---in a previous post I made reference to knowing 10 wild plants readily, as opposed to trying to learn 8,000 plants all at once from a book. This is just practical. In some survival scenarios that might play out, you might find yourself far from where your main stash of goods is. In that case, foraging and trapping will become your two main methods of procuring food.

First, is to identify those wild foods that are the most common in your area. Now the best way to do this is to have someone teach you, as humans did for thousand of years, but for many reasons this has been lost unfortunately. Next best is to use the books, but be conservative in your expectations. Now, all areas of the country have different plants, and differnt plants by seasons, there are a lot of cross-overs geographically, but you should restrict your initial research into what you are able to find out for a fact is plentiful and useful in your immediate area. Your local county Extension agent will usually be happy to provide positive ID on plants that you initialy have identified. Just bring an entire sample, if possible, and as quickly as possible after "harvesting" the plant. Once you are happy with your identifying skills on this limited basis, then you look for wild patches in the area that you *might* be contemplating for retreat plan c, for example. After the patches are identified, you set about "farming" these patches, very similar to what you would do in a normal garden. You would weed out the undesirable species, for example, and maybe add some of the same soil-type mixture to the plot of ground in the area of the wild patch. Only harvest the second grade appearing plants, leave the really nice ones for next seasons "breeding". Do this religiously, you'll always have a better and better crop. Don't pick anymore than maybe 10% at a time, either, if possible or practical. And pick roughly, don't slice neatly, you want the harvesting to appear to be animal done, not a human with some clippers.

Now you don't want this to LOOK like a garden, you still want it to appear wild, for the obvious reasons of ensuring your food supply, and keeping nosy interlopers from helping themselves to your stash. Don't scatter the pulled undesirable weeds around the site, that's a give away. Another give away is a blatant trail to the site, unless it's an existing trail that has been established long ago. Don't make neat "rows" or like that. No Home and Gardens look. Try to leave the site as natural looking as possible.

Wild plants are usually more drought resistant, and more excess moisture resistant, than regular cultivated plants. They don't require much maintenance, but you can greatly increase the yield by a little encouragement in the form of some discrete fertilizer use, or watering during a drought. If you do water, gradually "walk" the watering into the patch, so that there isn't a sudden glaring bright green spot in the middle of darker green or brown. Use the terrain to create lines of sight so that the casual observer wouldn't notice the change from too little water to "just right". You might even water totally different plants at random in the area, so your secret "patch" doesn't stand out.

Another trick is transplanting. Take several live plants of each kind, and build combo gardens in remote areas of your choosing. This is good for security sake, as well as increased supply. Make several, and you can travel and harvest from them on a rotating basis, never taking too much from any one site. Spread them around each other very randomly, remember, keep it natural looking, humans have a tendency for rows and lines, this doesn't happen in nature that much.

In the middle of dense briar patches is good, make it hard to get to, and harder to see from the outside of the brambles. Wild raspberry family briars are very good for this, they grow taller than a man in most places, and are thick, full of pickers,the canes last through the winter, and the raspberries/blackberries are aces to pick themselves.

These "wild" patches will now serve another purpose, as you can trap these areas for small game that will be attracted to them. I hear folks complain about animal depredations in the garden, for me, that's just stored meat on the hoof that requires little maintenance on my part, and zero canning or refrigeration. Fat city. Pellet guns, sling shots, or archery equipment is very good for small game harvesting as you travel from your various gardens. A.22 bolt gun with a long barrel using .22 shorts or CB caps is the quietest and most accurate of the regular firearms if you absolutely have to use a gun to hunt with. It's quiet, and saves your "real" ammo. You will get shots, and a lot of times a rabbit or six will be waiting for you at the garden in your traps or snares.

