Fifth and last blackberries

Last week, on return from Jubilee Way, what may well prove to be the last substantial picking of blackberries of the season. The day after the pick noticed at reference 1.

Rather to my surprise, the bramble patch to the right as you go into the arena had little to pick, although there was plenty coming on. Had someone else been there since I last picked a week or so previous?

In any event, a hopeful looking patch, snapped above, on the other side of the arena, so off I went. A good deal more bumpy cycling across the grass than I was expecting. But lots of blackberries on arrival.

Looking rather red here, so perhaps I had picked over these bits before I took the snaps.

I thought that someone might have been cutting access points, with access to a wild patch of this kind being something of a problem for animals without wings. Triangles maybe a foot wide and a couple of feet deep at ground level give a lot of access from six feet up. Not cut all that recently, probably not this year. Groundsman? Enthusiastic amateur?

Full tub home, to a BH declaration that she more or less had enough blackberries in the freezer for one year. So a third went onto a tray to be frozen, a third went into some stewed apple and blackberry and the last third went to make bramble jelly. All done by close.

The bramble jelly turned out rather well, very sweet, in the same department as Ribena. Good on brown bread, would be good on toast and would, I think, be a useful ingredient in lots of desserts. For example, dribbled over ice cream or underneath the almond paste of Bakewell Tarts. But that said, two older people are not going to get through a lot of the stuff. We don't have a young family getting through a pot a day, the rate of consumption when I was a child. Another snag being that the set is not very firm, despite added lemon juice, and according to the book the jelly does not keep very long, maybe two or three weeks.

In the margins, I wondered about blackberry diseases. Most fruit that one grows in a garden is prone to all kinds of problems, particularly problems involving grubs and caterpillars - while hedgerow blackberries seem to be immune. Perhaps one would know better if one tried cultivation, something I have not done for a very long time.

PS: some dwarf white cyclamen have appeared at the bottom of the garden over the past few days. Not many, which is just as well, as they are not supposed to appear until the autumn.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/fourth-blackberries.html.