An urban forager is the next level tightarse.There was a website by Costa from gardening Australia with urban foraging hotspots a couple of years ago talk of an urban foraging map of Sydney. Anyways these are my hot spots for Sydney urban foraging:
1) Asparagus@ the site of the old Blue Gum Farm at Milperra.Cut only about 15cm and come back after a couple of days for new shoots.Warning this is a notorious dogging(cottaging) hotspot so careful what time of the day you go there in case you are bringing kids but if you are also into dogging,1 stone 2 birds;
2)Fennel and prickly pear along train tracks.Southern European immigrant rail workers would throw seeds or cuttings along the tracks and then harvest later.
3)Pine Mushrooms at golf course and the pine plantations just out of Sydney.
Urban Foraging Pro Tips
Comments
I don't know enough to tell them apart from the bad ones.
There's a relatively simple method. Just eat a small mushroom, if you die in the next day or so, don't eat any more. But if you live… You've just found some free edible mushrooms my friend!
Care to be my guinea pig?
Free food is free food. :)
Just think of how much money you'd save on food when you're dead!
A delicious last meal!
Pine mushrooms (saffron milk cap) are tasty and also have the advantage of looking very different to poisonous/deadly varieties. I've been eating them, and other varieties growing in pine forests, for years without ill effect. But the best advice is if you're not certain of the variety then don't pick it up.
Never pick wild mushrooms near Canberra. People get poisoned every year and sometimes people die from it. Just not worth it. :(
Start in Costa's beard and work your way out.😄
Dare I say for the cost of petrol/transport to and from these foraging spots it'd probably work out cheaper just to buy the stuff from Coles? You also dramatically lower your changes of death and/or "accidental dogging".
Nothing worse than accidental dogging.
Except perhaps death.
This is so dumb. I've seen 3 kids in ED from eating stuff growing wild or on the side of the road.
Eat the wrong stuff and you can have permanent liver failure
So sad that people are so disconnected from the natural world that this is a fear and that it might be a risk.
Oh god
You might want to add seasons to your foraging guide. Asparagus grows in spring, and some shoots should be left to grow to full size to keep the roots healthy. Pine mushrooms are usually available April to June in temperate climates. Once the weather turns colder in July only old mushrooms are left over.
Probably should have warned me not to google dogging/cottaging on my work computer…
Not sure what is next level about it? In February me and the kids gather lunch boxes full of blackberries on the way home from school - great with cream for desert.
I forage in my veggie patch.
I grew up doing this stuff all the time. Station wagons and freezers full of foraged food. Foraging skills are essential to surviving an economic apocalypse .When the Nazis would spray fields to starve a resistant population ,guess what, kids who went into the forests and foraged still thrived. Anyway I've just discovered the Wildfood Map App.
I wouldn't harvest any type of mushroom in the wild by myself. I don't know enough to tell them apart from the bad ones.