Wild Fruit

The other garden to look out for at this time of year is the wild one at the back of Walthamstow Town Hall. This is where we get our fruits and berries to make Fruits of the Forest yoghurt. No, I lied there. It's to make sloe gin and damson vodka and other winter tipples.

Bit of a rainy day today. The weather this summer has only been really good for slugs and snails who are doing ever so well, much to the disgust of most gardeners.

Festoons of elderberries; these are always prolific but unfortunately they are not well favoured for liquor making as they are considered too tart.

And blackberies doing very well as usual. These make a very nice but not spectacular drink with vodka. There is no shortage of blackberries; the bushes have loads of fruit. 

The other fecund fruit is the wild damson or bullace which is coming on nicely; three weeks ago all these fruits were quite green. However, the crop is not as good as last year's when the branches were drooping with the weight of the fruit.

The damsons have a nice bluish bloom on their skins but they are not ready for picking yet. They should be ripe by early September.

The real stars of the show are buried deep in the hedgerow and you have to know where to look. Let's get our boots muddy as we search for the Blackthorn bush.

There they are! Get your head into the body of the bush and then look up and across. Keep looking and you will start to spot them; sloes. The golden nuggets of the hedgerow. These little berries make sloe gin, the finest fruit liquor of them all.

Sloes are barely half the size of damsons and nowhere near as prolific. They grow in clusters of three or four but under the leaves making them hard to spot. This is a hard-won harvest; you get precious few berries and the Blackthorn bush always seems to be surrounded by nettles. But the effort is worth it as sloe gin is magnificent. Not to be picked until the end of September.

Public enemy number one.

Why do we bother exhibit A. This is a glass of last year's Damson Gin; notice the light, tawny colour. A lovely fruit liquor for the cooler weather. 

Why do we bother exhibit B. This is a glass of last year's Blackberry Vodka. Admire the deep, dark, rich colour of the infusion. If only you could taste or smell it, it fills the room. 'Ere, though! Some bugger's had a sip from it already! Is nothing sacred?