North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Hélène Dessureault <interverbis@videotron.ca>]

Hi Melissa,

My experience has been that Blackberries too can be exquisite. Their food 
value is entirely different from raspberries. For instance, those who care 
about antioxydants find blackberries far more interesting to eat..

Here, growing in the wild, we find three distinct types of blackberries.

-The Black raspberry, which looks like a cap with the plant propagating by 
the tip bending to the ground. Those are usually eaten fresh and will stand 
beautifully in a fruit salad;

-The tall thorny typical Blackberry, the berries are long timble shape and 
gritty. It makes fantastic jellies but you have to get rid of those seeds 
when you cook them. This year, with the above normal rain fall, those black 
berries were huge and quite worth collecting.

-The Dewberry. It is a short little bush growing in the moss. The fruit is 
somewhat more round than a tall blackberry, but most of all you can cook 
them entirely leaving the seeds in, as they are not gritty... More like a 
raspberry but with each grains separating more easily. They freeze really 
well. This is my favorite.

I have not been very successful with different types of domestic varieties 
for different reasons, even though they grow really well all around us, so I 
have resorted to pick them wild. Maybe, blackberries are not as easy to 
domesticate as raspberries, and if one wishes to do so, more attention has 
to be given to varieties?

Hélène, zone 3-4

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melissa Kacalanos" <mijwiz@yahoo.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 10:53 PM
Subject: [NAFEX] flavorful blackberries?


> On the subject of blackberries, are there any really flavorful, aromatic 
> ones that are hardy in zone 5? All the blackberries I've tried have ranged 
> from pretty good to very sour yet flavorless, unlike raspberries, which 
> range from very good to exquisitely aromatic. Am I missing something here? 
> Why would anyone grow blackberries when they could grow raspberries 
> instead?
>
> Melissa
> zone 5, central NY, where the squirrels are still feasting on my green 
> strawberries.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nafex mailing list
> nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>
> Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
> This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web 
> sites.
> Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have 
> permission!
>
> **YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
> Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
> No exceptions.
> ----
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be 
> used to change other email options):
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
>
> File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
> TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
> Please do not send binary files.
> Use plain text ONLY in emails!
>
> NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/