re: What wild berries and fruits do you pick and eat?

Blackberries, plums

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I just noticed I have a muscadine vine growing on a tree in the woods just behind my backyard. It is loaded with grapes and brought back childhood memories of picking them

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about a months ago, me and my kids picked 4lbs of them over about a week then made homemade jelly with it. Was awesome.

Blackberrys, wild plums and crab apples. When I was a kid a sack full of wild green plums with a bunch of salt poured on top was a mainstay. We kept the skitters from about July - September but man those salty plums were good eating....our plumbing and septic systems, and sometimes our drawers, took a beating but they were damned tasty!

Scuppernongs and Muscadines were also common and subject to being wiped out as high as we could reach.....

We would pick blackberrys for days and wind up with enough for about one cobbler and one pint of preserves. Of course we ate about 10 for everyone we put in the sack. The number of blackberry's and their taste was directly proportional to the number of red bugs present....the more of the latter the more of the former and the tastier....I haven't eaten blackberry preserves in years....dammit

I've made jelly the last two years from what I thought were mayhaws. After researching a little I learned that they were Swamp Gooseberrys. Slightly different from mayhaws and ripen a little later (late June). Not good off the vine but great for jelly.

How many of y'all remember sucking the nectar out of honeysuckle flowers? We though that was about as good as a candy bar when I was a kid. My granny and pawpaw had a massive honeysuckle patch adjacent to their drain field LOL...those were the tastiest anywhere around....talk about the circle of life LOL....

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I just noticed I have a muscadine vine

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When we lived in Germany we become good friends with our neighbors. They were typical Europeans and consumed a LOT of wine....good wine too, as far as my north Georgia pallatte was concerned. The wife and I were at the mailbox one afternoon and she invited us over to try a new carbonated white they had recently bought. We went over that weekend and she served it and sure as hell it was muscadine wine LOL....Muscato in Germany but absolutely nothing more than carbonated muscadine wine. Being from North Georgia and having been away from home for about 3 years when this happened I agreed wholeheartedly that it was indeed a very good wine and never mentioned that my granny made about 5 gallons of it every year, minus the carbonation of course LOL....

A little known fact but the lowly muscadine saved a substantial amount of the European grape and wine industry. They had an insect infestation that nearly wiped out the entire industry and muscadine root stock was used, at least initially, to recover the industry due to its natural protection from that insect. I think this has changed to grape varieties from the US which came from Europe originally, for the most part, but at one time muscadines were the go to savior. All those snooty assed european wine snobs can thank the lowly muscadine...but they never will LOL....