I have wild raspberries here that I pick and enjoy while they are in season...usually just grazing and picking them and eating them on the spot daily. They are just now starting to ripen. I've found gold ones growing wild in several spots on the property and they are good like the wild black ones.

I've had a couple of tame raspberry plants (red and fall gold), and didn't care for them at all, so they got shovel pruned and went to new homes.

The wild blackberries start to ripen once the raspberries are about gone.

Sue

I have black raspberries on our property, but this year unless we get some rain they are not going to amount to much. I have picked less than a handful so far and they were popped into Alyssa's mouth. She loves them too. In good years of picking we pick around 50 quarts and freeze but that will not happen this year and it did not happen last year. I have never seen black raspberries in the stores around here. Ours grow wild.

Sue in Central Indiana

Grandmother used to take us blackberry picking. We'd have to wear hats cause of the sun, and long sleeves.

Then we would mash them in a bowl with sugar and add milk. Yummy!

We have close by a nursery, Petals from the Past, that has an annual Black and Blue Berry Festival, in June. Coming up the 16th.

You can go blueberry or blackberry picking or buy the most delicious berries they pick and sell in their store.

I have some wild black raspberry bushes on my property. We called them black caps when I was a kid. I prefer then to black berries.
Kittywhiskers

They aren't quite ripe here yet. THis is from a couple years ago.

You are right. Raspberies and bkackberries are two different plants each with a distinct flavor of their own. Raspberry seeds are larger than blackberry, but blackberry seeds tend to get stuck between your teeth - a minor impediment overriden by its great flavor.

The blackberries have just bloomed (in IL) and the berries will not be ready until sometime in late July.

As a kid rowing up, I have picked (and eaten) many wild blackberries. We canned blackberries and made jams and jellies. the routine was to go out in the morning before it got too hot, pick berries, and then process the berries that afternoon over a hot wood cook stove.

Mom's secret ingredient for making blackberry jelly: Include a few red to red with partly black berries to the mix. This adds a little tartness and aids jelling. Over ripe blackberries may not jell well.

I did not see any wild raspberries in southern IL, just wild blackberries. A few gardeners grew raspberries.

Here in Wisconsin, we have wild raspberries, but I have not seen wild blackberries. Some folks have claimed to have discovered patches of blackberies, but when I tasted a sample, it was was not blackberry. There are other berries that so resemble a blacberry, but is not the same as those full flavored ones of S. IL and Missouri.

By the way, chiggers is part of the package when picking blackberries. Apparently, Wisconsin is north of the chigger range. I have not picked up a chigger bite in Wisc during my 50 yr stay.

blackberrys, not wild raspberries (i think??) grow prolifically here in august (tacoma WA) - I pick them every year and make pies, sometimes I'll juice them and make jam.

they are delicious but OUCH the pokey bushes always take a pound of my flesh.

Nope, not blackberries, folks. I am talking about black RASPberries only. We grew them in the far end of our back yard when I was growing up in Peoria, Illinois. A friend of my mother's gave us some raspberry canes when she thinned out her berry patch. I have not seen them since I moved away in 1961 though I had seen them infrequently in the stores in the 1950s.

It is odd how people try to change the topic to black berries. That always happens, but they are two very different berries.

When I was a kid on the farm we had a garden that was 250'long & 150' wide. On the backside of the garden Grandma had two rows of berry bushes running the full 250'.

The first row was currants for the first 200',then 50' of gooseberries, and the second row was half & half, red raspberries & black raspberries. In addition to that there were dozens of small black raspberry thickets and huge blackberry thickets throughout our 90acre pasteur, and the occassional wild gooseberry thicket.

In those days the men did the fieldwork on the farm and the women and children did the berry picking.

I remember Grandma used to buy peanut butter that came packed in a nice little one gallon steel bucket, and when the peanut butter was gone she saved the buckets for the kids to use to pick berries.

