Learning More About Wild Edible Plants

The weather continues to be hot and humid here in Campbellsville, Kentucky. There's been plenty of rain so the trees and grass are all green and thick, but the humidity has definitely been a bit of a deterrent from going outdoors much. Nevertheless, I did take one day to explore a couple of the trails around Green River Lake. I started from the marina at the southern end of the park and hiked the Cabin and Lodge Trails looping from and back to the Marina-Main Trail.

Because of the rain, it made for frequent muddy spots - but that also meant an opportunity to find well-made tracks like these from a raccoon.

I hope to hike all of the currently mapped trails as time goes by with the commitment to learn everything I can from my immediate environment before branching out into other territories.

For those of you who are interested, there's a new place to get topo maps that can be printed on standard 8.5" x 11" sheets of paper. I took advantage of the site the other day to print maps for my local area. The site is run by National Geographic and you can find it here. I was able to roughly match the park map with one of the quads from the NatGeo website.

In addition to continuing to familiarize myself with the local area, I've also been reading another book, Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate, by John Kallas, PhD.

I really appreciate the level of detail that the author goes into for each plant he describes. He is true to the title in that he gives pictures for the smallest seedlings to fully mature plants, as well as best gathering and preparing methods.  As a consequence of studying this material, I have come to appreciate how important it is to know when to find plants as well as where in order to harvest the best quality.

Thus far, I'm still harvesting most of my "wild greens" from the patch of Lamb's Quarters that I have cultivated under the bird feeders.

Hopefully, as more species put on fruits this fall, I'll be able to find them as well, that is ... once the weather cools down a bit to make "hunting and gathering" a little more enjoyable!

So if you're up for this New Moon Challenge - I encourage you to either find some wild edible resources at your local library to read and/or find one or more of the plants described in your local environment. Feel free to share your experiences in a comment below.

Otherwise, wherever you are, enjoy what the Natural World has to offer!

And Until Next Time...

Happy Trails!