About

by Green Deane

 

Most Watched Forager In The World

Hello there, I’m Green Deane and I’ve been foraging since I was a child or for nearly 60 years.

Long before I went to school my mother would hand me a table knife and a paper bag and tell me to go find some dandelion greens for supper. While doing that I noticed wild strawberries, later checkerberries, raspberries, apples and roses.  My mother foraged as did my grandmother and great grandmother. I learned about plants long before I learned what their names were.

As a latchkey kid I also spent a lot of time alone in the woods, hiking, camping, fishing, exploring rivers, stone walls, old orchards, mountains, woods roads and old homesteads. I also made my first batch of home made cooking-malt beer then dandelion wine while in junior high.

After military service and college I moved from the land of ice and snow to orange groves and gardening year round. I studied locally with noted forager Dick Deureling and was a member of the Native Plant Society. Foraging is like rigging, you learn by doing.

I started to give wild food presentations about 20 years ago. Towards that end I created my “Itemizing” system to help beginners not only organize information but to give them a successful method to investigate a plant and make sure key points are covered. Nearly all of my plant articles are organized with my system in mind and I wrote every one. A few years ago I started making wild edible videos for my friends. That has made me via You Tube the most watched forager in the world with around two million views. I also started a foraging website in 2008. I teach about wild edibles full time. My goal is to help people who want to know more about foragables to enjoy the process and be safe while doing so. While I am now based in Florida my website and experience includes northern climates and international foraging.

I hold a degree in education, summa cum laude, from the University of Maine and did two years of graduate study in communication at the University of Central Florida. I am the author of two published books and am an award-winning writer and photographer. Besides being a life-long professional musician, my interests include cooking, cast netting, canoeing, kayaking, dancing and visiting relatives in Greece. Somehow through all of that I also manged to unintentionally remain a bachelor.

While most of the articles are about plants and a few off-beat animals there are some editorials here and there. If you are a beginning forager you might want to get started with my videos and read the accompanying articles in that the first several dozen videos are in seasonal order. Learning a plant or two a month is quite easy.

You can contact me personally here. Thanks for visiting. Toodles

{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Green Deane November 21, 2011 at 14:49
2 Dr. Amit Kaur December 2, 2011 at 04:14

i also want to publish mt research papers and articles on edible weeds at eattheweeds.com

best regards
Dr. Amit Kaur Puri

Reply

3 Mildred Jones December 9, 2011 at 06:50

What is your area of expertise, Dr. Amit? Where are you situated currently? Mail me your CV at my email address: mildred.jones88@yahoo.co.uk

Reply

4 judith collins November 22, 2012 at 23:49

Here in Australia for the past thirty years I have been teaching the value of using weeds in natural pest control, food for animals, food for the table, use in the compost bin, as a living mulch, liquid fertilisers, garden sprays, and healing the body.
Let me know when you publish I would love to read your book.
My book “Companion Gardening in Australia” covers most of the weed subjects I have mentioned. It’s now in its 9th edition. Written 20yrs ago, the book is now seen as an institution.
Keep up the good work.
Judith

Reply

5 Dylan December 4, 2011 at 18:57

Hi. I signed up for your class but want to make sure it did it right. I want to go this Sunday (12/11/11) in Jax. Please confirm.

Thank you.

Dylan Cadwalader
Saint Augustine

Reply

6 kat December 5, 2011 at 21:23

Hi Green Deane,
I luv your site! I am an ole, not old, horticulter, who lived many years in Fla. I’ve grown and lived plants. I, like you, let my dandelions grow despite my neighbors.
When my husband needed a kidney transplant we left my beloved home in Fla. and headed to the deserts of California. I had to sadly leave my beautiful Beauty Bush.
My husband passed and I moved back near my family to my home in Virginia. I am so thrilled that I can find many of your editable weeds here! Spring gives me the wonderful moral mushrooms and much much more then I had in California.
I still miss my Beauty Bush and found it grows here in Virginia but have not located it. How could I get the seeds? Can you help me out?
Thank you for sharing your wonderful information.
Your friend Kat
PS. My cat looks like yours.