When it came time to start cutting grain we cut the grain with an old horse drawn McCormic grain binder, which cut the grain and bound it into bundles. We then had to stack all the bundles in small stacks called "Shocks" where it would dry for about a week before we loaded the bundles on wagons and hauled them in to the threshing machine where the grain was separated from the straw. As one might imagine, to us boys it was a sign of manhood to be selected to work on the threshing machine crew instead of berry picking with the women & girls. Usually you had to be at least 9 or 10 to work on the threshing machine because the entry level job was operating the sacker, to sack the grain in two bushel burlap bags, which weighed over 120lbs when full.

I got to sneak in on the theshing crew when I was 6years old because Grandpa had taught me how to drive a team of horses, so I could drive team to pull the wagons while loading, then take the wagon to the threshing machine at the barn. I shall never forget my old team of horses. Dan & Fritz, two 8 or 20yr old Belgian draft horse geldings that were slightly disabled. Fritz was blind in both eyes and Dan was blind in his right eye, so as you might imagine, they worked very slow & methodical, which was perfect for a young teamster like me, especially when you consider that I was just barely as tall as the horses bellies....LOL.

Sometimes when Grandma was planning to go over the hill and pick blackberries in the pasteur Grandpa would have me hitch my team to the box wagon. We would then put two or three empty 10gallon milk cans on the wagon to put the berries in and another ten gallon can full of fresh cold water from the spring so they had drinking water for the crew. I then had to load all the ladies and kids, then drive the wagon to where ever Grandma wanted the cans placed and set them off, then I had to return the wagon to the barnyard so they could load the sacks of grain on the wagon, then I hauled them to the grainery at the barn, and in mid afternoon one of the girls would come to announce Grandma was ready for me to come back and pick them all up and take them to the house.

Of course while all that was happening one of the ladies, assisted by a couple of the kids stayed at the house and cooked supper for 15 or 20 hungry field hands and berry pickers who would be in for supper at 5pm, then at 6pm it was back to the barn to milk the cows, feed all the animals and do the barn chores for the night.

And when we came in from the barn Grandma would great us in the kitchen with a huge cookie sheet covered with a home made buttermilk bisquit type of shortcake. She would break off a big chunk of the shortcake and top it with fresh berries and a light drizzle of fresh milk..it gets no better than that at the end of a hard day.

Great memories LazyPup!

My DD has been lucky enough to be apart of a threshing crew - believe it or not! :)

They have "Threshing Days" around here and they have shocked oats to thresh. She drives the team (Belgians!) She has done it since she was about 12.

are they the same as what we call black caps like kittywhiskers said? if so, then yes, I've had them
pretty mild tasting if I remember correctly. If they
aren't the same, then, no, i've never had them , lol

well, I guess they are! lol sorry I didn't believe you Kitty! hahahaa

Here is a link that might be useful: black cap wild raspberries

So sorry to have discussed blackberrys on your black raspberry post.

Don't apologize, Amy. It is just how these black raspberry conversations go. I think somehow some people just cannot believe that there is such a thing as a black raspberry, and they automatically shift the conversation to blackberries. I do recognize that black raspberries are rare; wish they weren't.

You want to really confuse them, throw in Dewberries

I'm not picking, but I eat red and black raspberries every day of the year along with three other fruits for lunch. Love them. They're local now and in the winter I guess from South America.

Here in southeastern Minnesota we have both wild black raspberries and black berries. The black raspberries have finished blooming and have tiny fruits set on. We haven't had rain for a couple weeks, so unless we get some soon this years crop will be small and seedy. The blackberries are just blooming now. Both berries grow wild in the woods. The black raspberries are a real bear to pick. The plants are extremely thorny (to the point of drawing blood), you pick with one hand and swat mosquitoes with the other, and always check yourself for wood ticks when you get home. But, in spite of all that they are so worth it! A bowl of ice cream topped with wild black raspberries is a fantastic treat, even though you'll spend the next couple hours picking seeds out of your teeth.

Blackberries? I can take 'em or leave 'em.

Ron