Amy Goldman is a gardener, author, artist, philanthropist, and well-known advocate for seed saving, plant breeding, and heirloom fruits and vegetables. Her mission is to celebrate and catalogue the magnificent diversity of standard, open-pollinated varieties, and to promote their conservation. Amy gave up a career as a clinical psychologist to follow her first love which was kitchen gardening. In her own words from Heirloom Harvest: “I have romantic leanings and tend to follow my heart… In hindsight, I know my heart steered me straight, and toward a future I could never have imagined…My passion for the fruits of the earth has deep roots….”
Rosalind Creasy is one of my heroes. It was she who first turned me on to heirloom fruits and vegetables over 30 years ago, when I read her newly published Cooking from the Garden. That seminal tome celebrates the food garden’s bounty and uses in cookery.
Creasy is best known as a pioneer in the field of edible landscaping aka foodscaping: the practice of integrating edible plants into the landscape for beauty and sustenance. Think yummy delicious arbors, allées, groundcovers, borders, hedges, espaliers, foundation plantings, and potted plants. She spells out all the how-to’s, wheres, and whyfors in her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping; and updates it all in the second edition, Edible Landscaping. If you’re looking for practical advice, detailed instructions, design schemes, and recommended plants to feed body and soul, then allow me to point you in Ros’s direction.
This comprehensive, feature-packed book shows how you can create more beauty around your home, grow delicious healthful produce, and save money and natural resources all at the same time—by landscaping with edible plants. Author Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer and leading authority on edible landscaping, provides all the information necessary to plan, plant, and maintain ornamental edible landscapes, with specific designs for all geographic and climatic regions of the country. Drawing on years of research into the most decorative and flavorful species—from the exotic water chestnut to the ever-popular apple—Creasy shows how edibles can form the basis for a beautiful…
As a child I was drawn to the forest by its aesthetics. I felt as if I were wandering through a masterpiece painting. As I grew older, I wanted to know more about the many working parts of nature. I quickly learned this: If I wanted to know nature intimately, I needed to know what the Native Americans knew. After years of study and honing skills, I undertook seasonal, self-imposed “survival trips” in remote areas of the National Forest. As an adult I served as a naturalist for the Georgia Conservancy, wilderness director for High Meadows Camp, and as director of my own wilderness school – Medicine Bow – in the Appalachian Mountains.
Putting a wild plant into one’s mouth must be preceded by positive identification. This book’s text and photos offer guidance and recipes. It doesn’t try to cover a huge number of plant species, but the plants that are included are covered in more detail than in most plant books. The introduction alone, in my opinion, is worth the price of this book.
Already a huge success in previous editions, this must-have field guide now features a fresh new cover, as well as nearly 400 color photos and detailed information on more than 200 species of edible plants all across North America. With all the plants conveniently organized by season, enthusiasts will find it very simple to locate and identify their desired ingredients. Each entry includes images, plus facts on the plants habitat, physical properties, harvesting, preparation, and poisonous look-alikes. The introduction contains tempting recipes and theres a quick-reference seasonal key for each plant.
Season-by-season guide to identification, harvest, and preparation of more…
I started foraging when I was a toddler and my Greek great-grandmother took me to a park to gather dandelion leaves. I read foraging field guides almost incessantly (still do). Eventually, I got a certification in Ethnobotany and went professional. I love teaching and sharing my passion for wild foods through my books, workshops, and videos. One of the most rewarding moments for me is when a student realizes that something I’ve just identified as a safe and delicious edible is a plant that grows all around them. It’s a game-changer. They can’t go back to seeing any plant as “just a weed."
Every forager I know (myself included) doesn’t just gather truly wild plants. We also harvest neglected fallen fruits and cultivated plants that were planted as ornamentals but are also great food. In this book Ellen focuses on the latter, introducing us to the tastiness of hostas, daylilies, and many other garden plants that most people think are just eye candy.
Foraged food is surprising in its flavour, unusual texture, fresh colour and nutritional value. As more people become familiar with the idea of finding food in the woods, lakeside, or on their favorite hiking trail, they begin to notice the world around them in a new way. Now it's time to discover the many surprisingly edible plants found in backyards, lawns and parks. Foraging doesn't have to be hard or scary. Backyard Foraging brings foraging home to the neighbourhood. There's the lawn full of sheep sorrel, chickweed, dandelion and pineapple weed. Vacant lots host edibles like sumac, purslane, or Japanese…
As writers, we believe that if you have something wonderful to say it needs a beautiful book to say it in. In writing six books together, in the area of herbal medicine and foraging, we have been lucky to find publishers who share our beliefs. How it works is that Julie is our qualified herbalist and a photographer, layout, and typesetting specialist, while Matthew is a professional editor, writer, and compulsive compiler of bibliographies and indexes. Our USP is that we insist each plant deserves a recipe or two, and that we feature many forgotten wild plants from the old herbals that we love to bring back to life.
