“The season’s first raspberries, fresh from the garden, in a basket on the kitchen counter—aglow with color, flesh like soft velvet, giving off an intoxicating aroma…can anyone doubt that summer has arrived?” – Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Fruit

by Lisa Giroday, Sandra Lopuch and Sam Philips | You said it, Alice! Except we live in Vancouver, not Berkeley. While the weather may be patchy, the raspberries are ripe! For us at VG, summer is at least somewhat here when you bust out this little gem of a recipe book by Waters, and leaf through the pages with berry stained digits.

Raspberries grow in a myriad of colours: golden, red, purple and black. There are both cultivated and wild varieties of raspberries. Our favourite is the wild native species of BC black raspberry, Rubus leucodermis. They are high in antioxidants, whatever that means, and with summer and everbearing types, they have a long and abundant season. With all of their overlapping ripening times, you can harvest them from late June until the first frost!

Where to find them: pick them at a farm, in the wild, or buy them at your local farmers market. Picking berries at a local u-pick will surely evoke a few childhood memories. Go this week if possible, as many farms just grow the summer-bearers.

What to do with them: make raspberry jam! We use local honey to sweeten ours. A jar of homemade jam is a great trade for someone else’s homebrew, pickled beets, or, if you’re oddly competitive or self-deprecating, more jam (maybe trade for a different flavour). And freeze a few bags of raspberries for future smoothies and desserts – reap the benefits of your harvest throughout the dark winter months of Vancouver! Also, you can use the raspberry leaves to make a medicinal tea.

Lastly, when eating raspberries fresh, and you have more than you can pop into your mouth without getting tired—Alice suggests putting them in a bowl, dusting them with sugar, and pouring some thick cream over them. Do this as raspberries continue late into the summer, when they join forces with apricots, peaches, and other fruits.

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Victory Gardens is a team of local urban farmers for hire. Lisa, Sandra and Sam help transform tired or underused residential and commercial green spaces into food producing gardens. Their goal is to challenge the way communities use space and to participate in the change needed to consume food more sustainably. For the rest of the growing season, they’ve hooked up with Scout to share some cool tips and tricks on how to get the best from of our own backyards.