How to Hunt Wild Kentucky Edible Plants
If you're planning a camping, hiking or wilderness survival excursion, Kentucky is a beginner survivalist's paradise. The varied terrain and warm climate are conducive to the flourishing growth of a vast array of edible plants that are easy to find, identify and eat. With your trusty field guide and a few basic tools, you could get lost in the Kentucky wilderness for days and never suffer for a lack of naturally delicious foods to eat.
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Things You'll Need
- Kentucky field guide
- Paper bags
- Clipping shears
- Small garden shovel
- Knife
Instructions
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Buy a field guide with information about edible plants. You should be able to find this sort of book in local bookstores or sporting goods stores that specialize in camping and wilderness survival equipment.
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Inspect all of the plants thoroughly before harvesting and eating. Keep your field guide close at hand to compare photos to your findings and don't, under any circumstances, eat anything if you're unsure of what it is.
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Forage for nuts in the upland and lowland regions of the state. Common wild nuts are hickories and black walnuts and you can harvest them in either autumn or the early spring months. Gather nuts and store them in a paper bag to bring home to prepare by boiling or roasting or just crack them open and eat them raw.
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Visit spring beds and fields to gather chickweed, nettles and wild prickly lettuce during the spring and summer months. These are best harvested during the afternoon hours; clip the leaves and store them in a paper bag until you get home. Only clip what you'll eat and avoid pulling up the entire plant.
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Look for bulb plants, fruits and flowers any time from late spring through early autumn. Dandelions, blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, ground cherries and wild onions all grow in the wild in Kentucky. Blueberries are a low-growing plant and can be hard to spot if other plants are growing near them if you aren't paying close attention to the ground. All of these plants are capable of growing in almost any type of soil and can thrive in direct and indirect sunlight, so you shouldn't have much difficulty finding them. Harvest only what you plan on eating and keep each plant in separate paper bags.
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References
- Photo Credit wild image by carol lynch from Fotolia.com
