Chapter 1 European wild garlic is invasive in North America, is similar to wild ramps, and is delicious.
16 Guerilla Gardening
The Oldest Heirlooms: Native Plants
Considering the wild origin of every domesticated plant species, uncounted wild plants in their native state still can be premium groceries. They worked for thousands of years to feed the hunter-gatherers who came before us. Many are still foraged in their natural state for the modern market: everything from purslane to wild onions to mushrooms to wild nuts/ acorns to wild rice and various berries and so on are now readily found in American specialty markets, and the farther you get from the concrete jungle toward the triplecanopy jungle, the more common is produce that is harvested directly from the wild. And why not? Why mess with a system that works? Cultivars that have been developed from wild plants may be barely recognizable from their ancestors, and the reverse is also true. The advantage to our discussion here is that the original plants may not look like food to a marauder and that native plants may be more readily suited to plant-andneglect techniques. One advantage of purposeful agriculture has always been to increase the odds that a viable seed will end up as a useful mature plant. Thus if you take the time to sow and establish wild, native, edible plants, you can have harvestable crops from the wild, widely dispersed and largely unrecognizable to competing humans, and vastly increase the odds that competing animals will leave enough for you. One technique to hide the fact that a technique has even been used is careful selection of companion plants that may tend to discourage your wild competitors. For instance, if you are considering establishing a “wild” bed of something that you anticipate ruminants to molest, plant in juxtaposition with wild onions or anything of the allium family, which many rodents find off-putting. Another technique that may fit your situation is to establish native species—such as purslane, Jerusalem artichokes, blackberries, or amaranth (a.k.a. red root pigweed)—that, once established, tend to compete very well and take over, yet to the unknowing are no more than weeds. Depending on your location, there will be native, wild, edible plants that have never been a market item for commercial reasons and are often regarded as weeds, but which have fed local foragers since prehistoric times. Think local, plant local, and harvest local, wild, edible plants and you increase your odds for food growing without detection. Foraging the wild per se is a topic for another campfire, but encouraging or planting native forage crops is a facet of forest gardens to keep in mind, especially if you anticipate moving and revisiting specific areas. For an overview of edible forage plants common to temperate zones, I refer the reader to my earlier book Eating on the Run, a companion volume in this survival series from Ogden Publications.