Good Blackberry Year

[Beekissed]

Noticed the blackberries bloomed more than we can remember them doing in more than 35 yrs. Walked to the back of the property to see our vines LOADED with berries...if we can get them before the wildlife do, we'll have a mess to freeze.

Thinking about taking a drive back an old road we used to go to when we were homesteading, when we used to forage for food quite a bit. Back that road used to be a whole field of blackberry vines and wild grapes hanging in the trees in enormous pods. I'd like to see if that berry field still exists and, if so, we'll have all the blackberries we could ever really want.

If we score big on the berries, I'll can some for pie, freeze some for pie, and even make some jam. It's been nigh on 38 yrs since we had a blackberry crop like this one and I hope to make use of it.

Do you all have the same thing going on where you live? Plenty of blackberries?

 

[lesa]

Yes! I have been saying the same thing. The plants are covered here. Fingers crossed!

 

[majorcatfish]

i am jealous...

 

[journey11]

It does look to be a good year. My thornless tame berries are loaded and I've got several good places to go pick the wild ones. I like to make seedless jam with them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Blackberries don't look that great but plums, peaches, blueberries, and apples are loaded. Strawberries were a disappointment. I got about 1-1/2 gallons of mulberries a few days ago and there are probably that many again on my one tree. I picked close to a gallon of blueberries this morning. I really need to thin my apples and peaches in the next week or so, they are that loaded. They are about the size I can tell which are misshapen or flawed and need to come off. I have two different kinds of grapes. One vine is loaded and the other does not have one grape on it. I don't know what happened.

But as far as fruit goes, it will be a great year.

 

[seedcorn]

@Ridgerunner Gotta ask. What do you do with mulberries? I love them, make syrup out of them. You?

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

noticed my blackberries in bloom this past weekend. looks like i'll have quite a few from the few canes making a comeback on the property. the black raspberries i missed seeing them blooming but they are forming tons of berries too!

i dug up 3 young black raspberry canes around the large garden to try and sell this weekend but no takers during my yardsale. i have a lot more i want to move out but those will need to wait till after harvest since they are in established areas.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mulberry jelly plus syrup for waffles or pancakes. That syrup is nice, isn't it? They are great eaten fresh too.

 

[Nyboy]

@Ridgerunner Gotta ask. What do you do with mulberries? I love them, make syrup out of them. You?

You can use mulberries any way you use blueberries. The leaves make great rabbit food. Think they are very under used tree, because if not planted in right place can make mess with their fruit. Like any other fruit big difference between wild and named variety.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The big difference between blueberries and mulberries is that mulberries have that stem that does not come out. You can use blueberry pulp to make jam or pies since the stems are easy to remove but you have to use only the juice from mulberries because of that stem.

Another problem with mulberries is that if you use only the real ripe ones the jelly can be difficult to get it to set up. You either need a lot to be partially ripe sort of red ones or add lemon juice to get the acid level right. That's how I learned to make mulberry syrup. I had a jelly failure but all that required was writing "syrup" instead of "jelly" on the label.

My mulberry tree does not make a mess because it is not that close to the house. It's inside the chicken run. The first thing the chickens do when I let them out in the morning is run to the mulberry tree and check under it for anything that may have fallen overnight. I've also seen some jump about 3 feet high, trying to snag a low-hanging ripe mulberry. Talk about a chicken looking silly!