Remember, most wild food gatherers are limited in their knowledge to the more common species and big game, like deer. The more obscure or smaller you are willing to go, the more available this wild food will be for a longer time frame. When you are REALLY hungry, you WILL lose any food prejudices you might currently have. In a big crash, unlimited and unregulated hunting, deer will be mostly shot out east of the mississippi in a few months or so. Small and unorthodox game will last much longer, as will those "wild" gardens. Another advantage of the wild gardens is that they will be mostly self replicating, by usually being either perennials or hardy self seeding annuals.

Nuts in the wild are a great resource, and you can dramatically increase the nut yield from wild trees by clear cutting all the trees in a circle around the selected tree. Lots more sunshine, less competition for water, and now you have a lot of firewood. Try to do everything dual purpose like this, especially if you are using handtools. The amount of real "work" involved in living primitively is huge compared to even a normal type physical labor job. It's WORK, believe me, and you have to be adaptable as well. But, it's quite do-able, just takes determination to eat! Once that kicks in, things get easier! Ha!

Wild plants and game are a very valuable resource for stretching potentially small and finite "normal" foodstocks. Keep that as one of your contingency plans.

they'll be more zog

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 29, 1999

Answers

I wish you would double-post threads like this to the Prep Forum.

We found a very surprising number of edible plants on our property this summer. They weren't quite everywhere, but almost. A hundred years ago, folks around here routinely harvested them. I have to admit Ms. BigDog was incredibly better at this than me (to whom plants are either "green" or "yellow green" or .... I do a lot better in our "tame" vegetable garden).

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), November 29, 1999.

Zog, I think my local county Extension agent would have a little trouble identifing any plant I brought to them today, it's snowing here in MI. That little bare stick will be hard to put a name to (and if they could somehow, I wouldn't trust what they said at this point).

BTW- Did you just remember my name or do you have a list from way back?

-- P.A. (adkins@webbernet.net), November 29, 1999.

Just caught the butterknife question....I stand my ground (although alone in that area, I'm thinking) :-)

-- P.A. (adkins@webbernet.net), November 29, 1999.

I'm planting my vegetables in and among the flower beds. No casual observor would know that I have a crop down there. (God willing.)

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), November 29, 1999.

Check the library or local museum for what the Native Americans in your area used. Museum likely has a collection of pressed plants or illustrations. Nov./Dec. not the best time for this of course. Better have plenty stashed to get you through the learning curve. Don't forget Euell Gibbons.

Available almost everywhere - and certainly identifiable... acorns. Good - excellent - description of their preparation in "It Will Live Forever"

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), November 29, 1999.

---ya, ya, I know it's snowy winter most places, just hoping to plant a "seed" of next years hope in a few minds. OK--lemme see, I guess the best way to get local help in wild plant ID is just to get as many good quality color pics to look at as possible. Find them on the web, then save to a "wild pick" file on your drive someplace. Best of the cheaper books are Peterson's wild guides. Get the ones you are interested in for your geographical area. Don't neglect wild tubers, plenty of good chow lurking a few inches underground, and actually, nothing stopping anyone from planting jerusalem artichokes, garlics, onions, yams and spuds out wild, neither. Spread em out, same deal, make it look wild. Those patches will just keep expanding and growing.

PA--yes!

--I archive this stuff myself, and realistically, I must have done hundreds of "how-to" posts over the past 2.5 years, on a variety of subjects, it's hard to keep reproducing them. A lot of them were lost last year with a hardrive messup I had, and this is a borrowed puter, nothing of mine is on it.

grizzly zoggus

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 29, 1999.

A big thumbs up, zogoroonio.

-- flora (bigfoot@country._), November 29, 1999.

And again I offer my free demo for edible
and poisonous info on the native plants.

This covers the plants in the NW.

Let me know if anyone finds the info useful.

Download Flora

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), November 29, 1999.

Some great web sites out there for Edible Landscaping...here's one: (you can search for others)

http://www.eat-it.com/frames.htm

Edible Landscaping

--She in the sheet upon the landscaped hilltop,...

