Hi. Looking for way to turn an awful tasting blackberry into a sweet berry! Have a couple of thornless blackberry plants that seem to produce the biggest and most plentiful fruit of all my brambles........... but alas they are also the worse tasting! Is there anything I can do to sweeten the berries up (I mean pre-picking) Will adding any soil amendments help? Will pruning to bare minimum branches help? Note that I do wait until last possible time (before birds get them or they drop off) to pick them. Thx. Bob
When are you picking your berries? They will be quite bitter if you pick too early. Mine aren't thornless, so I'm not sure that makes it different. If you wait until they're "hairy", they should be sweet. Here's my favorite recipe, sugar will solve your problem. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Blackberry-Cobbler-II/Detail.aspx
Our wild brambles on the allotment are metalic in taste and not great eaten fresh but fine with apple or in a mixed berry jam. I have never heard of anything you can add to the plant to make them sweeter. The sugars develop as the fruit ripens prior to it going rotten so I can't imagine what you could add to do this. Would be interested to know though, all those blackberries on the allotment that go to waste every year.....
