survivalgardener
Here’s a useful plant resource that gardeners and foragers need to bookmark.
I’ve used Green Deane’s website EattheWeeds.com for a the last couple years. He’s built an expansive database of edible plants common throughout the United States. EatTheWeeds.com is the first site I check when identifying edible plants in the forest near our house. Green Deane is based out of Florida and has a good knowledge of tropical plants and perennials which has been handy here in Costa Rica. We’ve even incorporated some of the wild plants into our family meals. Thanks to Deane, we now raise Chaya(tree spinach), which we cultivated from the wild, and have also used purslane, sorrel, moringa and katuk in our daily salads. I even got Jodi to try some weird stuff we found on the beach (Sesuvium portulacastrum). She’s not as big of a fan as me, but we’re still working out how to prepare these unique varieties.
Green Deane has numerous videos on YouTube and a well-informed group of followers. You’ll find that the comments sections are the most informative and entertaining sections on his site. There’s also a forum for where you can post pics of possible edibles and get feedback from Deane and a slew of other foragers.
To give you an idea of what Deane’s videos are like, below is one of my favorites about purslane. Purslane is a weed that happens to contain the world’s highest plant sourced amount of omega-3 fatty acids per gram. The ironic thing is, we’ve all seen it in our gardens and driveways.
It’s said to be the most one of most nutritious greens found in the wild. Yet……most folks spray it with herbicide or pull it and throw it away.
Here’s a little bit about who Green Deane is:
“Hello there, I’m Green Deane and I’ve been foraging since I was a child or for nearly 60 years. Long before I went to school my mother would hand me a table knife and a paper bag and tell me to go find some dandelion greens for supper. While doing that I noticed wild strawberries, later checkerberries, raspberries, apples and roses. My mother foraged as did my grandmother and great grandmother. I learned about plants long before I learned what their names were. As a latchkey kid I also spent a lot of time alone in the woods, hiking, camping, fishing, exploring rivers, stone walls, old orchards, mountains, woods roads and old homesteads. I also made my first batch of home made cooking-malt beer then dandelion wine while in junior high.” — Eat the Weeds
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