The Garden Path Podcast

If you’re in Texas and have ever wondered whether a wild plant you came across was edible you may have stumbled across Foraging Texas in your research. The website is run by Dr. Mark ‘Merriwether’ Vorderbruggen, who by day is a scientist and by nights and weekends, well, he’s still a scientist but he’s also a forager, wild crafter, and explorer. Most recently he wrote a book about foraging!

I’ve used his website a lot over the years, not just for deciding if a plant is edible or not, but also for easy identification for particular plants that haven’t shown up in a field guide. His website is extremely resourceful with an index of a plethora of edible plants as well as links to where you can take a class from him. I happened to attend a class of his last November along with past podcast guest Julie Rorrer. It helped bridge that gap for me, where I knew a plant was edible but I was still hesitant to take that leap to eat it.

In this episode, Merriwether covers the ethics of foraging and gives a great beginners guide to getting started with foraging. This podcast is focused on Texas but many of the plants mentioned can be found in other areas of North America. If you are interested in foraging, reach out to Merriwether and attend a class or use his Instagram and Facebook pages to find out what expert foragers may be in your region. Merriwether is extremely knowledgeable and you can easily become engrossed in learning all sorts of tidbits from this conversation and from his classes!

As a side note, in the introduction of this episode I mention my friends Marc and Eliana, who are birding in their VW Bus Valentina across the US from Miami to Alaska and back. They were at my house over the weekend but my plans for recording a podcast episode with them did not get squeezed into the many things we did, including birding, over the weekend. I hope to have them on when they return next fall from their trip, but until then you can follow them at Birding By Bus on Instagram or over on Facebook.

If you enjoyed the episode, please let me know in the comments below or by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!