Reply

7 Green Deane December 6, 2011 at 12:47

I can send you some seeds.

Reply

8 Kat December 7, 2011 at 15:05

Great, contact me on my E-mail and give me details.
Thank you Soooo much! HUGS!

Reply

9 Katarina E January 13, 2012 at 17:20

Hey! I should have looked at the other comments firs., What’s this?, I thought that I was the only Kat. So now you have a Kat in Calif and Florida.

Reply

10 samuel alexander February 21, 2012 at 17:34

I live in Trinidad & Tobago. I love your site. Iwill go throught the info you have there and then request/buy what I need

Reply

11 Alina N. March 14, 2012 at 01:53

HI,
It is a great website. I am so glad that I found it.
I was wondering if it is possible on your website to look up edibles by region.
My second question: How much of North America do you cover?
Thank you.

Reply

12 Green Deane March 14, 2012 at 07:30

I did consider adding regions but the logistics were something of a headache in that there are a lot of regions… well, that’s not entirely accurate. I thought about adding states and providences which meant a huge amount of work, more than 60 categories because plants don’t know political boundaries. As it were by regions I would need All of North America, Canada, United States, eastern Canada, western Canada, southern Canada, northern US, southern US, eastern US, western US, northeast US, southeast US, New England, Old South, Florida Puerto Rico Hawaii,Rocky Mountains,Desert Southwest, Texas, Mexico, West Coast, Southern West Coast, Northern West Coast, Alaska, High Plains States, Mid-west, Central Ameirica, South America, Great Britian, Europe, Northern Europe, southern Europe, Australia, Australia New Zealand, North Australia, South Australia, Eastern Australia, Western Australia, Northern Australia, Mediterranean Area, South Africa, Middle Africa, North Africa, Asia, North Asia, southeast Asia, Japan, World.

I would be tempted to put them under Region but that would make a huge list in the middle of categories.I could make it Zregions which would put the list at the end… I will have to ponder it. I would also have to go through each of the 1,000 of so plants and mark off the areas…Right now I usually mention in each plant article where it can be found.

While I am in Florida I grew up in Maine and have plants on my site from all over the US and Cananda. I also have expert friends on other regions for reference and consultations.

Reply

13 Peg April 1, 2012 at 20:09

Very grateful to all you’re doing and there are thousands more and growing who feel the same. Live between you and Tampa and sharing and networking living naturally, thriving naturally, is where we’re at! Trying to find the answer to this: Is the Heart-Leaf Stinging Nettle edible and as nutritious as the Urtica Dioica? Your page on this is not clear to me if you’re referring to the “famous, popular” nettle or the Florida one in regards to health benefits….or both? Even with extensive internet searching, the answer seems to elude me. Thanks so much for your reply.

Reply

14 Green Deane April 1, 2012 at 20:32

The nutrition is roughly the same.

Reply

15 Stockton Reeves April 4, 2012 at 22:41

Green Deane:

I think the money I spent taking the tour of Mead Gardens in WP earlier this month with you was the best spent money of my life. The trek was fascinating and insightful. As a tour guide through the landscape you are wonderful and patient and I enjoyed that morning more than you can imagine. The time spent after the tour talking was great and I cannot wait to take another tour of some property with you. What a magical time. Thank you so very much.

I have a whole new perspective to walking through my neighborhood.

Stockton Reeves

Reply

16 Elizabeth June 23, 2012 at 20:45

I love your site for info, clarity and humor…and I love that photo of you up there at the top of this page—a person doesn’t usually get the opportunity to erupt into a full-face smile -&- chuckle in response to web-authors’ photos. What a pleasant surprise!! I was wondering how you fit all those listed accomplishments and interests into such a short life…are you one of those folks who only need 3 hours sleep? Please say you are–even if you are not. Practical Question: I wanted to forward your page on the Japanese Knotweed to a friend of mine (who is a gourmet cook) because she has been battling it up in Gloucester MA for a few years, and I’m thinking it might be good for her soul to at least harvest some next year. But— am I missing the place to check to “share” that page or is such a clickable place really not there? Thanks for it all, EB

Reply

17 Green Deane June 27, 2012 at 22:16

I don’t think my site has the function. When I get a new webmaster perhaps it can be added.

