Sounds like you live in similar terrain to me. Garlic mustard is everywhere, cleavers are up as well as dead nettle. Basically a whole lot of greens. I noticed that the Kentucky coffeetrees near me just dropped their pods, so I might try to collect some of those and give them a try at roasting.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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I want to find a morel for the first time this year, so I'm pretty excited for that! We'll see if I actually do or not.
I also want to try making some recipes with stinging nettle. Like make some nettle fettuccine or nettle soup. It's a common plant that I've been successful at identifying in the past, but all I've done with it is make tea so far, so I want to take it to the next level.
Also excited for pawpaws. I tried one for the first time last year at the Ohio State Pawpaw fest, but it would be cool to find one growing in the wild.
The most disappointing thing is finding loads of pawpaw trees all over, but no fruit. They grow in clonal colonies, and can't self polinate, so unless they are getting pollinators that have traveled from another grove, there's no fruit. I'd say maybe 5% of the pawpaw trees by me grow fruit. Certain groves are better than others
Almost seems like you need to just selectively plant trees from separate groves next to that of others. At that point it moves from foraging into more of a horticultural territory though, haha!
From what I've read, they are pollinated by flies, and some people recommend spraying trees down with fish emulsion to attract flies. No way I'm going to blend a fish fine enough to fill a spray bottle, lol.
I would love to forge a heavy duty silverware set
I love to forage fruits. I'm currently learning how to recognised herbs and wild vegetable but I absolutely love to find a tree or a bush full of fruits and have some, even better coming back to pick what I need for a pie.