Seriously.... don't even send me a friend request unless you've got three recent photos of yourself shoulder deep in a blackberry bush, double fisting those tasty nuggets into a bucket... and eating every third or fourth one you find. The big ones don't travel well anyway, right? Obviously the birds don't like them, so don't feel bad about stealing all this free bounty from nature. You're only helping the bush to grow more blackberries. Once the ripe ones fall off, or are picked, the plant will send more energy to the unripe ones. So if you want to get the most out of that blackberry bush in your backyard, pick it often. But maybe you live in the city, or a neighbourhood devoid of blackberry bushes (located in the 8th circle of hell) and you find yourself.... buying blackberries at the supermarket.... "They're so big and shiny, and the wild ones have bugs anyway...eww" The wild ones also have a flavour you will never find in cultivated blackberries, and you rarely taste the bugs. It takes time to figure out which ones to pick and which need a few more days on the bush, but when you master the art of sizing up your wild berries, you will enjoy a level of flavour unparalleled by any Mexican supermarket steroid-berry. They freeze well, so you can pick LOTS while they grow best and store them for baking, smoothies, or yogurt. A favourite trail snack of mine is yogurt, hemp seeds, puffed rice and frozen berries. The berries thaw as I hike and keep everything cool and fresh until Im hungry. I'll be enjoying wild blackberries on the trail well into January some years!
Did I mention they are free, and grow pretty much EVERYWHERE around Victoria.
But, if your time is too valuable to stroll in the sun, harvest delicious berries you didn't grow, and eat some straight from the vine as if you lived in some ever-producing garden paradise.... I'll understand.
But we can't be friends.
Did I mention they are free, and grow pretty much EVERYWHERE around Victoria.
But, if your time is too valuable to stroll in the sun, harvest delicious berries you didn't grow, and eat some straight from the vine as if you lived in some ever-producing garden paradise.... I'll understand.
But we can't be friends.