The free stuff grows outside — foraging for beginners

Let me tell you something it took me a long time to see: a large share of the things you honestly pay good money for at the deli grows twenty metres from the garden. For free. Capers, for example. Real capers come from the Mediterranean and cost a fair bit in the jar — and you can make them from a plant you probably tear out of the lawn every year.

That's foraging. Gathering. And then making something fine out of it.

I didn't go into this with expert knowledge. I started the way everyone does: with a handful of dandelion buds and the quiet worry that I'd wreck my stomach. I didn't. It worked. And ever since, part of my head switches into gathering mode in spring.

The reason this belongs in the magazine: a permaculture garden doesn't stop at the bed. The wayside, the old orchard meadow, the spruce edge behind the property — it's all part of the system. You don't have to grow everything yourself. Some of it is already standing there.

The rules first. Then the fun.

Before you start, four things. Not as bureaucracy — but because they make the difference between a lovely hobby and a bad day.

1. You only take what you recognise 100 %. Not "looks like". Not "it'll be fine". A hundred percent. Some edible wild plants have poisonous lookalikes, and some of those are no joke. If you're not sure: leave it. The plant won't run away, you can come back next week with a field guide or an app.

2. Clean sites. Not right by the roadside, where the traffic rolls over it. Not at the edge of a field that's just been sprayed. Not where every dog in the neighbourhood obviously marks its territory. A bit into the forest, a meadow away from the road — that's usually enough.

3. Never more than a third. You're not the only one living off that stand. Insects, birds, other foragers. Take a third, leave two thirds. Then there's something there again next year. It's the same logic as in the garden: whoever harvests everything harvests once.

4. Personal use, and mind where you are. For your own household you're allowed in Germany to gather wild-growing flowers, herbs and fruit (Federal Nature Conservation Act §39). Not in nature reserves, not where access is prohibited, not on a commercial scale. Common sense goes a long way here.

Whoever starts with six to eight truly unmistakable species comes through the whole season safely. Dandelion, elder, spruce tips, daisy, stinging nettle, wild rose — these are hard to mistake. That's where you begin. The rest you build up over time.

The season at a glance

Foraging is a calendar, not a pantry. Each thing has its window, and the window is often short. Spruce tips have two, three weeks in May — then the light-green shoots have grown out and that's that. Miss it, and you wait a year.

Rough orientation (shifts by weeks depending on region and altitude):

I've sorted the rest of the article along this sequence — from spring into autumn.

Spring: the dandelion you've always torn out

Dandelion capers

The classic for starting out, because nothing can go wrong. You take the still-closed flower buds — the round, plump ones that show no yellow yet. The elongated ones with yellow petals or even a seed clock are already too far gone.

Here's how:

1. Wash the buds, pat dry.
2. Leave overnight in brine (about 1 tbsp salt to 200 ml warm water, dissolve the salt, add the buds). This draws out the bitter compounds.
3. Drain, rinse. Put into a clean screw-top jar.
4. Pour over a boiled-up brew of vinegar, a little water, a pinch of sugar, salt, a few peppercorns and bay until everything is covered.
5. Seal. Let steep for 14 days. Only then are they ready.

Unopened they keep at least a year; once opened, into the fridge. If you want to be on the safe side, you can pasteurise the jars (about 25 minutes at 167 °F, jars three quarters submerged in a water bath).

What you do with them: onto the antipasti board, onto pasta with garlic and lemon, into sauces and dressings. Anywhere you'd otherwise use real capers — just with a slightly bitter, savoury note of their own.

Dandelion syrup ("dandelion honey")

From the open flowers (the yellow part, without the green calyxes, which bring bitterness). Briefly boil the flowers with water and a sliced lemon, let steep, strain the next day, squeeze well out, and simmer for a long time with sugar until it turns honey-like. On bread, in tea. Tastes surprisingly like honey, without a single bee.

