Foraging Log 8

Time: Perhaps 90 minutes on a weekday evening
Place: Mudchute Park and Farm
Gathered: A good handful of blackberries and 600g plums (mostly yellow with some red ones mixed in).

This was an ad-hoc foraging session; two friends and I were walking back from somewhere else and couldn’t resist looking around. We stopped because it was getting too dark to forage, I’m sure there would have been more plums hiding if we’d covered a few more paths. Also we would have managed more if we’d had a chair to stand on. We also saw loads of hazelnuts, which are huge this year though not yet ripe. When they just start to ripen is the time to pick them, wait any longer and the squirrels will have the entire lot. I should really plan better, I was wearing sandals and got stung by nettles quite a bit.

Foraging Log 6

Time: about 90 minutes, but this included lots of walking around
Place: Southwark Park, Bermondsey
Gathered: 10 lingering Saskatoon berries. About 1.5kg of cherries, not counting the ones that ended up in my tummy as I was picking.

Southwark Park has more in it than I had suspected, and I will be returning there. The cherries are excellent – juicy and sweet. When I pick cherries, I always taste a few from each tree, because there are so many different varieties and some of them taste better than others. One tree had large, dark, juicy cherries on it, but on tasting they were so bitter I decided not to gather those ones after all.

There are several Turkish Hazel (Corylus colurna) trees; I will be going back for their nuts later in the year. I also look forward to sampling some of the plums around. There is a walnut tree – I think it is the Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), also known as the “No, you won’t get this open without a sledgehammer” walnut. I may stick to the easier-to-open Persian (aka English) walnuts that I know of, instead, but if I miss them it’s nice to know there will be a source that the squirrels haven’t been able to decimate. Although I don’t much like them I’m quite pleased to have found blackcurrants. They aren’t in very good condition, I think the lack of rain in April and the abundance of it in June has confused them a bit.

Cherries! What to do with 1.5kg of them? Some were mixed with ground almonds and a bit of golden syrup, and used as a filling for sweet croissants. I stewed the rest and have been eating them with yoghurt, with ice cream, just on their own… I may well try cooking them some more to remove moisture and making a fruit spread. I’d really like to have a dehydrator to dry some with – I’m sure if I go back in the next few days there will be more – but that is not part of my current equipment stock. I might try doing some of them in a low oven, though, when it looks like I’ll be home long enough.

Foraging Log 4

Time: Perhaps 10 minutes total, last night
Place: Cathay Street, Bermondsey
Gathered: About a cupful of cherries.

This was absolutely lovely, really. We were on the way to the pub and I saw the bright red cherries in a tree across the road and ran over to try some. They were soft and juicy and sweet, so after getting to the pub and ordering food I went back with a sheet of newspaper rolled into a cone and picked some more of those I could reach. I got rained on both times but didn’t really care.

The temptation to go back this morning armed with a stepladder is actually quite high. Those are some very fine cherries indeed, better than I could get in a supermarket and absolutely free. I will certainly be back for more next year.

Foraging Log 1

Time: 1 hour on a Sunday afternoon
Place: Hendon Park
Gathered: None, but not for lack of abundance.

This slow amble around Hendon Park on a day of mixed cloud and sun was undertaken to kill time between other commitments. Little tiny proto-walnuts are beginning to form on the walnut tree. I also had another look at a tree I haven’t identified yet, which has small, hard green fruits. I think it may be Arbutus unedo, also known as a “strawberry tree” – I’ve seen these in gardens in this part of London. If that’s what it is, I look forward to sampling the fruit when it ripens.

Several trees have been removed from the perimeter of the park, but it does seem that they are being replaced elsewhere. Still, I shall miss the two hawthorn trees that had haws the size of small crab-apples! The grass was freshly mown as well, so there wasn’t as much in the way of greens at the edges as there often is in this particular park. I did see one bunch of mushrooms, but they were in poor condition and my phone battery died before I could take a picture.

Elderflower is still doing nicely, and I hope to get on with making champagne this week. I also found a Saskatoon berry tree (Amelanchier alnifolia, although it could be another Amelanchier species) that I hadn’t noticed before, to add to the two already in the park. Those berries will be ripening sometime in the next few weeks, and once they do that they’ll disappear very quickly to the birds.

It is unfortunate that most of the plum trees in Hendon Park have peach leaf curl disease, which leads to withered, premature fruit no good for eating. The cherries are doing better, but I don’t think many will be spared by the birds, and I do know of sweeter, larger cherry varieties elsewhere in London.

The only other thing of note is that a monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) in one of the private gardens has cones on. I may just work up the nerve to ask if I could have one when they ripen.