tallpines
Pro Member
Posts: 298
Zone:: 4a
Favorite Vegetable:: This week, it’s Rhubarb
Joined: February 2019
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Post by tallpines on Aug 18, 2019 21:43:43 GMT -5
The WILD kind! We live in the 40 acres of woods that we kept when we sold the dairy farm 19 years ago.
One curse that we need to deal with .... anywhere the soil gets disturbed, the wild plants move in to claim that area. Every year we need to cut back black berry bramble from the flower beds and along the sides of our very long driveway.
On the other hand .... one lovely benefit ... is the very tasty, blackberries we can harvest!
In the morning, I will be out, collecting those that are currently ripe!
Gotta love BlackBerry Jam!
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Post by paquebot on Aug 18, 2019 22:17:21 GMT -5
As a kid, picking blackberries right now was automatic. It all went for jam and we picked in milk pails. Those pails were tapered, wider at the top, and impossible to fill. The weight of the berries on top would compress those on the bottom. Emphasis was to pick clean so it didn't matter if the bottom ones were smashed. Second most important thing was to watch for rattlesnakes!
Several pickings were memorable. When I was 12, picked a gallon pail and my mother asked how they were tasting. Told her that I could not swallow any. I had the mumps! In 1983 I was walking up a wooded hill to a blackberry patch and a turkey flew up in front of me. Their release was a big secret and only a few landowners knew it. Scared the daylights out of me. When I began picking berries, it was real quiet and I was certain that there was something else around. I ducked low to look through the brush and a young coyote was watching me. Within an hour I had seen my first wild turkey and first coyote.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Aug 18, 2019 22:27:42 GMT -5
paquebot, And Copperheads! Same with picking mustang grapes. Dadblasted snakes!
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Post by Gianna on Aug 18, 2019 22:34:56 GMT -5
First rattle snake I ever saw was here in town was when Mom and I went to pick blackberries in a big, wide bramble thicket. Scary!
Now I see them in the back yard every year or two. Still scary!
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Post by brownrexx on Aug 19, 2019 5:42:06 GMT -5
Used to pick blackberries with Mom on the adjacent wooded lot in DE where I grew up. Have not seen any growing wild in many, many years.
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Post by paquebot on Aug 19, 2019 13:48:46 GMT -5
Around here in places, blackberries are among the first things to colonize a woods which has been clear-cut. Seed may be laying dormant for years and just waiting to germinate. Then for a number of years the blackberries will rule and keep everything else out. That give some trees a chance to grow and eventually those protected trees become the blackberry's doom. Fifty years later, they are entirely missing.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Aug 19, 2019 13:56:15 GMT -5
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