We love Euell Gibbons, the man and book that began it all a lifetime ago! Stalking the Wild Asparagus spurred the rise of foraging and ecological awareness in sixties America, and remains relevant today.
The book is folksy, personal, and inspirational but also remains scientifically accurate, and as a born teacher Euell is careful to define the limits of which foods you can gather and safely eat. It’s a miracle it was published, and we should be immensely grateful to David Mackay Co. of New York for going for it back in 1962–and giving themselves a bestseller.
Nearly sixty years ago an unknown writer named Euell Gibbons (1911-1975) presented a book on gathering wild foods to the New York publisher David McKay Co. Together they settled on the title, Stalking the Wild Asparagus. No one expected that this iconic title would become part of the American language, nor did they anticipate the revival of interest in natural food and in environmental preservation in which this book played a major role. Euell Gibbons became an unlikely celebrity and made many television appearances. Stalking the Wild Asparagus has sold the better part of half a million copies since the…
Growing up, I spent summers and weekends with my grandmother, who introduced me to wild food foraging. Grandma Josie and I harvested purslane and lambs quarters weeds from her garden, dandelions and meadow mushrooms from the pasture, and watercress from a nearby spring. On daily walks we gathered peppermint, yarrow, and other wild herbs for tea. She cooked on a wood stove and kept a pot of tea warm at all times. Grandma nurtured my interest in wild plants, wilderness survival, and self-sufficiency. Inspired by her, I built my own stone and log house, teach survival skills and botany, and I still cook on a wood stove just like she did.
John Kallas has rebranded foraging from 'alternative roughage' to 'five-star dining.' No other wild foods book has this kind of in-depth text, mouth-watering recipes, or eye-popping pictures of culinary delights, such as wild spinach pizza, pickled purslane, and homemade marshmallows.
Edible Wild Plants is rich with photographs, giving the reader the tools to be successful early and often at identifying, gathering, and dining on these plants. Based on the experiences of John Kallas, a lifelong, full-time wild food researcher, teacher, and author, it catapults a novice into many early triumphs, provides plenty of new useful and practical information for the seasoned professional, and offers naturalists a resource from which to teach wild food concepts. In no time, readers go beyond just tasting to incorporating these foods into regular meals.
"Wild spinach about 7 feet tall and fully mature. Well-fed wild spinach is well-branched and produces a huge quantity of seeds when mature. The leaves are still edible at this stage but are reduced in quality, taking on a somewhat off-flavor. According to research on other mature plants, the leaves on these older plants retain most of their nutrients and phytochemicals as long as they are still green."
Imagine what you could do with eighteen delicious new greens in your dining arsenal including purslane, chickweed, curly dock, wild spinach, sorrel, and wild mustard. John Kallas makes it fun and easy…
I am an anthropologist and former owner of a tech company. I saw firsthand how technology was changing society in the early twenty-teens, and knew that we were experiencing a compounding paradigm shift. I have a passion for telling stories and preserving the past for future generations — the stories that our grandchildren will ask about, just as we asked our grandparents about the great wars and depression.
This book cracked me up. Bill Heavey met with people all over the United States and went on crazy foodie adventures with them in order to better understand pockets of unique eats and subsistence. This is not a restaurant visits book. This is a go fishing, backwoods, hunt-or-be-hunted book.
I have two favorite stories in this book. The first is of a woman who forages along the Potomac for Paw Paw fruit. Her attitude toward finding wild food is hilarious and matter-of-fact. The second is of a man who fishes the Bayous of the south and takes Heavey for a wild ride.
"Mr. Heavey takes us back to the joys--and occasional pitfalls--of the humble edibles around us, and his conclusions ring true."--Wall Street Journal Longtime Field & Stream contributor Bill Heavey has become the magazine's most popular voice by writing for sportsmen with more enthusiasm than skill. In his first full-length book, Heavey chronicles his attempts to "eat wild," seeing how much of his own food he can hunt, fish, grow, and forage. But Heavey is not your typical hunter-gatherer. Living inside the D.C. Beltway, and a single dad to a twelve-year-old daughter with an aversion to "nature food," he's almost completely…
Growing up, I spent summers and weekends with my grandmother, who introduced me to wild food foraging. Grandma Josie and I harvested purslane and lambs quarters weeds from her garden, dandelions and meadow mushrooms from the pasture, and watercress from a nearby spring. On daily walks we gathered peppermint, yarrow, and other wild herbs for tea. She cooked on a wood stove and kept a pot of tea warm at all times. Grandma nurtured my interest in wild plants, wilderness survival, and self-sufficiency. Inspired by her, I built my own stone and log house, teach survival skills and botany, and I still cook on a wood stove just like she did.
