Wild Raspberry

Last year I shared about where to get the wild raspberries in bloom...

...Raspberries are in season now & you can find them in parks along trails, old estates just about anywhere woodsy.  Tried looking online to find where they are but it is a totally guarded secret just like the best beach/sea glass places (I know where the mother load is on the glass, BTW)...Today, as we left the car to visit the original  Motor Parkway that starts in Queens, I grabbed the empty Dunkin' Donuts cup and put it in my bike bag.  The place is loaded with wild raspberries, gets even better when you go off to the park known as  Alley Pond Park.  Go into the trails & there they are.  Dreamy ripe raspberries-

Well, I went to visit an old hangout that boasts raspberry heirloom plants yesterday that bloom a little earlier than the usual thickets you find everywhere.  The best place to find the raspberries and blackberries are at your local mansion estate.  Most likely because of high taxes these places are available to you as a museum or some other public venue, such as a park.  Back in the day, many of these old haunts were self sufficient and grew much of their own food.  Most of the perennial plants are rare heirloom specimens.  You can always take a snippet of roses or berries and hit it with rooting powder.  I do as I refuse to pay for heirloom plants.

Here are some identifiers~

Raspberry leaves







Blackberry Leaf



I like to mix them into my

Watermelon Slushies

and then dump the seeds
at the bottom of the glass
into a garden bed for free
plants next year




One of my secret raspberry stashes is located on the grounds of


HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

100 Crescent Beach Rd
Glen Cove, NY 11542
516-571-8040

As you pull up to the main house, veer to the right up that driveway.  A large raspberry bramble is immediately to your left behind the old garages.  Many more brambles in the immediate area and the forest-like trails.

Later in the month you can hit this spot.  Loaded with berry brambles...


Caumsett

Lloyd Harbor, NY 11743

Check out all of the GoldCoastMansions.com

-On the morning of the hunt several hundred pheasants were released into the woods. Men, called beaters, and dogs flushed the pheasants out of the woods towards clearings where Field and his friends were stationed with their guns. At the end of the day, the hunters returned to the mansion Main House for a pheasant dinner. Although hundreds of pheasants were shot during the hunts, many managed to escape the hunter’s guns. Their descendants can occasionally still be seen roaming in the woods and fields of the Park.


The gray path to the right of the parking area is loaded


Caumsett State Park   Go have a look 

Rare crystal geodes can be found on the beach but they are brown in color.  Many perfectly shaped large rocks on shore