Does anyone forage?

I do Zsa Zsa!.   I do fungi of all kinds (I had a foraging course as a 60th birthday present!). I do a few plants - Wild Garlic, Lovage, Nettles etc etc.  We make Sloe Gin, Bullace Gin plus others.   Re your blokes wild stuff, bite his hand off particularly if he can get ceps/penny buns - it is what the Italians call Porcini and pay a fortune for. Easily slow dried on a tray in a very very low oven, then soaked to reconstitute.

Do you know your Pear Tree varieties?   The old saying is plant "Pears for your Heirs" cos they take a long time to get to proper fruiting maturity.

Gets my vote.

Sloes and Bullace  here too for the gin making

They are Gorham, I dont know how old they are but the tree looks very old(house 1908)

They make a very nice crumble, giving them away  is better than letting them rot in the garden and being plagued with wasps.

I did get some Porcini off him, hope he comes back this year.

There’s plenty of laver on the rocks around my home. It’s something of an acquired taste and requires thorough washing to rinse off every trace of sand.

Zsa Zsa - Gorhams are very nice.  I don't have one as I bought other varieties to pollinate my Comice du Doyenne pears. Don't waste the fruit though - it makes excellent Pear Juice which also freezes brilliantly.  I would like to try a blend with one of my sharp cider varieties this autumn to try to make perryder - or is it ciderry!!.

So, if you are near Sussex at harvest time, pop down with a bushel or two and I will press them for you. PM me nearer the time if of interest.

Interesting thread..very much like the ideas and offers too.

Sunken lanes here in Somerset, so plenty of dandelion leaves and flowers to pick at the tops of the banks. They don't really taste bitter at all at this time of year, and if you stick them in a sandwich with mayonnaise, they actually taste very nice. They're very nutritious, the roots especially so. The roots are actually the most pleasant tasting part of the plant. When I dig them out of my lawn, I always wash them under the tap and eat them, rather than waste them on the compost heap.

Over most of human evolution dandelions would have been an essential part of the diet, seeing as they grow earlier and more readily than any other crop. When the pilgrim fathers sailed to America, they made sure they took dandelion seeds with them. Yet, all of a sudden, the plant has disappeared from nearly everybody's diet. I wonder whether we might be missing out on something which our bodies have actually evolved to need.

Thanks for the offer Blackbarn, live on Wirral/Cheshire border so not really an option. The pear trees produce 100's every year but the apple tree never gets many. The only thing I have ever picked is Samphire.

Don’t worry about having any excess pears this year ,be lucky if you have any .

As for foraging next to roads ,don’t do it ,pollution from cars accumulates in all roadside vegetation ,maybe ok on quieter roads but busy roads is a big no no .

Agree re dandelion leaves. The leaves are lovely especially when young - a cross between watercress and lettuce.   The best thing about them though is the dandiclocks.
Did a session just this afternoon with my two year old grandaughter - brilliant!!! - the wind was just right to blow all those mini helicopters over my vegetable garden.

nb - she is too young for pissenlit.  Still in nappies.

I had a guinea pig what used to go mad for the dandelion leaves. The rabbits were take them or leave them. I had a try myself and decided I was squarely in the rabbit camp.

breadnbutter - re pear crop. The frosts even here in Sussex have been a bu66er but my pear blossom has only been affected only below a height of 5ft, exactly the same as my big Wisteria (three sides of the house 15ft high 60ft long - we call it mass wisteria - sorry!!) - murdered below 5ft but fine otherwise.
Rising ground frost or falling air frost.

Pokermonster... I'm lucky enough to have a laverbread factory 5 mins from where I live. Acquired taste, yes, but having eaten it regularly all my life , I can say it's food from the gods!.. the factory is also one of the main cockle and mussel producers in the region.

The speed that dandelions grow, I doubt the leaves or the flowers absorb much vehicle pollution.

But there wouldn't be more than three or four vehicles an hour using the lane where I pick them. And because it's a sunken lane, the dandelions are at the top of the bank, under the hedgerow, so I don't have to worry about pollutants being washed onto them by rain (or dog p1ss).