Eating wild plants when SHTF is a massive plus on your survival skill set. Because, sooner or later, you’ll be out of gas: your supplies will run out, and you’ll have nothing to stay on in the wild. And so, you’re left to feed on what the wilderness has to offer. These offerings typically are animals, birds, insects and will always include plants.

However, if you know the first thing about the wilderness, you’ll know that wild plants are never to be eaten carelessly. Most of the available plants are toxic, some to the skin, health, or both. This leaves you needing a guide on what to and what not to eat if you do not want to suffer intestinal poisoning out there with no 911 to call. 

 

5 Reasons For Eating Wild Plants When SHTF

 

While I understand the reservations many have about eating wild plants, these reasons are not enough to rule out a crucial part of your survival during your stay in the wilderness. When SHTF, you should be looking at eating every edible food you have around, notwithstanding the taste or difficulty involved. I mean, who’s considering taste when life hangs in the balance?

We believe you can survive for two weeks without food, but these 14 days will be much worse than you think. Here are five good reasons you should be harvesting every edible wild plant that you can find when SHTF.

• It is wrong to rely on a single source of food. Should the food you bring from the home exhaust, what will your plans be? It is much better to add wild plants to the foods you brought to the wild. That way, there will be a balance in taste and nutrition. This simply means you should not even wait until your stockpile finishes before harvesting wild plants.

 

• Greens, which are common wild plants, truly do not contain calories, but they offer several other beneficial nutrients. They are just like birds: no calorie but tons of other nutrients that will help fortify your immune system and even provide you with short bursts of energy. 

 

• You can’t be picky when your survival is shaky. You have to eat everything you come across. I think most people don’t need much convincing. Hunger will do the job very easily. In two or three days, most are eating dandelions like Sour Patch Kids.

 

• You can harvest these plants to start a survival garden with an eye on long term survival. Sometimes, you may be spending more than you think in the wilderness, and it’d be best if you’d supply to fall back on.

 

• Lastly, you don’t have a choice. You honestly don’t. You may think that animals will always be available, but that’ll be wrong thinking. So, unless you’re willing to migrate with animals when it’s time for mating, you’d better start eating wild plants.

 

Eating Wild Plants When SHTF: What Should I Settle For?

 

A list of wild plants to eat when SHTF will not be valuable because we can’t mention every edible option. However, we can look at the parts to eat and of which plants to get these parts from.

 

Tree Bark

 

Poplar, ash, pine, aspen, maple, birch, and willow are the more common trees whose bark you can harvest in the wilderness. Ordinarily, harvesting these barks will be difficult, but if you had the foresight to use any of these trees in building a cabin, harvesting the inner bark (that’s what you need) won’t be much of a problem since you’d have stripped the external bark anyway.

There are several ways to eat tree bark, and they are:

• Raw: if you do not have any problem with bitter tastes, you can just cut these trees’ inner bark to strips and eat.

 

• Boiled: you can decide to cut the bark into shreds and include a survival pasta recipe. 

 

• Dried & Ground: if you have the energy and resources, you can dry and grind the shredded bark into powder. This powder can be used for porridge, bread, or added to stews and sauces for thickening purposes.

Alternatively, you can simmer shreds of bark to make tea. Get the inner bark or an evergreen tree and, if available, needles, and simmer: that’s enough vitamin C and a richer aromatic flavor.

 

Roots

 

Roots are the powerhouses of greens, so if you do not fancy wild plants because of their low-calorie contents, you should eat them with their roots.

Here are the dirty but edible, calorie-rich options available to you:

• Burdock: earthy flavor, looks like Jerusalem artichokes or parsnips.

 

• Evening Primrose: to be harvested before the flower stalks develop because the roots grow tougher due to the added weight.

 

• Garlic Mustard: pungent, bitter flavor but edible and calorie-rich — may have to be eaten with other foods to reduce its bitterness.

 

• Wild Carrot: edible in its raw form and has a delightful taste, but beware of the Poison Hemlock, which is dangerously identical.

 

• Yellow Dock: bitter as the garlic mustard but also edible and nutritious. Best harvested early.

 

Cattails

 

Cattails are specifically mentioned because they are good eating options in the wild. They are indeed nature’s pantry.

The roots of this plant are rich in starch, which you can pound in water to remove the fibrous strands, peel, and joints. Should you choose to pound these roots, you’re left with the starch only, and that’s a lot of carbohydrates!

When still tender, the flower stalks of cattails are some of the best plants you’ll ever see in the wild. You can also nibble on the bases of tender leaves or young shoots as vegetables, but they are best enjoyed when grilled over hot coal. Also, you may want to peel off the tough outer skin for a tastier taste.

You can use the yellow pollen of cattails to make breads. They typically save you about 50% of the flour you’d have used.

 

Conclusion On Eating Wild Plants When SHTF

 

As you have read, eating wild plants when SHTF is not bad. It is recommended for the reasons you’ve read up there. These plants are some of your best feeding options when SHTF, and the earlier you realize so, the better. You can take comfort in the fact that it’s only a matter of time before yellow dock tastes just as fine as meat.