HEDGEWITCH ADVENTURES Blog

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Tag: food

  • FEBRUARY HAZEL POLLEN: Sweet or Savoury?

    Identifying Hazel Over the last few weeks, male catkins of Common Hazel (Coryllus avellana) have been draping the bronzy twigs of our native small tree. They’re a welcome addition ot the otherwise muted colours of February. Hazel is monoecious, which means it’s a hermaphrodite. It has both male and female flower parts on one tree.…

  • H.A. Foraging Journal – February Week 1

    H.A. Foraging Journal – February Week 1

    Buds are slowly revealing their silken insides on willow. Sycamore buds glow green, Blackthorn is dressed in hints of bridal white. Sloes are still out though, and they’ve been nicely bletted by the cold. I can even eat a few raw without wincing. Sloe Recipes A Sloe Ice Lolly could be a good bet, but…

  • Can We Eat ARUM LILIES?

    Can We Eat ARUM LILIES?

    This is one of those posts where I hope to ghod people read the WHOLE post. Like the one I wrote years back about Yew berries being edible. Read on to discover why the answer is both YES and NO! The answer to this very much depends on what type of Arum you are talking…

  • 6 Roots You Can Eat In Winter (If Trump Destroys the World…)

    If the world system fails, which looks increasingly likely with the behaviour of certain grown-up toddlers… be apocalypse-ready. Winter food Winter is traditionally the time to harvest roots. Plants store energy in the form of carbohydrates by stocking it up in their roots, bulbs, corms, tubers or rhizomes. Don’t worry about the terminology, unless you…

  • My Foraging Journal: January

    YES, you can still find wild fodder in the coldest and cruellest of months. Though it’s not the easiest time to survive, granted. Here’s what I’ve been up to. Why not try some of this out for yourself? What foraging and bushcraft ideas have you come up with with in winter? Let me know in…

  • ROWAN…Fire Engine Red Witchbane & What You Can Do With It.

    Rowan trees are aglow with fire engine red berries in council car parks and waysides everywhere. They’re a popular landscaping tree, so chances are there’ll be one near you. They love growing high up, so check hills too. Rowan, or Mountain Ash, is known as Sorbus aucuparia in the botanical community. It’s a member of…

  • ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ – J. Keats

    After a busy weekend teaching a public forage on Saturday and a private Foraging Party Sunday, both with 3-4 tapas tasters, I thought I’d share with you all some other fruiting and fungal delights of the autumn season. Hops droop (like brewer’s droop haha) from the hedge down the way. Once golden and dry, the…

  • My Hedgewitch Journal: Seedy September 2025

    September is the golden, freckled season of seeds. There’s lots to forage now and much to store for winter. So here are 5 the seeds the boy and I been harvesting. Well, ok, seeds I have been harvesting whilst my son moans about it and slumps in the footway. PLANTAIN SEEDS I’ve been shucking the…

  • Cooking A Continental Find: ‘Pioppino’, The Poplar Field Mushroom

    A week or so after the first rains, I leapt aboard my trusty steed and cycled down to one of my favourite foraging haunts, Tiddenfoot Lake. Here I was blessed enough to find two black poplar tree stumps with fruiting Poplar Field Mushrooms. This mushroom, Cyclocybe aegerita/cylindracea, has been foraged, grown and cooked since Greek…

  • SUMMER SPICED FRUITS:H.A. Foraging Journal July pt 2

    Fruits are hanging ready all about me, urged on by the earlier, hotter than normal weather. Being aware of climate change and making whatever steps we can to lower our carbon footprint is one thing to do. Try to walk on local journeys whenever possible…not only are you saving carbon and getting fitter, you’ll spot…