The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants is the only book to list all edible species (about 4,000 plants) that have been used as food by humans on the vast North American continent. The book contains a comprehensive account of each species, including etymology, geographical location, uses of each part, history of the uses, composition, medicinal uses, possible toxicity, endangered species, and much more.
Author Francis Couplan, Ph.D. blended scientific expertise with thirty-five years of personal experience consuming edible plants. By relating to the senses and to the pleasure of discovering amazing new tastes and flavors, the book encourages the reader to develop new relationships with nature.The book also includes traditional Native American cooking techniques and uses for plants which the author recorded while living with various tribes around the country.
We’re Chantal Gordon and Ryan Benoit — the cofounders of gardening/design/DIY blog The Horticult. Our site shows you how to create handsome yet effective habitats for your plants. That includes a collection of mounted staghorn ferns under our citrus trees, a vertical garden for your herbs, and a sleek bog for carnivorous pitcher plants. One of our most popular DIYs is how to build an outdoor theater behind your rosemary hedge. We show people how to create outdoor spaces they can deeply enjoy — whether it’s a patio, balcony, or yard. A key to welcoming someone is good design. The more you like hanging out outside, the better care you’ll take of your plants.
As primarily ornamental gardeners, we’ve fallen back on the old excuse about tomato plants being ugly as the reason why we don’t do edible gardening. It’s a lazy excuse! The Beautiful Edible Gardenshows that its titular premise is so not an oxymoron. And it hits the two things we look for most in a garden design book, which are: (1) hyperspecific plant recommendations and (2) solid design principles we can learn from and put into action. Through lucid, inviting instructions and scrumptious photos, The Beautiful Edible Gardenoffers gold like how to select “anchor plants” to establish structure in a landscape, blueberries and culinary sweet bay being top picks. And the transformational effect of planting a “focal point” plant — which has us hankering to bring in a persimmon tree.
Learn how to artfully incorporate organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs into an attractive garden design with this stylish, beautifully photographed guide.
We’ve all seen the vegetable garden overflowing with corn, tomatoes, and zucchini that looks good for a short time, but then quickly turns straggly and unattractive (usually right before friends show up for a backyard barbecue). If you want to grow food but you don’t want your yard to look like a farm, what can you do? The Beautiful Edible Garden shares how to not only grow organic fruits and vegetables, but also make your garden a place of…
As writers, we believe that if you have something wonderful to say it needs a beautiful book to say it in. In writing six books together, in the area of herbal medicine and foraging, we have been lucky to find publishers who share our beliefs. How it works is that Julie is our qualified herbalist and a photographer, layout, and typesetting specialist, while Matthew is a professional editor, writer, and compulsive compiler of bibliographies and indexes. Our USP is that we insist each plant deserves a recipe or two, and that we feature many forgotten wild plants from the old herbals that we love to bring back to life.
This book is our go-to reference for any new wild food plant and still our favourite food foraging book of all, even though it’s over 40 years old. It has the best photographs (often of the author’s amazingly set-up food shots), the biggest range of worldwide edible wild plant foods (including mushrooms and seaweed), and the most informed, comprehensive text.
It is the book all foragers aspire to have written and we are very grateful to Roger for having done it so well already!
I started foraging when I was a toddler and my Greek great-grandmother took me to a park to gather dandelion leaves. I read foraging field guides almost incessantly (still do). Eventually, I got a certification in Ethnobotany and went professional. I love teaching and sharing my passion for wild foods through my books, workshops, and videos. One of the most rewarding moments for me is when a student realizes that something I’ve just identified as a safe and delicious edible is a plant that grows all around them. It’s a game-changer. They can’t go back to seeing any plant as “just a weed."
Like all of Sam’s books, this one is a gold mine of detailed, in-depth information about the plants he features in it. His information is beyond trustworthy: he is so familiar with his subject that it is as if he is inviting you to get to know some of his best friends (the plants). My copy is dog-eared and field-stained from all the use I have put it to.
A guide to 32 of the best and most common edible wild plants in North America, with detailed information on how to identify them, where they are found, how and when they are harvested, which parts are used, how they are prepared, as well as their culinary use, ecology, conservation, and cultural history.
