 Spring has arrived here in Western North Carolina and across much of the world. There's not a lot of green on the trees yet, but there is a lot of green on the ground and a lot of that green is edible. So today I'm going to walk through my neighborhood and introduce you to some spring plants that you can easily begin foraging and getting that delicious and nutritious springtime food. This right here might look like grass to you, but it's actually onions or chives. Now spring is well underway here, but you can start foraging for greens and onions as soon as the snow is melting and you start to see a little bit of green on the ground. People walk past lawns full of onions and chives just popping up. It's one of the earliest foods to start in the spring and you can harvest it like you would chives and just enjoy the green onions or you can actually pull up bulbs and have a nice little onion. To some walking through this park, they see a bunch of weeds or they see a lawn to mow, but do you know what I see? I see nature's salad bowl and this salad bowl doesn't just have the greens, but it's got beautiful flowers as well. Dandelion flowers, not only are the greens edible, but the flowers are delicious as well. You can also make a coffee substitute from the roots. The dandelion is just an incredible nutritious medicinal beautiful food to add to your diet and it's one of the first things to come up in the spring. So through that long lonely winter you see that dandelion pop up and get that in your belly. So there's a saying in the foraging world that I like to remember. It's you've got edible and incredible, edible and forgettable, and then you've got edible and regrettable. Here we have something that is often called dead nettle and dead nettle is kind of edible and forgettable, but I have to say when spring has just sprung and you've got your fresh greens popping up, even the ones that are forgettable are very, very memorable. For me just to get out in the spring and have this connection to earth, even with plants that don't necessarily taste incredible, that little bit goes a long way in awakening from a long winter. Now some people when they see the sea of green they would just imagine that all of this green tastes the same, but it really couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that all of these different greens added up together brings in a whole diversity of flavor and different nutrients and medicine. This here is plantago. You've got narrowleaf plantain, you've got broadleaf plantain also called plantago and it is one of the most medicinal plants on earth and it grows as a weed all across our yards, our parks, our wastelands. This medicine is growing freely and abundantly all around us and I just could not do a video on spring greens without mentioning plantain or plantago. It's one of my favorite plants, one that I so much encourage you to incorporate into your life. I came here to show you this field of stinging nettle behind me but I also came across from my favorites and that's garlic mustard. Garlic mustard is considered an invasive which means by eating this you're actually working with the earth. Foraging can be beneficial to our earth. Now another plant that I absolutely love is stinging nettle. So walk over here just a little bit. Now stinging nettle gets the name stinging nettle because it stings you right now. That's stinging but not only is this an edible but it's also a medicinal just to let it sting you. I mean would you have it that what other people consider to be the bane of this plant is actually one of its absolute gifts to us? To remove the sting you simply have to cook it. What I like to do is make a nettle tea. It's very high in minerals one of the highest out there so I'll make a nettle tea. I'll also just saute it up and eat it with olive oil and lemon and salt and if you're really careful and you know what you're doing you can just roll these stinging leaves right up and put that right under your back molar and you can eat it fresh without being stung and that is a delicious one. You can eat these greens fresh from the yard you can take them home put them in a salad you can saute them you can save them for later by freezing or drying them whatever you do just make sure you get out foraging. I like to say eat one wild thing a day something I've learned from many of my foraging friends. So if you want to learn how to forage and you want to get out there I recommend checking out our website findaforager.com with it you can find a forager near you to go out and learn from in person as well as many many tips. So just go out there and do some foraging.