-- Donna (moment@pacbell.net), November 29, 1999.

Uncle Zog, you made me hungry.

-- dinosaur (dinosaur@williams-net.com), November 29, 1999.

Liked your post, Zog....about a year ago I read an article by a person doing research on the Native American's doing exactly as you described....this was in central California, reported in diaries by a few of the first foreigners....at first they thought they were seeing a natural phenomenon, which they described as a kind of miracle paradise....lush fields of acres and acres of flowering plants, each variety in large blocks with its own colors, looking like a giant quilt....there were also trees in park-like settings, the underbrush sometimes burned, the trees trimmed and full, etc....it finally dawned on them that this was a purposeful "horticultural" activity, not for beautifying, but for helping themselves while helping nature....of course such a lush area did attract all kinds of creatures, and there was always a plentiful supply of vegetation/berries/nuts/basket reeds/ etc....the large fields of flowers were made by dividing the plants....I've read recently that the Europeans introduced most of what we call weeds, so that probably wasn't a big hassel....by-the-by, I'm not recommending the burning technique....the original peoples probably learned how to go about doing it properly over many centuries....it came as a surprize to me that it wasn't simply "hunting and gathering"....the early peoples were gardener's, in a very real sense.

-- Queen of Hearts (alice@wonder.land), November 30, 1999.

If you live in the northeast, I heartily reccomend "lambs quarters" and pig weed. For us, these are the two most common weeds in our garden. The lambs quarters especially nutritious and good tasting. If you can get kale seed--do so. It is winter hardy with just a little straw. Excellent for salads. I planned to plant some just around the chimney but so far the new house isn't even rough graded. Carrots can stay in the garden until you want to dig them anf parsnips. Sorry--probably the wrong place for this posting but I wanted to share the info. Lambs quarters vitamin info is in Adell Davis' books. Pam

-- Pamela (jpjgood@penn.com), November 30, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California M y Foraging Books

Queen of Hearts: An article, where? Can you remember anything about the article, like what the name was of the tribe, or any of the plants? I'd really like to read that one, since I live in central California, myself.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), November 30, 1999.

To all:

For winter identification of woody plants, the best means of identification is examining the twigs, buds, and leaf nodes, for example. This is a very complex topic, but, for example, in some cases you can I.D. a plant by cutting a cross section of twig and examining the shape of the pith (e.g., circular, star-shaped, etc.), or by the leaf nodes (e.g., opposite v. alternate).

There is even a method of I.D.-ing through cutting the bud to observe how the young leaves are packed inside, called "ptyxis".

I know, not much practical help here, but it's important that you be aware of these methods. There are some books out on this kind of identification. If anyone is interested, I can post some titles and authors.

A final word -- unless you want to end up as a candidate for the long-term ward at the state hospital, try to avoid attempting to identify woody plants by their bark.

-- eve (123@4567.com), November 30, 1999.

Zog,

By the way, great stuff!

-- eve (123@4567.com), November 30, 1999.

All;

Oh yeah -- of course my post above refers to the deciduous plants. And, yes, there's a purpose for the post; you can eat parts of your trees, e.g., inner bark (e.g., Slippery Elm, Maples, Poplars, etc.), and in the case of the Bittersweet, the Chippewas ate the outer bark and twigs. And of course there's always the sap -- not just maples, but birches too, for example.

Actually, re evergreens, the White Pine is one of the best for inner bark.

-- eve (123@4567.com), November 30, 1999.

To all:

Some cautionary advice: Do not get into wild edibles unless you absolutely know what you are doing! Get the books! Know your plants, poisonous lookalikes, what parts to eat and which parts are poisonous, and how to prepare them.

As an example, regarding the Bittersweet (Celastrus scandens) I mentioned above, the bark does contain poisonous saponin which is dispelled by boiling (I don't have the details handy right now). I apologize for neglecting to mention this.

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 01, 1999.