Early Spring Foraging

Wild Greens, Roots and Flowers

Mar 15, 2024

It seems like everyone’s excited about new early-season spring greens, not just foragers. But foragers seem to love this season more than any of the others.

Yes, it’s true; there are things you can forage in winter, but there’s something about spring foraging that brings everyone to the yard.

Partly, it’s a celebration of all things fresh and green, and the excitement that winter has finally relented and growth can begin again. We all could use some fresh greens in our diets this time of year, after heavy winter foods.

But spring greens are also abundant and accessible. While your suburban lot might not have access to a woodland space to forage nannyberries later in the season, you almost certainly have wild violets, dandelions, chickweed, and yarrow growing within a stone’s throw of your door.

During morel season, suddenly everyone’s a mushroom forager, and for good reason!

Morels are delicious, and one of a dozen easily identifiable beginner mushrooms. (And they sprout from suburban lots often enough, occasionally even coming up through sidewalk cracks in the city.)

Dedicated foragers know spring is one of the best times to harvest edible and medicinal wild roots. For some reason, most people are shy about foraging beneath the soil, but it’s where a lot of wild plants keep their calories and nutrition.

And you have to admit, there’s something magical about the idea of harvesting tiny “fairy potatoes” from plants like spring beauty.

“Fairy Potatoes” under Spring Beauty Plants. Every part of this plant is edible.

Though “spring” technically arrives the third week of March, Vermont won’t see spring wild edibles until Early to mid-May. The first dandelions usually flower for Mother’s Day weekend, and we’ll see our first morels around Memorial Day.

Still, I know most of you live in more reasonable climates, and are itching to get out there and taste the season. Here are some things to look for each spring (whether that means now where you are, or in a few months from now, as it is where we are).