Forage/Grow List 2025

What I'm Growing And Foraging This Season

Author

Pete Kooshian
February 10, 2025

According to feedback and metrics, you all enjoy personal updates.

Honestly this surprises me but since you enjoy those, I figured I’d do something similar that you might like!

This is the list of things I’m planning to forage and grow this year with the full understanding that not all of it will happen the way I want it to.

Sometimes there’s bad harvest years, sometimes I don’t have as much time to devote to something as I like, sometimes other foragers beat me to my haul, things happen!

Climate Context

I live in Michigan USA which ranges in climate a bit from the southern lower peninsula to the spike of the northern peninsula.

My USDA zone is 6a but I’ve found that isn’t always a good measure of how well things will do here.

We get winters that are fairly cold but only dip into the negatives a couple days a year on average (typically in late January or February). In the summer our temperatures get quite hot in mid-late May to early June, then cool off a little until later in July when it starts to get dry.

In October and November, it gets pretty rainy, and temperatures fluctuate between around 35°-75°F before we get snow in mid-late December.

Microclimates can make a huge difference around here too!

Soil is generally moderate to high acidic around here which makes for good blueberry and apple growth, and soils texture ranges a LOT from one area to another even within my county.

Our garden had a slightly compact medium soil that was somewhat loamy but that has changed with the addition of mulch over the years.

This is our second garden plot that we set up in 2020 (first was in 2019)

Foraging List

A lot of what we want to do with foraging is increase our intake of wild foods and medicines. Right now, our medicine is dominated by our own foraged herbs, but our culinary side could always use more.

Here are what we want to gather this year for either preservation or for fresh eating:

This was the same plot in 2022, it became our main plot in 2021

Planting

I always plan on planting a few focused things and consistently end up planting a lot more than I should because it’s so easy.

Naturally this means sometimes I sacrifice yields of one thing in favor of more variety but that’s ok.

On top of our regular produce, we also are growing some things to sell to people in the local area and are doing some experiments.

We also have about 3 or so gardening plots where we’re allowed to grow things (A new one is pending) so even if we don’t have space for everything in our main plot, we can always squeeze it in one of our other plots!

We generally practice low-maintenance gardening out of necessity but also because it fits with our principles, so some crops might not see very high yields until later down the road.

Here’s our list (I didn’t list specific varieties, but I will specify if it’s a landrace/grex or not):

Annual Crops:

  • Kale

  • Asian Broccoli

  • Cabbage (Grex)

  • Cucumber

  • Musk Melon

  • Watermelon (Landrace)

  • Pumpkin

  • Squash (Grex)

  • Beans

  • Peppers

  • Tomatoes

  • Tomatoes (Landrace)

  • Garlic

Perennial Crops:

Then a random assortment of greens and flowers that keep self-sowing.

Mache that was donated to us

For Sale

Some of these are being sold as plants, some are for fresh produce, some are foraged, some are grown by us:

Produce:

Plants:

Purple deadnettle

If anyone wants any of these plants or has something specific you want us to forage for, reach out to me on Instagram or by replying to this email!

Basil seedlings

Hopefully that gave you something you can apply to your own garden. If you have any questions or want to chat, I always respond to messages on either Facebook or Instagram!

Follow me on social media for behind-the-scenes videos and seasonal photos!

Leave a comment to show the algorithm how legit we are!

Thanks for reading The Naturalist. Please share on social media to support the work!

Reply

or to participate.