Blackberrying

Because someone always gets there before you and picks all the accessible big fat ones.

@CountessFosco or just across a ditch 😉

Blackberries and nettles both thrive in slightly acid and sunny sites.

Too early here for brambles. It's usually September. We always picked loads as a family and mum made bramble jelly.

When I moved to Cornwall in my late teens, as an inner city kid I was amazed that I could find food for free in the hedges. Lived on Blackberry crumble for ages!

Have picked and frozen 8 cartons…

My husband has just stuffed his face with them on his way back from our walk but I’m not keen on those growing alongside traffic fumes.

We shall have an expedition with containers to our usual hedgerows in the fields for untainted blackberries for jams and pies 😋

We have lots growing in an untamed area of our garden. Probably enough for a few crumbles at least.

There were blackberries in our garden when we moved here and DH has cultivated them and added more.

We've picked loads already.

The raspberries and loganberries planted several years ago have had a very poor yield this year.

MayBee70

When I moved to Cornwall in my late teens, as an inner city kid I was amazed that I could find food for free in the hedges. Lived on Blackberry crumble for ages!

Oh MayBee70, living-off blackberry crumble sounds wonderful to me!
In fact I could live- off any sort of crumble! My favourite though, will always be a Bramley apple one with lovely Birds custard. 😍

DH picked a load the other day.

We’ve frozen them, then I shall make them into blackberry coulis to eat with Greek yogurt.

I do all sorts with them, today we had porridge for breakfast topped with stewed apple and blackberries.

I ve been picking them for about 10 days now
I too am living off rhubarb crumble and now blackberry crumble

I am devastated this year - they came early here and I’ve missed the best ones as I haven’t a freezer until next Thursday. I always like to have enough to see me through the winter for puddings, but I don’t think it will happen. I’ll have to rely on an over abundance of plums!

I repurposed my grabber, like a litter picker, (after my hip replacement) into a blackberry picking tool.

It is very successful at grabbing high or nettle protected bramble covered branches. Highly recommended tool.

Smintie

I repurposed my grabber, like a litter picker, (after my hip replacement) into a blackberry picking tool.

It is very successful at grabbing high or nettle protected bramble covered branches. Highly recommended tool.

Great idea Smintie!

Blackberries are in full swing here in Bedfordshire. The hedgerows are full of ripe juicy ones. The thornless plant in the garden still has small green ones though so I’m hoping they’ll be along later.

@lixy There are so many this year in the wild but gardens seem to have suffered more from the hot weather. Good luck with your foraging, there are plenty of hazelnuts and wild plums too.

We have a lot of brambles with blackberries on them just outside our garden fence. Also our local Sainsburys has some on the outer reaches of their cat park, they need to get bigger. Blackberries have a wonderful affinity with apples.

Cat park Should read car park

I think I’ll head out to my secret brambling spot tomorrow. Though I confess I’m of the same ilk as Pantglas’s husband and we’ll be lucky if many survive the walk home.

We’ve loads in the allotment and garden though. They’re ready early this year, so I’d best get them picked.

A propos of nothing, years ago when we lived in Belgium, on a walk we came across a patch of the biggest blackberries we had ever seen - they were almost the size of golf balls. But covered in dust from a nearby cement works, so completely useless. Even after washing you couldn’t have risked eating them. The irony was, so we were told by a local resident, that during the war, the occupying Germans fitted filters in the factory to stop it belching all this stuff all over the local countryside and after the war, the Belgians removed them because the Germans had fitted them and never replaced them with anything else.

I usually pick lbs of blackberries every year to mix with the apples from the garden of the house we have just sold. Currently we are sofa surfing at daughters until we take possession of our new home in three weeks time - even then we will be camping there for a few months while work is done.

However, this will not stop me looking for blackberries in my new location. I wan tjust enough to make blackberry gin for Christmas. A couple of lbs will make three bottles.

I usually make sloe gin, but have yet to see any sloes in my new locality.

DIL makes sloe gin 🙂

I’m north west. Blackberries usually end August into September. They’re early here