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The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants | 
 enlarge | Author: Samuel Thayer
Publisher: Forager's Harvest Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $15.61
You Save: $7.34 (32%)
New (26) Used (6) from $14.33
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 5320
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0976626608
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.303
EAN: 9780976626602
ASIN: 0976626608
Publication Date: May 15, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
A practical guide to all aspects of edible wild plants: finding and identifying them, their seasons of harvest, and their methods of collection and preparation. Each plant is discussed in great detail and accompanied by excellent color photographs. Includes an index, illustrated glossary, bibliography, and harvest calendar. The perfect guide for all experience levels.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 The best available book on edible plants! December 13, 2006
Washu-chan (St. Louis, MO USA)
112 out of 112 found this review helpful
I am a botanist and I'm in love with this book. Admittedly, it treats only a few dozen plants, but each is described in detail, with methods of distinguishing it in the field from similar species, harvesting, and preparing it. Numerous color photos are very useful. There are good general discussions of plant identification, harvesting, and preservation. The author complains about previous edible plant references, which exhaustively list hundreds of plants but give inadequate information on each, and frequently recycle information from previous literature, allowing misinformation to creep in (an undeniable problem). Thayer proposes that writers on edible plants should provide only information from their own experience or else specifically referenced information, a praiseworthy code of conduct and one that really makes this book shine. When he gives you detailed instructions for when and how to gather and prepare a plant, you know that he's actually done it himself and it worked. I like his standards for the plants as well: Food should taste good! If it doesn't taste good, he says, don't eat it! So, while other books provide long lists of "survival foods" that would gag a goat, Thayer discusses only the plants that he actually enjoys eating. He tells you what sort of quality to expect in the final products, and whether they will be worth the work you put into them. The only volume I can recall seeing of remotely similar quality was Steve Brill's book, which dealt with a different set of plants (emphasizing the common "weedy" species that Thayer is not particularly interested in), so if you already have Brill, you can buy this too. Otherwise, if you want to start learning to use edible wild plants, start with this volume.
The BEST book for a beginner October 19, 2006
William Smith (New York)
68 out of 68 found this review helpful
I have 3 books on wild food foraging, including Angier's Wild Edibles and Gibbons Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Both those books are very good for plant details except they rely on hand drawn depictions for the plants, which it makes them close to useless for accurate identification. Forager's Harvest is the BEST book of the three for getting a beginner started. Lots and lots of nice color photographs of the plants. When choosing a book in getting started in foraging, you must have color photographs, there is no substitute.
Forager's Harvest, unlike Gibbons and Angier books, does not overwhelm the reader with large numbers of edible plants, choosing to focus on a lower but still fairly good number of readily found and easily identitified plants for foraging. This increases the reader confidence and starts them off gradually.
If you are starting out in foraging, this is the book you should get. If you are botanist and have no problems identifying plants them Gibbons or Angier books might suit you better. As I am a beginner, I can say that of the three books, Forager's Harvest if the book that I will be using in my plant foraging expeditions. I wish I had gotten this book first.
Excellent Source for Information on a few plants... February 19, 2007
Erik M. Smith (Spokane, WA)
54 out of 54 found this review helpful
This book offers an excellent introducion to the practice of wild plant harvesting. Not only are the plants discussed (in great detail), but the author includes many personal experiences and additional information (the first 75 pages - timing, storage, etc.) - including recomendations on further book resources. The descriptions of the two dozen or so plants are extensive. The book gives information on ID, range, harvesting, and preparation. I live in Washington State, though, and I have only found about 11 of the plant species readily available here (Choke Cherry, Wapato, Butternut(in urban settings), Black Locust, Cattail, Stinging Nettle, Serviceberry, Sumac (Staghorn), Linden (urban ornamental), Burdock, and Thistle). The book is still a wealth of inforomation and a very valuable resource.
Best Book for Foragers To Date October 21, 2006
Loretta C. Gartman (Charleston, WV United States)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book is very well written and is very good for the novice as well as the experienced forager. It offers detailed description of how to identify and harvest a select number of plants. It doesn't overwhelm a neophyte with too many plants while it provides enough to capture their interest. The photos of the actual plants and the parts that are edible add to its attractiveness to wild food enthusiasts. In addition to all this it offers methods of preparation explaining how to avoid mistakes that may leave some of these foods inpalatable. Another helpful part of the book is that it tells the reader the season in which to forage and where to find them. My husband and I are both wild food enthusiasts and began our life together foraging wild foods as graduate students with Euell Gibbons' book, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" since it was the only one available that we could afford at the time. We have continued to add to our collection of wild food books and we think that Sam Thayer is today's new version of Euell Gibbons and that his book is a must for all wild foods enthusiasts.
 I guess it's a good guide if you live east of the Rockies... March 7, 2008
Dale Adkison (Vancouver, WA USA)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
I was interested in finding out what kind of plants were edible native to the Pacific Northwest area, where I live. Unfortunately there were very few edibles covered that grow in this area, which has some of the most awesome natural habitats around. Nothing on Red Huckelberries or Oregon Grape for example. Miners Lettuce? Forget it. Not a good guide if you're interested in foraging in the Pacific Northwest, didn't seem to be any indication of this bias in the Introduction or other clues contained therein... very disapointing.
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