Foraging in London

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
OK let's have it!

-Loads of brambles on Hamstead Heath. Tasty.

-Wild plums in Haggerston Park. Not picked any yet but there are loads just rotting on the ground. They are little, about the size of big grapes.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Great thread. Apples and blackcurrants in Forest Hill near the Horniman Museum.

Pret a Manger in the City at closing time :)
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Cool!

Anyone feel free to include urban foraging - keen to find some skips to dive and get some goodies round the back of supermarkets. I always keep an eye out but have never found any exposed bins.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
We've got three fig trees, an apple tree and a plum tree in the back garden, so going to the park seems almost redundant. :p

I guess you could forage in Harringey by nabbing our stuff from the bits that overhang the road, though...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I guess you could forage in Harringey by nabbing our stuff from the bits that overhang the road, though...

Before they beefed up the gate it was really easy to get into the Railway Fields - blackberry heaven! I think the reserve is still open sometimes, but only for a few hours during the day on weekdays. Not ideal if you're an adult with an office-hours job.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Richard Mabey's Food for Free


is really good on stuff to pick in the Uk that won't kill you lol.

Pret usually leave their stuff out in black bags for foraging, I know M&S used to spoil their stuff, bastards, but I think there was a campaign to stop them and others doing it and to leave stuff out, there was a website but cant find it at the moment
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Loads of blackberries and blackcurrants in a secret location near my place. (Well I'm not gonna tell you lot, am I?). Good 'shrooming to be had in the autumn on Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest. Epping's good for chestnuts, too.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Cool!

Anyone feel free to include urban foraging - keen to find some skips to dive and get some goodies round the back of supermarkets. I always keep an eye out but have never found any exposed bins.

I'm sure I read something about supermarkets in Chelsea/other 'posh' areas being especially good for this, cos they throw out food with much more abandon, seeing as people use £50 notes at the till 'n' all.
 

MrFence

Oh the humanity.
Great thread. Apples and blackcurrants in Forest Hill near the Horniman Museum.

Pret a Manger in the City at closing time :)


Also, Apricots on the trees outside the museum (walking down the hill toward East Dulwich) and more Brambles than I have ever seen on the dirt track that connects Homestall Road and Colyton Road behind the reservoir in foresthill/nunhead.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Any more tips here? Kind to do more if poss (too late in the year?)

I managed to get the wild plums from Haggerston Park this year and made crumble. There are also some on Regent's canal going east from Kingsland Rd towards the Wick.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Hmm, definitely too late for any fruit I can think off. There's been a frost which will have put paid to any mushrooms worth the effort of collecting. A few late chestnuts, maybe? Pushing it, even so.
 

sufi

lala
still have some pears on the tree outside, no leaves tho, and the pears are in some funny mutant shapes that kind of put me off scrumping (havent checked for my favorite brixton pear tree behind the multistory this year, they are building there, so i hope it's ok)
the time of the big mushies has been and gone a month ago, apparently the fungi like fluctuating weather from cold to hot and dry/moist ... there's one small one in the garden though that looks like a chestnut,
no way i'm eating it
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Elders have been going mad everywhere I've looked over the past month or so. The berries are too sharp to eat by themselves but you can make stuff like sorbet and jam with them. I like pairing them with blackberries which are obviously a bit sweeter, though the bramble season is more of less over now. Once you start noticing elder trees you realise they're everywhere, pretty much an arboreal weed.

A wet, cool August means the mushroom season is already well underway - made some amazing cream-of-puffball soup the other day...
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
this is great.

i just came home with a lovely 1/2 kilo of blackberries from round the local allotments

sweet! Are they in season? i think of autumn but i suppose we are in Aug already...there are loads of cherries outside where i live i need to add.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Blackberries were still at the late flower/tiny green fruit stage a week or so ago in Oxford, guess it'll be another week or so until they're pickable. Looks like there'll be plenty though. Got some great wild apples last year, hopefully there'll be out in force again soon.

I've been picking huge fuck-off field mushrooms in Holland since May, god knows what's going on there but I'm not complaining.
 
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