Reply

18 Rose June 26, 2012 at 00:25

Hi, I live in Santa Barbara, Ca., a professional plantscaper, specializing in edible gardens, and I’d love to grow “Loroco” here.
Do you know any source for seeds?

Reply

19 Green Deane June 27, 2012 at 22:13
20 Jessica July 5, 2012 at 20:13

Hi GreenDeane! It’s so nice to be able celebrate ‘weeds’ with like-minded folks! (what is a ‘weed’ anyway??). My property has jewelweed growing all along one side and this year I allowed the stuff to grow all over the place…good choice, too! Was helping an elderly client clean up their yard and got attacked by some sneaky poison ivy hiding in amongst other greenery. Went hope, took some jewelweed, and rubbed it on one really itchy spot and the itching stopped! Took some more, put in blender with baby oil, lathered in on my itchy legs and it really helped take out the itch!

Reply

21 Marly July 6, 2012 at 11:58

Happy to have come across this site (was searching for edible forget-me-nots as in the sugar icing ones ☺ )
Moving to Alaska in the near future and will have a large garden that only has kiwi and lilac bushes in so far ☺

Reply

22 Lewis Boudreaux July 21, 2012 at 12:08

Can you recommend someone who gives classes in atlanta georgia.
That is where my sons and I live.

Reply

23 Green Deane July 25, 2012 at 22:02

In my search window type in Resources. That will take you to a page with over 100 foraging instructors. Scroll down to Georgia.

Reply

24 Nell in Canada September 3, 2012 at 16:58

About the posting re John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario and the
page in the Ladies’ Home Journal that the 1941 Michael book
references, that is not what was published in the November
annual Thanksgiving issue. It was an advertisement paid for
by Bauer and Black, surgical materials supplier, and there was
a side bar with the wrong name for the poem which first appeared
3 years earlier in the UK in Punch, and error about Dr. McCrae himself.
The illustration was of American doughboys, bandaged, rising to heaven, singing. Not quite the image in the poem re CEF “fallen” in spring 1915 !
Also this elderly lady would not have been at a meeting of the Young Women’s Christian Society in New York that fall. It was a meeting of the recalled overseas representatives of the YMCA, known confusingly today as “war secretaries” and she was briefly acting as a volunteer receptionist.

Reply

25 Shane September 5, 2012 at 01:59

Love the site and channel! If you know of a “weed” expert in South Korea, please let me know. I live in Korea and want to know about my local weeds–but my Korean language ability is not good enough to read local books/articles. Or…if you don’t know anyone, why not come over for a week or two and shoot about 100 or so videos and that way I can learn!!!

Cheers and I hope to hear from you, but I know I might be asking for a needle in a haystack!

Shane

Reply

26 Kat November 6, 2012 at 18:12

Hi, Green Deane,
I have not heard from you on the Beauty Bush seeds yet. Had a question about the silver Dollar Plany/ Lunaria Annua. I have heard that it was editable but not that tasty. I also heard that it can grow in Fl. I GOT seeds wanna trade .
thanks,
Hugs Kat

Reply

27 Green Deane November 7, 2012 at 20:37

The roots of the Lunaria annua can be eaten raw if gathered before the plant blossoms. The seeds are a mustard substitute.

Reply

28 John November 28, 2012 at 18:22

Hello Mr. Deane!

I’m new to wild foods and I’m looking for nettles, purslane, mallow and well just about any wild edible around. I’m going to start going to foraging classes but I was wondering in the meantime, are there any specialty stores around Los Angeles (or online order for that matter) where I can buy NOT the dried powders, but the actual wild plant as they appear in nature (for those not yet versed in foraging yet)?

Thank you and kind regards!

Reply

29 Green Deane November 29, 2012 at 18:39

Google my friend Feral Kevin and ask him.