Stinging nettle

The most underrated free vegetable there is. The young shoots in spring are a spinach substitute with noticeably more iron and protein. Harvest with gloves, blanch briefly or purée — then nothing stings any more. Becomes soup, pesto, spinach, smoothie greens. And the seeds in late summer are a nutty topping you can scatter over anything.

Late spring: the forest smells of lemon

Spruce-tip syrup

My personal favourite. In May spruces and firs push out their new tips — light green, soft, lemony-resinous in flavour. You pick those (only the light, new ones — not the old, dark needles), and again: never more than a third from the tree, and not the very top leader tip, or you take the tree's growth direction away.

There are two ways:

The quick way (cooked): bring the tips up with water, let steep, strain, squeeze, simmer with sugar for several hours into a brownish syrup, fill into clean jars.

The cold way (layering method, "spruce-tip honey"): layer the tips alternately with sugar or honey into a sterilised jar. Let steep for six to twelve weeks in a dark, cool place, then strain. With honey instead of sugar it's considered the finest version — honey brings its own antibacterial effect. Important: no honey for children under one year (botulism risk) — that goes for all honey preparations.

Spruce tips are full of vitamin C, essential oils and tannins. The syrup is an old home remedy for cough and cold — and honestly just delicious in tea, on pancakes, over ice cream.

Elderflowers

Late May, June. The large, cream-white flower umbels of black elder, with their sweetly fruity scent. That very scent is also your identifying mark.

From it comes the whole programme:

• Elderflower syrup — steep the umbels with sugar, water, lemon and a little citric acid for a day or two, strain, boil up, bottle. Summer in a jar. Topped up with water, the best refreshing drink there is.
• Elderflower jelly — boil the syrup down with jam sugar.
• Elderflower fritters — whole umbels dipped in pancake batter and fried.
• Elderflower sparkling wine — fermented, if you have patience.

Wild rose & lime

Take them along on the side, while you're out anyway: wild rose petals for syrup and rose sugar, lime flowers (June) for one of the best calming teas you can dry yourself.

Autumn: what the forest leaves over becomes a store

Elderberries

Ripe in late summer. Always process cooked, never raw — then you get elderberry purée, juice, jelly, the classic "elderberry soup" store for winter. Full of vitamin C, the old cold remedy par excellence.

Rose hips

Sweetest after the first frost (or freeze once, that simulates the frost). The fruits of the wild rose become rose-hip purée, jam, tea. A bit of work because of the seeds and hairs — but the purée is gold.

Beech nuts

The small three-sided nuts of the common beech, in autumn under old beeches. Raw only in small amounts (they contain fagin, which is unwholesome in quantity) — but roasted a fine, almond-like snack and very good over salads. Peeling is fiddly work, but free nuts are free nuts.

Walnuts

Anyone with a wild or unused walnut tree nearby knows the good fortune. Gather ripe nuts in October, dry, store. And for the bold: green, unripe walnuts in June (still soft, pierceable with a needle) become black nut liqueur or pickled spiced nuts — an old tradition hardly anyone keeps any more.

Where you begin

If you do only one thing this year: dandelion capers. Nothing is safer to recognise, nothing is easier to get right, and the moment you have a homemade "caper" on your bread for the first time and think I made this out of the lawn — that one stays with you.

Then spruce tips in May. Elder in June. And suddenly you have a little calendar in your head telling you what's ripe out there and when. That's basically the same thinking as in the garden: not everything at once, but the right thing at the right time. Observe. Gather. Process. Keep.

The garden produces the planned. The forest gives you the gifted. Both together is self-sufficiency the way it was actually meant.

If you want to go deeper, you'll find the matching step-by-step recipes in the wild apothecary — from ribwort cough syrup through herbal oils to the pitch salve. And which "weed" is actually a whole apothecary is explained right next door.

Note: this article is no substitute for identifying plants on the spot. Gather only what you recognise for certain, and when in doubt consult a field guide, an app or a knowledgeable person. When unsure, the rule is always: leave it standing.