Growing food that don't look like food

[Mad Scientist]

Loads if weeds are edible. Silver weed, dandelion roots, hairy bittercress, chickweed and cow parsley all grow all over the place. No need for gardening or just let a patch of garden grow wild and the stuff just appears naturally.

[jansman]

The majority of folks are non - gardeners.As previously stated,many would not recognise the most common food plants,especially when grown in isolation.

I have messed about with guerilla gardening on my dog walks.I have planted Jerusalem Artichokes and spuds in verges on the lanes we walk.None of them touched! The yields were fair too. For those with limited space then this could be viable and would take shtf foraging to another level.

Again,as previously stated, veg can be grown in plain sight in your flower garden.I like to grow climbing beans ( Cherokee Trail Of Tears) and peas( Champion Of England) amongst my sweet peas.They look lovely and the casual observer would see only flowers.

Leafy greens in all their forms,cultivated or foraged,are great.However,I would ( do) concentrate on plants that provide carbohydrates and protein.That's spuds ,Jerusalem Artichokes, Peas and beans and Winter Squashes ( spaghetti marrow) .Even the latter are so leafy that you cannot see the fruits forming in the height of Summer.I have a ten by twelve patch where I grow rhubarb,spaghetti squash and Jerusalem Artichokes.Up the fence goes Streamline runner beans.It looks a total mess in Summer,but the yield is huge.

[the coalthief]

Based on my experience,most people struggle to identify domestic fruit and veg,let alone wild varieties.
Make your beds look more like decorative herbacous borders,mix decorative plants amongst the edible,and plant anything edible in random clusters/groups.
Neat straight lines of produce look obvious to even the untrained eye,a 'natural' looking bed would deter most.

[Mad Scientist]

Fortunately we live near a golf course that has a wild verge around it (silver weed, Good King Henry, elderberries and hawthorn). There's a park that does not allow dogs within walking distance that have berries, damsons and limeflowers. Near our old house is oh glee, a huge area of disused railway track across town. I'm shocked by the number of people NOT picking blackberries, hawthorns and rosehips there. Silly them! Oh well all the more for us then.

[Hedgie]

I work in town, and a regular lunchtime walk is up through a quite nice housing estate, which has been planted up with loads of hedges along the green area walkways. These, to my delight, consist of Plums, Gages, Cherries and also loads of blackberries. I get lots of strange looks when I go 'scrumping' at lunchtimes. They only go to waste otherwise.

[cpslashm]

I'm planting trees at the moment - alders (inedible) to provide nitrogen and climbing frames for vines then sweet chestnuts, hazels and various fruit. Linden (lime) trees for salad leaves. A 4m x 25m sheet of plastic is hopefully covering bare ground now, into which will go perennial vegetables and forageable annual weeds.

For perennials:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/How-Gr ... 1900322846

[Foxypreps]

We plant normal peas and beans, but very few people would see them. Next to the mulch pile, I dig a circle down about three inches on the rim going down to about 8 inches in the middle. Line it with a bit of sand and a fair few flat rocks. This needs to look unintentional and messy. Then we plant peas or beans towards the bottom, then loosely cover over with dead branches. Not too many - light has to get through. Mounded up, the garden underneath disappears. The peas and beans grow all through the branches, but one must really look hard to see veggies growing in there. The rocks in the circle allow the rain water to pour off them and roll down to the plants, so they have double normal rain water. It isn't a perfect hideaway, but not bad either.