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Why Blackberry Season Is Worth Waiting For

By late August, the hedgerows of Britain begin to change character. What was a green tangle of hawthorn and hazel in June suddenly hangs heavy with fruit, and the smell of ripe brambles drifting along a country lane is one of the most evocative scents of the British year. Blackberrying — brambling, if you grew up in the West Country — is a free, wholesome and quietly addictive pursuit, and it costs nothing but a little time and a few scratches.

The blackberry, or bramble (Rubus fruticosus aggregate), is one of our most widespread wild plants. It thrives in hedges, woodland edges, railway cuttings and scrubby corners, and it fruits from late July in the south of England right through to October in Scotland. A good hedgerow can yield several kilos in an afternoon, and nothing tastes quite like a crumble made from fruit you picked yourself.

But a hedgerow is a busy place, shared with livestock, wildlife and traffic, and it pays to pick with a bit of care and a bit of respect. Here is how to do it well.

Pick Above Dog Height, Always

The single most useful rule in blackberrying is this: only pick fruit that sits above the height of a large dog's nose — roughly a metre, or about waist height on an adult. Below that line, hedgerows are used by foxes, badgers, rabbits and passing dogs as a latrine, and the fruit may be contaminated with urine, faeces or the parasites they carry.

Practically, this means ignoring the fat, glossy berries clustered at the bottom of the hedge, however tempting they look. They are often the ripest and largest, which is exactly why they have been left. Reach higher, use a walking stick or a hooked branch to pull down a high bramble, and pick from the top third of the bush where the sun has done its work.

• Wash your hands before you start, and again before eating.
• Take berries from the upper canopy, not from the base of the hedge.
• Avoid fruit that is sitting on the ground or has clearly been nibbled.
• If you are picking with children, keep them to the top of the hedge too.

Choose Your Hedgerow Carefully

Not every hedge is a good one. Busy roads are the obvious problem: exhaust fumes, brake dust and tyre particles settle on roadside fruit, and a hedge on a fast A-road is not somewhere you want to be standing with your back to the traffic. Country lanes are usually fine, but pick on the inside of the verge if you can, and never step into the carriageway.

Also think about what happens on the other side of the hedge. Fruit growing along the edge of a field that has just been sprayed with herbicide or pesticide is best avoided, particularly if you cannot tell what was applied or when. If a hedge borders a garden, a golf course or a public park, assume it may have been treated. Hedgerows on public footpaths, common land and quiet lanes away from farmland are usually the safest bet.

Look for berries that are well up off the ground and away from obvious sources of pollution. A hedge on a hillside footpath, miles from any road, is as good as it gets.

How to Pick Without Damaging the Hedge

A bramble is a tough plant, but it is also a habitat. Bramble thickets are nesting cover for wrens, dunnocks and whitethroats, and they shelter hedgehogs, bank voles and slow worms. Blackberry flowers feed bees and hoverflies well into autumn. Pick with that in mind.

Use both hands if you can — one to steady the stem, one to pick — and take only the berries that come away easily with a gentle tug. A ripe blackberry is deep purple-black, plump and slightly soft, and it releases with almost no resistance. If it fights back, it is not ready. Half-ripe berries are sour and unpleasant, and picking them just wastes them.

Take a shallow container rather than a deep bag, so the fruit does not crush itself under its own weight. An old ice cream tub lined with a cloth works well; a plastic bag does not. And leave the stems and leaves alone — do not rip branches down or trample the hedge to reach a distant cluster.

Leave Plenty for the Wildlife

This is the part that matters most. Blackberries are not there for us. They are a critical late-summer and autumn food source for a long list of British wildlife: blackbirds, song thrushes and mistle thrushes, redwings and fieldfares arriving from Scandinavia, dormice fattening up before hibernation, foxes, badgers and bank voles.

A good rule is to take no more than a third of the ripe fruit from any one stretch of hedge, and to leave the harder-to-reach clusters alone. Those high, awkward berries are the ones birds rely on when the weather turns. If you find a hedge that is already well picked over, move on rather than stripping the last few.

In a poor fruiting year, when the crop is thin, take very little or nothing at all. Wildlife cannot drive to a supermarket.

Storing, Preparing and Enjoying Your Haul

Once home, tip your berries into a bowl of cold water and let any debris, leaves and the occasional residents float free. Lift the fruit out rather than pouring it through a colander, which bruises it, and drain on kitchen paper. Eat or freeze what you will not use within a day or two — blackberries mould quickly.

• Freeze them in a single layer on a tray before bagging, so they stay loose.
• Cook them into crumble, jam, cordial, gin or a simple compote with a little sugar.
• Check for maggots by soaking in lightly salted water for ten minutes if you are squeamish.
• Do not eat fruit raw if you are unsure what the hedge has been treated with.

Blackberrying is one of the small, free pleasures of the British year. Go out with a tub, pick above dog height, choose your hedge sensibly, take only what you need — and leave the rest for the birds.