weeds to grow in your own garden. :-)