Three California Natives that Double as Culinary Herbs

...e. Grow these plants in your garden and you can dodge the controversies of foraging in the wild. Towards that end, I thought I’d look at three easy to grow California natives that look great in a garden and double as culinary herbs. White sage (Salvia apiana) If you can grow this one you should. Like most California natives, when used as a culinary herb, it’s much stronger tasting than its cultivated cousins. You need to use it sparingly when cook...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Crowbox, Urban Walking and the War on Cars

...mas Rainer (@ThomasRainerDC) August 19, 2018 New #podcast Talking Mushroom Foraging and Canning Pickles https://t.co/hCizzioeEB pic.twitter.com/oKpzA87piW — Eric Rochow (@GardenForkTV) August 14, 2018 I love that someone added tomato cages! https://t.co/2fKOyyiBv1 — Erin (@ImpatientGarden) August 17, 2018 Google admits it tracks users’ location after they turn off location history https://t.co/qEh3Rq5j90 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) August 17, 2018...

Read…

The Virtues of Gerard’s Herbal

...rnets, Archive.org, hosts a copy of John Gerard’s 16th century bestselling foraging manual, The Herball, or, Generall Historie of Plantes. I’ve embeddified it as an alternative to spending an evening staring at the Netflix browse menu or as an opportunity for workplace dinkering. Here’s how the University of Virginia describes it, Gerard was superintendent of the gardens of William Cecil, advisor to Queen Elizabeth. Gerard was one of the most resp...

Read…

133 Trees of Power with Akiva Silver

...a year using practices that go beyond organic.” Akiva’s background is in “foraging, wilderness survival and primitive skills.” He is also the author of Trees of Power: Ten Essential Arboreal Allies (Amazon, library) just published by Chelsea Green. In our conversation we discuss how trees could replace a lot of the staple crops in our diet. During the podcast we also rap about: J. Russel Smith Tree Crops (Free download on Archive.org) Kat Anderso...

Read…

Chicken of the Woods

...thoroughly cooking all Laetiporus. I can report having consumed a lot of the mushroom we foraged with no ill effects. It was, in fact, one of the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever consumed. But one should not trust the musings of an aging urban homesteading blogger when foraging for mushrooms. Find yourself a local mushroom nerd or run it past your cats. That said, don’t be too fearful either or you’ll miss out on a free source of gourmet food....

Read…