Do anons have experience foraging? I dont think theres much to forage the stockholm area during winter but Im a newbie and quite clueless. How do I go about finding out what I can eat and the best way to forage and use them
I checked the log, the mushroom and kudzu thread are not what Im asking
Find a field guide in your area to start. Study it, paying close attention to poisonous look-a-likes. Start by foraging things that are very unique and have no look-a-likes. Get involved in a local club if you have one. Again, do your research. A few bites of the wrong thing can kill you.
When you are trying a wild edible for the first time, start by placing it against your skin for several minutes to make sure there is no negative reaction. Afterwards, hold it against your lips, again waiting to see if there is any tingling, stinging, or numbness. If you're all clear, take a small bite and hold it on your tongue. If you're still good, swallow it and wait a half hour at least to see how you feel. Then try another bite and wait. If, at this point, you've had no reaction, it's likely not poisonous and you're likely not allergic.
You're using outdated stupid fricking information from a U.S. military survival manual. If you aren't sure, don't eat it.
You know an orange is an orange because you know EVERYTHING about an orange, that is how certain you should be when foraging.
Don't eat a lot of oxalic acid unless kidney dialysis is your idea of a good time.
Ther's not much in stockholm in winter.
Therre's pines though, go taste some pine needles and find one you like, there's plenty species and taste vary between trees so try plenty.
Make some yummy tea, I got a personal favorite pine tree 30mils north of stockholm I put a few needles from in my ginger tea and it perfects the taste.
>Do anons have experience foraging?
I got into it last year to have something to do while in nature. It's been very fun.
Get a book that is specific to your region. It should have a few things:
* a structure you can intutitively understand: Some are ordered by family, some by habitat, some by leaf type. As long as it makes sense to you and you can look something up quickly it's good. If you can't, it's bad. Stay away from alphabetical ones.
* Good pictures: You should have pictures that show the relevant parts of the plant in such a way that you can reliably feel confident the picture is the actual plant you are looking at. If the pictures are ass, so is the book. Don't buy it.
* A mention of uses for any given plant: This can be medicinal, or culinary, or historical. Personal preference, but it should mention how to use them
* Poison lookalikes: Any plant in this guide should have a section that states what other plants look like the one you are looking for, how to tell them apart and if the lookalikes are poisonous or not. If this information is missing, do not get the book.
* Good formfactor: Also personal preference. Smaller is better to carry, but means either less information or worse organization. Bigger means nicer pictures and more info, for more weight and bulk. It should at the very least fit into a backpack, at best into a pocket.
* Seasonal calendar: Bonus if there's a calendar showing what's in season each month
Then just go outside and start foraging. I read the book when I got it once, but forgot 95% of the info instantly. Then when outside I try to identify plants and think of how to use them. You will grow your knowledge slowly. Favorites of mine are hazelnuts, elderberry/flower, blackberry, wild garlic, rose hip and wild oregano, but there's so much more.
Why is this board so full of larping posers. It drives me nuts how so many people just say made up shit with authority that anyone with literally the slightest but of real world experience would immediately know is nonsensical.
You have obviously only ever watched YouTube videos of people who are also larping telling you how to forage.
Are you literally incapable of reading? Do you lack understanding?
I literally fricking say in the post that I got into it last year and that it has been fun. All of those tips are tips that are perfectly reasonable and that helped me with my foraging.
"Muh ancient knowledge only to be learned by word of mouth by your grandpa in your infancy" frick off larper. My post gives actionable advice you can act on right this instant.
Your post doesn't even give any advice at all, much less good advice. Give better advice or explain it better than me or frick off and keep crying about larpers in your chair on your pc you subhuman waste of space who hasn't left his house since 1987
Ok here's what you said that was moronic. Buying books because they have the best pictures is down syndrome tier. Anyone will tell you that. Buy the books because they have plants you've never heard of, or the most variety and then use the internet to get good pictures of them, and figure out if they have poisonous lookalikes.
You hit me with the "ancient traditions" meme and then forgot that it's possible to learn any way other than books!
What is the point of a book that tells you what
>hazelnuts, elderberry/flower, blackberry, wild garlic, rose hip
Are. That is a book for morons.
A 9 year old who doesn't know the word foraging or understand the concept would know those are food. I literally picked and ate all those except the garlic as a small child while unprompted when unsupervised.
No I don't "not know how to read" What upset me about your post was the instructional list full of instructions where each and every one was made up bullshit that you should basically do the opposite of if you actually want to succeed.
But the worst part is you've never been told the first thing any legit "expert in foraging" will tell you is you should learn plant identification first, then start eating plants. Doing it backwards is a good way to get poisoned to death by your own rose tinted glasses when you go "yeah Im pretty sure it is wild carrots" because you were explicitly looking for wild carrots.
Best advice for your noobie forager is to use books on plant identification to become knowledge from memory on the difference between things before ever going out with the intention of gathering anything.
Frick yourself gay boy. I "provided nothing of value" the reason I didn't type all this out then is because you annoying stupid homosexuals are the ones who turned this board to absolute cancer with the constant fricking arguing and making shit up you don't know nothing about. So I though nah it would be a waste of my effort to bother. And I was right.
Well after reading your post I can say I don't agree. At least we can have a discussion about it though.
>Buy the books because they have plants you've never heard of
Which is pretty much all plants except the most common ones for beginners.
>or the most variety
More variety does not equal good. I'd take a book covering 150 plants well over a encyclopedia covering 5000 plants poorly in a sentence or two.
>and then use the internet to get good pictures of them
Why the frick would I have internet everywhere I forage? And even if I did, I want the information quickly available, not "on the internet". At that point just tell people to use google lens. Good pictures in high quality in a book are worth a lot, I'm not going to fricking download plant pictures beforehand and look throught those on my phone near a plant.
