forest foraging

While I haven’t be able to forage around my home due to how many ongoing home reno projects there are, I’ve been greedily reading all I can from books and Pinterest. I am nowhere near an expert on identifying specific plants besides mint, chamomile and, Japanese knot weed but learning about what I can find in the Northeast is satisfying.

The two books I’m referencing at the moment are “The Wild Weeds of Wisdom” by Katrina Blair and “Northeast Foraging” by Leda Meredith. The second book includes an awesome breakdown of plants by season, then further down into specific areas to look (open meadows, shady woodland, riverbanks and seashores). I’m moving those tables into my garden journal for ease of reference, though the images included are just as important.

With these two books, I’ve been able to identify a number of wild plants in our back yard. Aside from the things I’ve planted in previous years (blueberries, raspberries, mint, chamomile), I’ve been able to find the following. Japanese knotweed, violet leaves and flowers, red and white clovers, purslane and a couple of other beneficial weeds.

Once we find a new home surrounded by thick forests and sunny spots, I’m going to catalog the plants I find into a little field guide. Cottagecore, here I come~

innards of the garden journal

If you’re anything like me the idea of having a exhausting, all encompassing reference of a particular topic is a very attractive idea. I’ve attempted it when it comes to general world building and more specific Dunegon’s & Dragons world building but after a while, I would get bored and move on. I hope a garden/homesteading/permaculture reference would be different but we’ll see. 

As for what to include in this journal, it is easy to tailor it to your specific garden needs. If you plan on growing a small hobby garden with a collection of some favorite herbs and vegetables, you could include a few things.

  • A grow map of what was planted where
  • Varieties that were planted and how well they did
  • A yield estimation
  • Your grow zone and first and last frost dates
  • Differences between Full Sun, Partial Sun, and Full Shade
  • What to try next year

As for my own garden journal, here’s what I plan on including.

  • Future “Forever Home” garden
  • Local plants and mushrooms that can be foraged
  • Foods that are in season in my area
  • Recipes 
  • Direct Sow vs. Transplant
  • Plant families in regards to crop rotation

There’s truly a dizzying amount of things to include in a garden journal and I’m excited to finally fill up a notebook.

keeping a garden journal

I like to think I have a good memory, I definitely brag about it. But heading into a new grow season, it’s easy to forget all the ups and downs of the previous year. I can remember that we were swimming in hot peppers, chard, and pumpkins but I couldn’t tell you what their names were or how many I might have planted. Since my homesteading aspirations weren’t realized this time last year, my garden records were pretty non-existant. 

This year I’m going to be more involved in our ⅛ acre, or whatever size our small plot of suburban hell we occupy is. I appropriated one of the many empty notebooks I’ve squirrled away for this journal, along with some colored washi tape and markers to give it some personality. While I’d like to record all the minutiae that I’ve seen on Pinterest and other garden-y blogs (rainfall amounts, daily temps, moon cycles?) collecting that data on a regular basis sounds overwhelming for a paper garden journal. Instead, I’ll probably make a spreadsheet, spend a day or so making all the columns and rows look cute and then never use it. 

For now, I’m going to add useful information as the summer drags on and figure out what was useful and go from there.