Dewberries - Enjoying berries you don't have to plant!

About ten years ago, I was browsing through the garden department in one of the large stores - either Home Depot or Lowe's and ran across some raspberry canes for sale.  I remember thinking how cool it would be to plant and harvest our own raspberries.  I never see them growing around here and sort of see them as an 'exotic' berry.  I picked up a raspberry cane package and brought it to the checkout, envisioning eating fresh raspberries on top of homemade vanilla ice cream.

I planted the raspberry cane according to the directions and watched in despair as the plant made a feeble attempt at growing in our harsh summer before finally calling it quits and withered away.  So much for my raspberry adventure.  I have since learned that raspberries are just not well adapted to our conditions here in South Louisiana.  It made me think: There are enough hassles, why try to force things that aren't going to work?  Like the candy positioned strategically around the checkout counter, I made a impulse purchase based on emotion with the raspberry purchase.  I learned to research first and plant varieties that are known to grow in our climate and zone.  But even better yet, I learned to not plant things that grow for free in the wild!

I'm talking about dewberries.  We have dewberries that grow wild in the overgrown field across from our home.  Dewberries ripen a little earlier than blackberries and they run along the ground and on top of other weeds that grow.  They have a reddish-colored cane or vine that grows with a gazillion pointy spines.  It is a difficult operation to pick dewberries without getting scratched up.  No pain, no gain, though.  We pick them each year at this time and the best part is, we don't have to do anything. No planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing...  They just appear every year, begging us to pick them. We oblige.

Dewberries, to me, are bigger, juicier and sweeter than their cousin, the blackberry, but I wouldn't turn down blackberries, for sure.  You can see how plump this dewberry is:

Juicy Dewberry

All the rain we've experienced in April has put a dent in the amount of time we've had to get out there and pick, so we're a little late and have missed a lot of the crop. We'll still get enough for our use. Fortunately, we still have a gallon or so frozen from last year's crop, along with a good number of jars of seedless dewberry jelly put up in the pantry.  Here is Benjamin reaching in to pick a dewberry or two:

Picking dewberries

Here's a view of what he's trying to grab, without getting all scratched up:

Success!!  For every berry that goes in the bucket, two or three get eaten.  By the time we get back to the house, our fingers are stained purple!

Plump berries!

We just stayed out for a brief time but were able to pick a nice bucketful that we placed in a colander in the vegetable sink and filled with water.  Once the sink filled with water, you start seeing lots of little critters float to the surface - worms, stink bugs, tiny beetles - all things that you don't want to be eating along with your dewberries.  We scoop them all out along with twigs, branches and other trash.

Cleaning the berries

We freeze the cleaned berries spread out on trays.  Once frozen, we scoop them up with a spatula and put in gallon sized freezer bags.  That way they stay individually frozen and are easy to pull out and measure for making things like ---  Homemade Pies!!

This is a nice one that just came out of the oven.  We call it The Black and Blue Pie because it is made with both Dewberries (which are black) and Blueberries.  It is jam-packed with flavor that was harvested right out the front door (dewberries) and right out the back door (blueberries).

Black & Blue Pie

I had a nice slice of pie after supper last night.  We did plant the blueberry bushes, but the dewberries are one of those things that just occur naturally, and I'm thankful for that.

A little slice of happiness

Here is a side view where you can evidence the fact that this pie is loaded with berries!

Even though my raspberry experiment didn't work out as planned, the dewberries that naturally spring up each year across the ditch helped me to see that sometimes the easy way is the best way. Sometimes the best things in life are free!