>You hit me with the "ancient traditions" meme and then forgot that it's possible to learn any way other than books!
I have yet to find any alternative that is as well organized and information dense. The internet is full of shit advice. If you hate books, just say so - but don't pretend books are ontologically evil.
>What is the point of a book that tells you [...]
If you think the average beginner won't fall risk of confusing wild garlic with one of the 3 toxic lookalikes, you are a moron. Also stop posturing that the others are easy to identify, that wasn't the question, I listed those as my favorites, because I don't have to larp as a extreme foraging pro who only eats obscure stuff. The basics are that popular for a reason, they are great fruit and nuts to forage.
>where each and every one was made up bullshit that you should basically do the opposite of if you actually want to succeed
Oh you are actually moronic. My bad. Guess I wasted my time trying to argue with you. OP can judge for himself what he wants to believe.
Alright, Ill consider what all of you posted and any addition potential posts. Ill make sure to have something committed to memory or quick on hand and check for similar looking plants or fungus that could be dangerous so that I dont mix them up
>Dude the book isn't for never reading until the very first time while in the field. The book dosent need to cover them well. You should be capable of looking up "x plant poison lookalikes, x plant image" while in your house and then you remember, or print out, or write on a sticky note and put in your book.
That way you can actually identify plants that aren't moron baby easy.
I don't know why you have this weird obsession with taking the book with you and learning on the fly, you keep mentioning that over and over throughout your posts. And then say I'm stupid because I can remember things and plan for the future.
The book is just a way for people to paywall their knowledge. Once you have that knowledge you could not get on the web for free, use that knowledge as a jumping off point. A physical book is not the best way to learn in the 21st century, and it is a finite amount of space, and therefore probably shouldn't waste space with unnecessary information.
>"You should only buy a book of it has a good categorisation schema"
"The criteria you listed objectively do not matter. That is an arbitrary bullshit thing to say you should buy all the books you can and then research them further yoyrself"
>Oh you are actually moronic. My bad. Guess I wasted my time trying to argue with you. OP can judge for himself what he wants to
Go forage for wild carrots and eat them.
Go eat camas in the fall.
You gay basedfaced malding asswipe. This is why I don't post. Nu-out is just underages with no experience, making shit up and speaking with authority when the things they say don't make a lick of sense. And anyone with a passing level of knowledge in the field they're talking about would know they have no idea. It's not just here, it's in all the hunting threads, all the gear threads, it's horrible. It's driving me insane.
My jokes on the ways have a nice day are wasted on you.
Seethingly fricking angry anon here,
Op, my advice is just buy every foraging book you can find for your local area, cross check them against each other, and make sure to always look up "plant name, poisonous lookalikes", before eating anything for the first time.
Didn't mean to start my first sentence with a > that was an error. Oh well.
>buy every foraging book you can find for your local area
Would borowing or using free e-books not be good enough. Theyre not super expensive but if Im buying a bunch it adds up. Its not like im going camping to forage a ton, Im just trying to grab edible stuff here and there, bc its nice and also free
>This is why I don't post
Keep doing that, that seemed to work out much better for you.
lol angry larper
Elaborate.
Wow.
Lucky we're all anon here.
That's some stupid and overly emotional ramblings worthy of being ashamed of.
Elaborate. What did I say that was wrong.
homosexual.
>accuse others of larping
>provide nothing of value yourself
If anybody is the larper, it's you.
Bunp
Books are the best resources. I've found a lot of info in books that for some reason is not common info online.
Överleva på naturens villkor - Stefan Källman og Harry Sepp is a pretty good book about surviving in scandinavia, I'm fairly certain it covers foraging as well.
Naturens skafferi : recept med smaker från skog och mark - Louise Bondebjer
Some easy ones to start with:
Dandelions are great, you can make tea, coffee, salad and a whole lot more from them.
Stinging nettles can be eaten raw (if you learn how to do it right) made into a tea or soup and more.
You should already be familiar with most of the berries, but remember to appreciate our bilberries, they're pretty unique and great compared to regular blueberries.
>Stinging nettles can be eaten raw (if you learn how to do it right) made into a tea or soup and more
I literally came to ask about them. I looked it up and apperantly you can only harvest young ones bc there isnt an effective way to deal with the thorns of the mature plants. Ive never eaten root, unless you count rootfruits so I have no idea what to even do with them
Ill also check out the books you mention, thank you
You're welcome.
I've eaten raw mature stinging nettle multiple times just to test it or to show and educate people. The spikes are only on the underside of the leaves, if you fold the top part of the leaf around the bottom like folding a table cloth you can eat them. I've never been stung in my mouth and no stomach pains either, but there is of course a small risk and no point unless you absolutely need to. I mostly dry them and use as spice. If you do, dry them outside, and especially not by the window over your bed. I had to sleep on my couch for a while after that.
https://www.skogsskafferiet.se/
Yeah I use that, its pretty neat but its quite terse and even the dudes that made it recommend you use a few other sources
I FORAGED YOUR SISTER'S PUSS PUSS
> nedladdning.jpg
made 1 liter of spring spruce tip syrup last year and this is what i have left
was supposed to make beer out of them too but just remembered i had some in freezer for that so thank you anon
>spruce tip syrup
Did you need to do something or did you just put sugar and spruce needles in a jar, put them somewhere and let them emacerate? Im worried about mold but also that it wont work like I want it
i soaked spruce tips for 24 hours in cold water, then boiled them for an hour and strained the tips out
then added sugar and boiled until i got syrup
sugar in a jar with some spruce works too as far as i know but it takes time