Eat Weeds: A Field Guide To Foraging

Eat Weeds: A Field Guide to Foraging: How to Identify, Harvest, Eat and Use Wild Plants

A guide to finding, identifying, and eating wild plants. An essential for anyone interested in reviving the lost art of foraging. 

For thousands of years, and as recently as three generations ago, it was common practice all over the world to collect wild food; knowledge of what, when, and where to forage was a necessary part of daily life. Few people today have experience harvesting wild food with their own hands, and with the advent of supermarket culture, monocultural systems of food production, and escalating urbanization, foraging knowledge has largely been lost.

But now there is a desire to learn how to forage once again for health, economy, and pleasure. From forest to seaside and from riverbank to city street—even your own yard—there is wild food and medicine available to those who know what to look for. In the face of global challenges, such as climate change, food security, and a pandemic, people seek to empower themselves with the information and skills that bring self-reliance and equip them to care for their families and communities. In Eat Weeds, Diego Bonetto shows readers how to engage with wild food sources through identification guides and with twenty recipes for food and remedies. It’s time to reconnect with the stories of our ancestors and care for local ecologies while transforming our neighborhoods into edible adventures. Including helpful illustrations throughout, this engaging book gives readers the tools they need to forage edible plants. 

Illustrated in color throughout

Diego Bonetto grew up on a dairy farm in northern Italy when it was still common practice to collect the wild produce of the land. He moved to Australia in the mid-90s and spent years working in orchards and garden centres, where he realised how rare his foraging knowledge was - and how much the people around him longed to rekindle their untapped connection to nature. He now runs foraging workshops that teach participants how to engage with delicious wild food while starting conversations around belonging, sustainability and agency. He has collaborated with chefs, herbalists, environmentalists and cultural workers; he is also an artist passionate about using his practice to restore botanical literacy to communities. Diego has been featured by Marie Claire, GQ Australia, Lonely Planet, The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC and SBS, among other media outlets.