Blackberries.......

[ToraToraTora]

just had a delicious punnet of blackberries from ASDA, every one delicious. Took me back to when as kids we'd go picking them from the brambles and occasionally I'd get one as good as the ones in my punnet today. So are there bramble farms that supply the supermarkets now or do they have expert hedge row pickers? I tend to think of brambles as annoying weeds in the hedge rows.

[Patsy33]

Brings back pleasant memories. We used to pick loads as kids and our school used to pay us about threepence a lb! Also my mum used to make apple and blackberry tart. I like the crumble myself. Blackberries have a beautiful unique taste. Love them.

[atalanta]

I don't think shop-bought ones are the same as hedgerow ones. For a start, the cultivated ones don't have the evil thorns which tore my hands so badly, so often. Paid pickers wouldn't pick amongst those awful thorns. Also, if they are cropping now, they are extraordinarily early for wild blackberries. Only the very earliest wild ones, which grew in full sun in southernmost counties, used to be ripe in July.

[Tilly2]

The blackberries are not ripe around these parts. The bramble hedges are still flowering.

[EcclesCake]

My neighbours cultivated blackberry is always way ahead of the hedgerow brambles

A local farm grows soft fruit for supermarkets, including blackberries.

[atalanta]

My son bought a "blackberry" plant for his garden. It has no thorns whatsoever, and the leaves look nothing like those of wild brambles. Wild bramble leaves look rather like rose leaves, but his plant has leaves which look a bit like thistles. The fruit is sweeter, too.
I used to pick the first wild blackberries in the last week of July, but nobody else ever found blackberries before mid-August, and I never told anyone where the early ones grew.

[Chipchopper]

I too remember that school holidays was the time for blackberry picking, when I was a kid but I've not seen any ripe ones so far, maybe in a few weeks.

A good thornless variety for the garden is 'Oregon Thornless' which also has attractive cut leaves.

[237SJ]

When I picked blackberries as a child I always used to check there wasn`t a little maggot in the middle bit where it joined the stem. Last year a friend and I picked a lot of blackberries and I did my maggot checking as usual. I left them in a bucket in my kitchen overnight and in the morning, there were quite a few miniscule maggots over them. That`s put me off wild blackberries really. If I was going to make jam I would buy the shop bought, farmed ones. They must use some sort of pesticide as they are usually maggot free.

[diddlydo]

The Asda ones are definitely the cultivated variety and have almost certainly been sprayed to death. Unless they were certified organic I wouldn't touch them and definitely would not eat them (or indeed most food from Asda).