The “wow it’s beautiful outside!” season between frosts sometimes seems real short here in Colorado; but as foragers, herbalists, wildcrafters, and wilderness admirers, this is the time we live for! The ground starts to turn green with familiar dandelions, lambs quarters, and plantain friends. While purple pops of the non-edible plants like lupine, monkshood, and larkspur start to show in the distance. Every trail you walk becomes lined with the feathery leaves that hint at blooms of yarrow, osha and sweet root soon to come.

When you find yourself coming up with any excuse to get out there, make sure you’re prepared for the activity at hand. Having the proper informational and practical tools will help keep you safe, successful, and having fun all throughout your harvest season.

Before getting up and harvesting a bounty of any medicine, there are some essential steps that must be taken to ensure your safety, the safety of the land, and the animals inhabiting it. The tools below will assist in familiarizing yourself with foraging ethics and safety, which will continue to set you up with a foundation of herbal information you can pull from as you wander. Keep in mind, the best way to learn about plants is with first hand experience from a trusted source.

Guide books by Rooted Apothecary owner Briana Wiles:

I like to keep Mountain States Foraging handy to follow wild food recommendations by season, and learn exactly what to look for, where and when to look, and how to gather in a responsible way.

Mountain States Medicinal Plants is an accessible introduction to finding and using wild plants for health and wellness. Beginners seeking reliable advice and experienced practitioners on the hunt for new information alike will delight in the plant profiles, color photographs, step-by-step instructions for essential herbal remedies, and seasonal foraging tips.

The Wildcraft Journal can become your source for the magic you create from wild medicinal and edible plants or fungi. Record and map out your harvests each season for years to come, and plot out your months week by week. Soon this journal will be a materia medica filled with your gained knowledge, and ability to see habitats as nature’s gardens. Fill this journal with your own art work, credited images from others, or photos you have taken, documenting the flora.

*As of 7/27 there are a few spots left in Session 1, 2, and 3 (of note: session three remaining spots do not include accommodations or camping).

Be welcomed into the medicine of the mountains with our 3-10 day course that winds you through ecosystems at different elevations in the Colorado Rockies. You have the option to join us for the whole 10 days for a deep dive, or choose to take any combination of the 3-4 day a la carte sessions in the location that intrigues you the most. We start in the high alpine country, surrounded by mountains, streams and lakes. August is the perfect time to see the plants fully blooming, and mushrooms ready for harvest. Working our way down through to lower elevations, we’ll be exploring the medicinal and edible plants of riparian and desert steppe environments.

This course is designed to give you a hands-on start in wild foods, plant identification, botany, sustainable harvesting methods, and wildcrafting ethics. We get into the nitty and gritty of herbal medicine, medicine making, principles of herbal formulation and herbal safety, and basic herbal first aid. Along the way we delve into ancestral, land based skills such as basket, cordage, and fire making, primal cooking methods, coal burning, and how to walk like a forest dweller.

Can’t make it? Then be sure to get on the waitlist for Plant Camp at Home. Registration is closed and will open again in Fall 2022 - Join the waitlist here.

Learn how to use and incorporate over 70 medicinal herbs and mushrooms, for so many ailments and nutritional needs in our 3 month course. Become educated and proficient in herbal energetics and actions, botanical identification and medicine making.

Plant Camp Summer Sessions 1, 2, & 3

Our Foraging Baskets are hand woven and crafted in Ghana by artisans and proceeds from the sales of baskets provide healthcare, education and financial support to over 5,000 African weavers and their families. Using a basket while collecting plant medicine allows for continued air flow and protection of the plant matter.

Need more than just a basket? we’ve even partnered with one of Briana’s dear friends, Sheri Hupfer, to create the most exquisite hip pouch and harvest baskets you can wear on a hip belt that holds all your tools!

We also carry some rad foraging and garden tools courtesy of Barebones out of Utah. Check out all of our Foraging and Preservations Tools , we’re really loving the new Flower Presses and Pocket Flower Presses! Preserve your favorite blooms forever by pressing them to use on greeting cards, letters, and crafts. The Pocket Press is easy to cary with you for those smaller foraging grabs that you’ll later use for drying and medicine making.

A bad-enough sunburn can keep you out of the game for a few precious days. Avoid the burn by applying this natural sunblock as needed while frolicking around the sunny meadows looking for pearly everlasting.

Keep a bottle of Back Off Bugs in your basket to keep the bugs away in even the most swampy marshes and buggy woods. Sometimes hunting mushrooms involves battling swarms of ankle-biters. Spritz this all over to tell those bugs, in no uncertain terms, to Back Off (naturally).

Getting up and going into nature (especially with loved ones), is a valuable form of self-care. In addition to this, be sure to drink lots of water, laugh when you can, take your shoes off when you want, dip your toes or whole body in mountain water, and share your song or dance with the spirits surrounding you. Take Good Care. In the words of @blackforager, “Happy snacking! Don’t die!”