Why Brambles Are the Best Place to Start

If you have never foraged anything in your life, start with the blackberry. It is abundant, it is unmistakable, it grows within walking distance of almost every town in Britain, and it tastes like the end of summer. The common bramble, Rubus fruticosus and its many micro-species, scrambles through hedgerows, railway cuttings, woodland edges and scrubland from Cornwall to Caithness. There is no permit to buy, no season to book, and no risk of picking the wrong thing. Best of all, a good blackberry patch will keep you in crumbles, jellies and cordial right through to Christmas.

What follows is how to find a clean hedgerow, pick berries that are actually ripe, and get them home without turning them to mush.

Timing Your Picking Right

Blackberry season in the UK runs broadly from late July in the south-west to late September in the north, with the greatest glut in the second half of August and early September. Early berries on sun-facing sides ripen first; the same hedge will give you fruit for six or seven weeks if you keep going back. Warm, dry spells speed things up, and a few rain-free days before you pick makes a real difference to flavour, as the sugars concentrate.

Go in the morning once the dew has lifted, or on a dry evening. Wet berries bruise and mould quickly. Take a shallow container rather than a deep bag — a punnet, a mushroom tray, or a tupperware box no deeper than three or four inches. Berries piled deep will crush themselves under their own weight before you get home.

• Wear long sleeves and trousers. Brambles are called brambles for a reason, and the thorns are recurved hooks that do not let go willingly.
• Take gardening gloves if you plan to reach deep into the thicket, but be warned: they cost you the fine sense of touch that tells you a berry is ready.
• Bring a walking stick or an old broom handle to lift arching canes out of the way rather than pushing your face through them.

Choosing a Clean Hedgerow

This is the part that matters most. Blackberries absorb whatever lands on them, and they grow at exactly the height a dog lifts its leg. Avoid any hedge within about 20 metres of a busy road, where brake dust and tyre particles settle on the fruit. Steer clear of verges beside arable fields that may have been sprayed, and of hedges on the inside of field corners where drift and runoff collect.

The best picking is found along quiet lanes, footpaths, old railway lines, canal towpaths, and the edges of unimproved pasture. Look for hedgerows with a mix of hawthorn, hazel and ash — they tend to be older, less managed and richer in wildlife. Pick above waist height wherever dogs are walked, and higher still if the hedge borders a well-used path.

If you are unsure whether a patch has been sprayed or is on private land, leave it. In England and Wales you may pick wild fruit, leaves and flowers for personal use, but digging up plants or taking fruit for sale requires the landowner's permission.

How to Pick Without Bruising the Crop

The single most useful skill is learning to tell a ripe blackberry from a nearly-ripe one. Colour alone will not do it — many berries turn black while still hard and sharp. A ripe blackberry is dull, deep purple-black with a faint bloom, feels heavy in the hand, and comes away at the gentlest touch, sometimes almost falling into your palm. If it resists, leave it and come back in three days. Red berries are unripe and will never improve once picked.

Roll the berry gently between finger and thumb rather than pulling. When it is ready, it slips off the white core, which stays behind on the plant. Work from the outside of the bush inwards, and use your other hand to hold the cane steady so you are not yanked by it. Drop each berry into your container rather than letting them fall and stack.

Avoid anything with brown patches, white mould, or a sour smell. And do not confuse aggregate blackberries with the single, shiny black berries of deadly nightshade, which grow on a leafy shrub with dull purple bell-shaped flowers — if it is not a cluster of little drupelets on a thorny cane, leave it alone.

From Hedgerow to Kitchen

Get your haul home and spread it out on a tray in a single layer. Pick out leaves and any mouldy fruit straight away, and only wash what you are about to use — damp berries keep badly. Simmering the fruit before washing kills any stray insect life just as effectively.

Blackberries are low in pectin, so for a set you need either jam sugar or a handful of under-ripe berries, which are naturally higher in it. The classic is bramble jelly: cook the fruit with a splash of water, strain it through a muslin overnight without squeezing, then boil the juice with sugar to setting point. A crumble with cooking apple needs nothing more than a little sugar and a hot oven.

• Cordial: steep the berries in hot water, strain, and sweeten with sugar syrup. Keeps for months and tastes like bottled August.
• Vinegar: cover the fruit with cider vinegar for two weeks, strain, and use it in dressings and shrubs.
• Freezing: open-freeze on trays, then bag. Perfect for winter pies.
• Leaves and tips: young bramble leaves make a pleasant, tannic tea, and the tender growing tips can be picked in spring for salads.

Leaving Some Behind

A good forager takes a little from many places rather than everything from one. Leave the high berries and the deep-in-the-hedge berries for the birds and small mammals that depend on them to see them through winter. Take only what you can realistically use, and move on to the next patch. That way the hedge keeps feeding everything it feeds, and you have an excuse to go back next week.