A Hedgerow Harvest Worth Waiting For

By the middle of August the hedgerows are carrying far more fruit than most of us could ever pick. Blackberries come first, fattening along sunny lanes and woodland edges, and by October the blackthorn bushes are bowed down with sloes. For anyone who grew up with a stained ice-cream tub and scratched forearms, this is the best kind of free food — but the hedgerow rewards a little knowledge and a fair bit of restraint.

Know What You Are Picking

Blackberries grow on arching, thorny canes and ripen from green through red to a deep, glossy black. The test is simple: a ripe blackberry comes away at the gentlest tug, leaving the white core behind on the stem. Anything that needs pulling is sour. Low-trailing plants with fewer, larger segments and a dusty grey bloom are dewberries — smaller, earlier and perfectly good eating.

Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn, a spiny, twiggy shrub usually smothered in white blossom in March. The fruit is small and round, blue-black with a soft bloom, and each one holds a single stone. Bite into a raw sloe and your mouth will pucker instantly; that fierce astringency is exactly what makes them so good in gin. Do not confuse sloes with bullaces or damsons, which are larger, rounder and noticeably sweeter. If it is plum-sized and pleasant to eat raw, it is not a sloe — use it, but cut the sugar.

Choose Your Ground Carefully

Old hedgerows on the sunny, south-facing side of a lane ripen first. Footpaths, canal towpaths, the edges of commons and disused railway cuttings are all reliable, as long as you have permission to be there and the fruit is genuinely wild.

Walk past anything growing within a few metres of a busy road. Exhaust fumes, tyre particles and historic lead contamination settle on the fruit, and you cannot wash it all away. Skip verges that look as though they have been flailed, blanket-sprayed or treated by the council, and avoid field edges next to recently sprayed crops. Give a wide berth to popular dog-walking spots at leg-cocking height, and leave nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest alone — many ban picking outright.

Pick Responsibly: Leave Plenty Behind

• Take from abundance, not scarcity. If a bush carries only a handful of fruit, walk on and leave it.
• Harvest above knee height where you can. Low fruit is what badgers, foxes, voles and mice rely on, and it is the fruit most likely to have been marked by dogs.
• Never strip a bush. Take a few berries from each plant and leave the rest, especially the higher branches, which are the safest feeding for blackbirds, thrushes, redwings and fieldfares.
• Do not break branches or haul stems down to your height. Use a hooked stick to draw high fruit within reach instead.
• Pick only for your own kitchen. Foraging wild fruit to sell is a different matter legally, and it is not what the hedgerow can sustain.
• Wash your hands before eating, and cook or freeze anything you plan to keep.

Kit, Timing and Technique

Go out in dry weather — wet fruit bruises and moulds quickly, and wet sloes dilute your gin. Wear long sleeves, thick trousers and gardening gloves, and take a shallow tray or tub rather than a bag, so the berries do not crush under their own weight. A stick with a bent nail in the end makes a fine fruit hook, and secateurs deal with the nettles and brambles that always seem to guard the best patch. Check yourself for ticks afterwards, particularly if you have been pushing through bracken or long grass.

Timing matters more than most people think. Blackberries are at their best from mid-August to the end of September, though a warm, wet spell can turn a whole hedge to mould in a fortnight. Sloes are ready from late September, and the old advice to wait for the first frost is sound — not because frost improves them, but because it softens the skins. If you pick early, simply freeze the fruit overnight and the skins will split just as well.

From Basket to Bottle

Rinse blackberries only if they are dusty; washing dilutes the flavour. Spread them on a tray, freeze, then bag them, so you can pour out exactly what you need all winter for crumbles and pies. For bramble jelly, simmer the fruit with a little water and lemon juice, strain overnight through muslin without squeezing, then boil the juice with sugar until it sets — a lovely way to avoid the pips.

Sloes are the real prize. For sloe gin, use roughly 500g of sloes, 250g of sugar and a litre of gin, though plenty of foragers prefer less sugar. Freeze the sloes first, tip them into a large jar with the sugar and gin, seal, and shake gently every few days for the first week. Leave it in a cool, dark cupboard for at least three months, then strain and bottle — ready for Christmas. The leftover sloes, stones and all, make an excellent jelly. Do not crush the stones, and do not eat sloes raw; a little patience turns that fierce astringency into something far lovelier.