Reply

30 jimmy January 8, 2013 at 10:59

do you sell books on edible and non edible plants …if not can you recommend one for wild plants in florida

Reply

31 Green Deane January 15, 2013 at 09:58

Unfortunately there isnt a good book on Florida wild edibles yet. But I know of a couple in the works. Until then my website will have to do.

Reply

32 William Amelang January 30, 2013 at 12:16

Mr. Deane,

I’m a 24-yr old, starting a small-scale long-term organic vegetable farm in TX. You are like the grandpa I never had. Thank you for the sound advice. My generation is lost. I will do my best to help them, and lead by example. The same example that you and others lead by.

-William

Reply

33 Green Deane January 30, 2013 at 15:11

Thanks… also check out Houston Wild Edibles.

Reply

34 Dan February 20, 2013 at 14:30

I gave you the wrong e-mail yesterday. Please note “.dj” after “man.”
Re:”Do you have a farm” email I sent yesterday. Btw(by the way) I was up until 630 am, 22 hours after ingesting 6 bauhinia seeds,(((found a product that listed Purpurea extract as increasing metabolism and increasing energy…after last nights episode, yeah, id agree… to say the least))) 2 opuntia fruit, and about a dozen Surinam Cherries…Not sure if you’ve d ever fought the ants for ‘em (cherries) but they change texturely…mango-esque….you may want to give them a shot once they fall…got a feeling they got some of the same terpenenes…

Reply

35 Alexandra February 28, 2013 at 16:25

You do not look almost 60! I’m sold on edible “weeds”. :) Thanks for all the information. We are on a budget, but want to continue to eat lean protein and veggies(Paleo ish). Substituting foraged foods has been really helpful! Another draw is the nutritional content which seems to be higher than your average grocery store veggies. Thanks again!

Alexandra in S. Va

Reply

36 Green Deane February 28, 2013 at 16:46

thanks… I will be 63 this year.

Reply

37 janets123 April 21, 2013 at 09:09

Deane, Thanks for visiting my blog. I truly *slike* your story on the tropical almond. I always want to know the names of things. Everywhere I go, I’m asking, “What is it?” I dabble in edibles & medicinals & have a new devotional coming “soon” from AWOC.com Publishing, titled *Devoted to Healing with Herbs.* So happy to have found your site!

Reply

38 Nick April 26, 2013 at 20:49

Hi Green Deane, Came to your site after getting fascinated with a weed I had to pull out from all over my lawn (black medic). My family thought I was going batty, of course. Your site is a treasure, god bless!

Reply

39 Anna Maria Stone May 7, 2013 at 02:43

Hello,
I’m just as excited as everyone else to have found your website and youtube channel. As I said in my comment last night on your FB page, I was looking for info on pruning pyracantha, since I am currently in love with one of the two specimens I planted a year ago, and ended up discovering the jelly and sauce videos you made with the Pyracantha berries.
Two and a half years ago I moved to my parents’ former home in southern Italy, on 3 acres of land, and I have been obsessed ever since with learning about the plants that grow here spontaneously and not. But, as an Italian expression says, “It’s like making a hole in water”.
You are so lucky to have started learning in earnest as a child; until now most of my experience was with small backyards and raised beds in community gardens, and since I am 64 I feel like have to hurry up and learn!! No time to waste. :-)
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
Anna Maria

Reply

40 Nathaniel May 15, 2013 at 15:02

I want to thank you for this awesome site and your weekly newsletters. I have been a mushroom forager in the Upstate of South Carolina for several years now, but it has only been in the past two seasons that my wife and I have really started to invest more time learning about other edible foraging foods. We started off only knowing things like chickweed, wild alliums, and a few others, but since then have been learning a great deal about all the various things that can be gathered out in the woods. One of your newsletters got me to look more into smilax shoots which happen to be popping up all over the place at the same time as the morels, and this spring making meals with both has been wonderful. I love finding interesting and informative blogs like this, so many many thanks again.

~Nathaniel Lord

Reply

41 Spencer May 20, 2013 at 18:30

Green Dean,

Thanks for the fantastic website. I’ll be a frequent visitor from this day forth.

Reply

Leave a Comment

{ 2 trackbacks }