Weevils in Blackberries

Gardening
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Yesterday afternoon, we picked a lot of blackberries from the rather rampant ronces in our garden. I intended to make my favourite blackberry and apple jelly as we also have a lot of apples this year.

I couldn’t start the jelly yesterday so was picking over the blackberries this morning only to realise that a great number (majority) had little white wiggly things popping out of them.

I have shoved the lot on the compost heap BUT it’s a problem I’ve never had before so I was wondering if any of you experts would know why this has happened this year? Climate thing?

I remember not eating raspberries for about 30 years after my mother served me some ones she’d bottled and they contained weevils… yuck…

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The benefit of making jelly is that you strain off the fruit, so no-one will see the weevils, except perhaps you as you strain it.
You’re lucky to have usable blackberries from your brambles. Ours are always tiny and shrivelled.

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I believe that is why you leave berries in a bowl in water with a heaped teaspoon of salt for a few hours. (Then drain and rinse twice.)

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That’s where you went wrong! They always have them but if you deal with the blackberries straight away you don’t notice!!

You can soak the blackberries for a bit and then strain off any larvae and gunk, or put them in the coldest bit of the fridge with a lid on and the larvae will try to crawl out.

Or just avert your eyes, they are harmless fruit fly larvae.

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Just dont label it "vegetarian ":hushed:

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Quite a few of ours were, especially this year!

@JaneJones How disappointing! I threw away a huge bowlful :frowning: I wonder if I can face having another go …

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I’ll have a go with that idea! Thanks @KarenLot

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Don’t worry about having thrown out a few prematurely Angela. I once was forced to buy about 30 shrivelled passionfruit Safeway had reduced from about 80p each to 5p because they were um… shrivelled.

Needless to say it would have been rude to correct their mistake

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That’s so funny :rofl: I really miss easy access to passion fruit, hardly ever see them here, always in the supermarket in Oz!

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Really??? :face_vomiting:

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I’m sure there were passionfruit in Lidl last week… :thinking:

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If you leave of bowl of any kind of soft fruit for too long don’t you get fruit flies? With foraged raspberries, blackberries etc etc being the worst, but other types of fruit don’t escape. So where do you think they come from? :rofl::slightly_frowning_face:

Or maybe you never let your fruit bowl go squidgy……

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Oh don’t :nauseated_face: really? I thought the flies flew in from somewhere;!! And yes I regularly leave fruit to moulder in the top of my dresser where it lives :blush:

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