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The last few days I have picked a few brambles from various locations, only to find they are crawling with little worms. I'm really careful about which ones I pick too. I can't recall having this problem before, is it common? Not sure what to do with them now, such a waste but I don't want to eat the worms!

Same here with the one we collected yesterday. I hope we've picked out all the infected ones, but I guess an one won't harm us once cooked in a crumble. Just try not to think about it

Anyone know what these grubs are? Are they raspberry beetles grubs?

I was once told they could be got rid of by sprinkling sugar on the berries and waiting for the grubs to come out to eat the sugar, then washing them out. I've not tried that as they seems to come out when we washed them anyway.

<<quiet cough>>

I made blackberry jam yesterday and realised afterwards that I hadn't even rinsed the berries

Hopefully there are no worms in my jam!

I read somewhere they might be moths so have gone off the idea of the pie I was going to make! Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

I am struggling manfully on with eating my jam, and the baby certainly has no issues with the half teaspoonful he's got on his toast for breakfast!

I have noticed when picking them this year that a lot of large flies seem to like perching on ripe blackberries...

Many, many years ago when I was a teenager I went brambling. As I was picking them, I was also eating them, as you do. I took home a big tub full, and put them on the draining board for when my mother came home. Next time I looked at them, they had these horrid little maggots all over them. And I had been eating them! When my mother came home she found me sitting, shaking on the settee, hugging my knees. Unfortunately, (warning: this is weird), I now have a phobia about brambles. I got over the maggot thing, although I still don't like them, but I haven't been able to eat brambles since. Not even in jam. I keep trying to get over it, and one year went bramble picking with OH and my children. There were maggots in those brambles too, so I didn't get over the phobia, it just put the rest of my family off brambles as well. This is the first year in, well, years, that I haven't bothered to try to overcome it. I can live without brambles.

I had a phobia about strawberries for years, after biting into one and finding a maggot then a few years later I convinced myself that it was a one off, so bought a punnet and it happened again ... I meticulously wash and cut in half all the strawbs I eat now.


I would compost stuff with worms in it, I wouldn't eat them at all

I cut all my strawbs in half too now Annpan just because, amongst all the gazillions of strawbs that I produce, I once found ONE maggot inside one!

I have just been cutting into greengages which were windfalls and there's so many grubs in there, I'm just trying to find a few edible bits. It really turns my stomach when I see a wriggling maggot.

Thankfully haven't had that problem with blackberries yet....... but I can understand Rosie's phobia really.

And caterpillars, yuk, I nearly couldn't eat my curly kale last winter at all as I'd squidged so many off them, and then was still having to wash them, blanch them, wash again to get the ones out even after lots of frosts.

There is only one thing worse than finding a maggot on your plate and that's finding half a maggot!

Rosendula wrote:Many, many years ago when I was a teenager I went brambling. As I was picking them, I was also eating them, as you do. I took home a big tub full, and put them on the draining board for when my mother came home. Next time I looked at them, they had these horrid little maggots all over them. And I had been eating them! When my mother came home she found me sitting, shaking on the settee, hugging my knees. Unfortunately, (warning: this is weird), I now have a phobia about brambles. I got over the maggot thing, although I still don't like them, but I haven't been able to eat brambles since. Not even in jam. I keep trying to get over it, and one year went bramble picking with OH and my children. There were maggots in those brambles too, so I didn't get over the phobia, it just put the rest of my family off brambles as well. This is the first year in, well, years, that I haven't bothered to try to overcome it. I can live without brambles.

I don't blame you, I've been put well off them now!

I kept looking at the ones I picked over the last couple of days during washing and draining, almost expecting maggots to come crawling out..... . They didn't thank god!

I always leave my blackberries to soak overnight before freezing them. There's usually at least one drowned grub so I pick the berries around it making sure it doesn't stick to any!

I don't blame your phobia though Rosendula, when I was a teenager I went out on a boat with my family. After dangling my legs in the water for a while I brought them out to find tiny sea creatures on my feet. Haven't been in the sea since!
Funny what early experiences can do to the rest of your life!

Oh dear Susie - I've always thought that particular phobia would be a bad one to have as a gardener! Well done for overcoming it.