As the long hot summer gives way to showers and cooler breezes it's the perfect time to go out hunting for blackberries, which you'll find ripening in city parks, suburban verges, or country lanes. The low-hanging fruits may well have been picked, but if you have a long stick to hook the out-of-reach berries you should still be able to bag a punnet-full.
There are over 300 species in the UK alone, which is why you'll find some berries to be extra sweet, while others are small and sour. The Himalayan giant, one of the most common hedgerow varieties, produces berries as big as the top of your thumb (fortunately, it's one of the tastiest blackberries out there). On the down-side, it's a little bit too successful; squeezing out some of the less common brambles.
Like other UK blackberry bushes, it's replete with prickles, so if you're serious about foraging, it's worth donning a pair of gardening gloves. Steer clear of any bushes near a main road - and any below knee height (foxes are very fond of berries, so may have had a nibble).
Make sure you're forage-safe
If you're heading out with children, make doubly sure you've read up on how to forage safely - don't let them pick or eat wild food unsupervised. There's one plant that often grows adjacent to brambles, deadly nightshade, which is extremely poisonous. The berry looks more like a small black cherry, nothing like a blackberry, but nonetheless tempting for younger children. Read up on these simple foraging rules before you head out, and try and stick to the 1 in 3 rule - just pick a third of any fruit available, leaving a third for the birds and beasts and a third to seed new blackberries for next season.
When to pick them?
If you head out this weekend, there should be plenty on the stem, ripe for picking, and you can keep picking them all through September, as long as you can find them. According to folklore, your last day of blackberrying is St Michaelmas Day (29 September). This was the day when the devil himself was ejected from heaven, landing bum-first on a blackberry bush. Taking exception to having a thorny backside, he put a hex on all blackberries, cursing them to be sour and mouldy from October onwards. As with many folk tales, this is only partly true.
If you travel across the UK at this time of year, it's nice to take note of the season gently rolling across the country - so blackberries on the South Downs will ripen earlier than blackberries on the Trossachs. You can see the same phenomenon in spring with as the hawthorn blossom appears.
Best eaten all year round...
You can comfortably stretch blackberry season into winter by making a few pots of jam and jelly. One of our favourite activities at autumn Family Camping trips was making blackberry jam - which takes a modicum of skill if you're making it at home, but easy enough to make over a campfire, you just need to boil up the berries with extra sugar and a bit of lemon juice. Even easier if you're under 5, you just mash them up in a bowl.
If you think a Michaelmas pie (baked with the last blackberries of the season) is beyond your culinary wit, just whip the berries up with a bit of Greek yoghurt and honey and freeze - a delicious treat to look forward to as the nights draw in.
