The Blackberry season has now just finished. Fruit gathered in, jam’s, pies and preserves made. Ok I only made a few pies this year.
I have strong memories of blackberry picking in my childhood during the late 50’s and early sixties. I lived in a small village in Cambridgeshire and in late August early September the family mother father sister aunt uncle cousins would go on a blackberry picking picnic. We would walk across the village common to the best field with a bramble hedgerow. We took baskets bowls bags anything to collect the blackberries. We selected a grassy spot to picnic avoiding the cow pats. Then Mother aunt father and uncles set to picking immediately us children too we picked and picked well the adults did I would pick a while choosing the biggest juiciest fruits from the easiest spots. Tasting testing many fruits my hands would be a purple colour my face too. Then when bored I would play games with my cousins we would play hide and seek in the bushes, make a den in the tall grasses. Then it would be picnic time and we would hungrily devour the sandwiches and home made cake my mother had made. We would then pick again for a little while before going home our hand stained and prickled from the thorns our arms scratched if we had stretched to pick that largest one tempting us from
the top of the hedge.
After picking the fruit my mother and aunt would divide them and the next day we would wash the fruits if we picked a bit late in the sweason we would find lots of magots eating the fruits.
While we children were at school or play mum would produce the most wonderful concoctions blackberry jelly a seedless jam I can still remember dunking my crust of bread in the warm jelly that was not cool enough yet to set. Mum would make blackberry and apple pies and preserve some for winter use by bottling them, I guess no one bottles these days with the arrival of freezers in the home kitchen.
Yes my memories of blackberry picking are truly idyllic country images from the past a country persons way of harvest and using food from the wild. As an adult IO have picked blackberries in the wild and used them, but remember not from roadsides as they absorb all the dirt and fumes from the traffic.
The wild ones of course have thorns and their fruit is smaller than the cultivated thorn less one and thorn less varieties are available from garden centres and nurseries to plant in your garden. October is a good time to plant these the soil warm still but moist. You can plant blackberries anytime now till March. I have some blackberries growing in the hedge at the bottom of my garden these are wild ones, one year I threw some rotting blackberries there and they seeded and took root easily.
There are three reasons, no 4 reasons why I like the blackberries at the bottom of my garden. The hedge at the bottom of my garden is a wildlife hedge. I have tried to fill it with trees and bushes wildlife will like. So many of our countryside hedges have been pulled up to make room for bigger fields for the crops and the combine harvester to turn in that so much wildlife no longer has a home, so I have done my best to make a short hedge.
Yes one of the reasons I like black berries in the garden is so that they are easy to find and pick without trudging the countryside. Another is that butterflies love to nectar on the blackberry flowers the comma of peacock the small tortoiseshell are a beautiful sight sitting sipping nectar from the blackberry flowers.
Then the birds love the fruit as much if not more than I. The sight of a blackbird or wren pecking the purple black fruit is wonderful a joy to see. Another good reason for growing blackberries along my boundary fence is that it creates a good barrier makes a good dense hedge that will dissuade any intruders as if they should try to get over it they will get scratched to pieces.
The sight of the blackberry rambling over a hawthorn hedge is glorious. It flowers from May to September. The flowers are a pinky white that has 5 petals. The bramble fruits August to September, beware the old wives say do not collect fruit after the ST Michelmas day 29 sept or the devil will curse you. Apparently when the devil was cast out of heaven he landed in a bramble bush. If you have a blackberry bush you need to prune it as soon as it finishes fruiting prune the stems that have fruited back do not prune this years new bramble canes, as they will produce fruit next year, The blackberry is self-fertile so you only need one bush. The canes /stems can grow up to 5 metres long and do need a little support I grow mine over other hedgerow bushes pyracantha and hawthorn this gives the support it needs if you are growing yours without a hedgerow you may need a stick to support it. Where the cane runs along the ground it will develop roots and grow a new bush.
One of my favourite recipes is for a blackberry crumble cake I will give you the recipe then stop rambling about brambles.
Blackberry crumble cake.
Wash and dry 100 –150g blackberries remove any maggots Then grease an 8 in cake tin then make the crumble mix
Ingredients for crumble mix. 75g /3oz self-raising flour. Pinch salt. 50 g /2oz caster sugar. , 25g /1oz margarine or butter.
Rub the marge/butter into the flour add pinch salt and sugar. Leave mix to one side then make cake.
Ingredients110g /4oz self-raising flour. 50g caster sugar 50g soft margarine 1 egg 2 table spoons milk. Make the cake beat marge and sugar add egg fold in flour then add the milk should be smooth and creamy cake mix. Put this in the well-greased tin.
Place a single layer of blackberries over the top of the cake
Next put the crumble mix evenly over the top.
Mix 1 heaped teaspoon of cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and sprinkle this over the top.
Bake in the oven at gas mark 4/ 180 C. cook for 50 minutes to 1 hour test its cooked. Leave in tin to cool a little then, remove carefully from tin. Serve either as cake or warm as a pud I made one using apple juice instead of the milk for Adrian. It was successful.
Happy gardening and brambling. Mary
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Brought back memories to me, oh the stains that would never come out.
jo145 19.11.2004 22:41
I used to go picking too! We used to have a rubber dinghy and pick along the canal bank, they were always lovely on the far bank but it was a bit dodgy at times if someone rocked the boat! We used to make wine as well, but found it was better mixed with rosehips or elderberries. jo
iiyama1000 16.11.2004 23:50
i love blackberries straight from the bush!!!! my diet allows them, but no crumbles!!!
oh, how i miss blackberry jam. anyway, great review. take care. regards, john.
perfectlypolished 07.02.2007 (07.02.2007)
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