I'm processing Gingko fruits that I found. Here's how they fit with my 8 Principles of Foraging. Come join me, out on my picnic table, if you are interested in foraging wild plants or mushrooms.

I eat a lot of wild plants and mushrooms! It can be intimidating for people to start foraging. There is more to know than any one person can learn in a lifetime. Here are the 8 principles that I use to organize my thinking about foraging. Gingko nuts make a good example of how to put these principles into action. I'll be going into more detail about each one in future posts.

Here's an 8-minute video, if you would rather listen than read. I've summarized the video with text, if you prefer to read. Just remember what learning research shows -- it's best to do both! :D

---

If you get any value out of this video or post, I'd appreciate your upvote! If there's anything I can do to make my foraging posts more useful to you, please let me know!

---

A Foraging Foundation - Haphazard Homestead's 8 Principles of Foraging

1. The Plant

Here's an understatement -- before you eat anything you forage, it's good to know what it is! That's true whether it's a plant or a mushroom.

Gingkos are easy to identify. First, it's a tree - and by the time it has any fruit to harvest, it will be a big tree! Second, there is no plant that has a leaf like it. Even when a gingko tree is bare in the winter, there are usually plenty of old leaves on the ground for a rock-solid identification!

---

2. The Part

Not all parts of edible plants are edible -- or even safe to handle! So it's good to know which parts of the plant, or mushroom, are good to eat -- and which are not. Yes, even mushrooms!

In this case, it's the Gingko nut, inside the fruit, that's good to eat. Not the fruit -- the fruit is actually a problem!

---

3. The Place

There's a lot to consider about good places for foraging. Like whether a place is safe for foraging. If it's legal to forage there. If it's ethical. And if it's practical.

Gingko trees don't grow in the wild. And they take 30-40 years to bear any fruit. So the practical place to forage for gingko nuts is in old, established neighborhoods. In parks, or even more common, along the streets. Fruit that falls on the street and sidewalks belongs to everyone!

---

4. Phenology

Phenology is just a fancy name for nature's calendar. And nature's calendar is a lot more flexible than ours! A plant's calendar depends on the overall climate of the region it's in, the specific weather this season, and the micro-climate where an individual plant lives.

Most of what's written about foraging Gingko nuts says to harvest them in the autumn. But I just picked these in January, here in Oregon's Willamette Valley. The time to pick Gingko fruits is when they are falling off the tree, all soft and rotten. No matter what month that is on our calendar! So this mess on the sidewalk is a good thing!

---

5. Picking

Picking seems so simple. But there can be easy ways to pick, hard ways to pick, and downright bad ways to pick, for some plants and mushrooms. If you've seen any of my videos or posts about picking wild salads, you know I stress Pick Clean and Pick Organized. But sometimes that's not practical or necessary. Thinking ahead to bring the right tools can be helpful, too.

I could pick up Gingko nuts from fallen fruits splattered all over the sidewalk. But it's a lot easier to lay down a tarp and use a long pole to shake off a lot of fruit at once, from the high branches! With gingkos, it doesn't matter if there are leaves and other debris in there, too. That's makes harvesting fast and easy!

---

6. Preparing

Some foraging is so easy. It's hard to beat a double-handful of wild blackberries, right there while you're picking! But other plants and mushrooms take a lot more preparation. Some have to be processed in very specific ways to remove toxins or make them worth eating. And it's always helpful to have recipes and see what tasty food other people are making from their foraged harvests!

Gingko nuts do take a lot of preparation! First the nuts have to be removed from the rotten fruit. The nuts have to be removed from their shell, either before or after cooking. The nuts have to be cooked, too. And then the thin skin around the nuts has to be taken off, too. But I think they are worth the effort! I use different methods to process a few fruits or a lot of them. I'll show them both in a future post. If you come up with a better way to process them or cook them - let me know!

---

7. Precautions

Even foods that we eat every day may cause problems for some people - because of allergies, other health issues, or interactions with medication. And some garden crops have to be handled carefully or they can cause skin rashes or other problems. The same is true for wild plants - it all depends on the plant and the person.

Some wild plants take even more precautions, though. From dealing with hazards out where the plants are - like ticks and poison ivy - to not eating too much. Just because a plant or mushroom comes with precautions, that's no reason to fear them. It's just a question of knowing which ones matter for your situation.

Gingko nuts comes with a lot of precautions, even though many cultures have eaten them for thousands of years. The fruit may taste good, but it is not for eating -- they have both toxic and irritating compounds in them. Even for processing the fruits to get the nuts out, it's a good idea to wear gloves to keep the juice from causing a rash or burning. The nuts have to be cooked to break down one set of toxic compounds. And it's not a good idea to eat too many nuts at once, or too many over a long period.

---

8. Practice

To be a forager, you have to forage! Foraging is not just book-learning for future use in unlikely situations. Wild food is real food for regular people. Every time I go for a walk, it's a chance to practice plant identification. And maybe picking! Especially when it comes to identifying and preparing wild plants and mushrooms, practice helps a lot! Every day, every time we eat, is a chance to practice using wild plants and mushrooms.

There are some real rewards for practicing foraging! Here's a delicious and easy chopped salad I made with Gingko nuts for the Steemit Iron Chef contest run by @progressivechef.

---

What Do You Think?

• How do you organize your approach to foraging?
• Would you like to learn more about foraging?
• What name do you think is better for a Steemit foraging community: Foragers Guild, The Foragers Club, or something else?
• Would you rather watch a vlog or read a Steemit post?

I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.

I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!

---

Haphazard Homestead

foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land
All content is 100% Haphazard Homestead!My YouTube channel: Haphazard Homestead

---

Music: "Floating Cities" - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

---

▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS