Our garden has escaped from the tenuous control we had over it, apart from the lawns which husband subdues every so often with the lawnmower. We’ve lived here for many, many years now, and the previous owners had had the house from the time it was built, on what had been rough meadows with a holiday caravan park for summer visitors. Despite our best efforts – ok, our pathetic attempts, many of the wild things are becoming dominant, a very strong and vigorous ivy, prickly things, something with lots of large leaves which look somewhat similar to a grapevine and isn’t identifiable but grows like a mad thing, and of course brambles. This might seem a positive – thinking of blackberries and all the delicious things you can do with them, but our briars produce tiny, seedy, fruit with a rather bitter taste no matter how ripe they are.
I wrote about fruit cheese a little while ago and someone enquired about blackberry curd and whether I have a recipe. I’ve found a recipe described as a fruit cheese – which isn’t quite the same as a fruit curd as it doesn’t have butter. This recipe includes sloes, which sounds both interesting and delicious, so although not a blackberry curd, here it is – from my little 1944 “Cookery To-Day and To-Morrow” by Nell Heaton. She doesn’t include the amount of water needed – nor for any of the other recipes in this section, so I assume the fruit is heated gently at first to release its own juice. , :
Take equal parts of blackberries and sloes and allow ¾-1 lb of sugar for each 1 lb of fruit.
Place fruit and sugar in the preserving pan and bring to the boil.
Boil for about 45 minutes, then pass through a wire sieve, reboil for a few minutes, pot and seal.
I will continue my search for a true blackberry curd, or as Arnold Schwarzenegger might say, I’ll be black!
Lois Elsden 
Yes, our wild blackberries here can be very seedy. The flavor is hard to detect due to the seeds!
But, one year I was able to pick wild blackberries for jam in their perfect habitat: along a year round stream where they would get semi-shade and lots of water to resist our Southern California heat. The were not enormous but of good size, not too seedy, and eminently edible fresh. Fantastic flavor!
That year the jam was the best, bar none, that I have ever made or tasted. That semi-seedless jam (I strained half the seeds out) tasted richly of blackberries and had an aftertaste/aroma of old, true rose. I still dream about making more jam like that, but have never been able to get berries of the same quality and good richness of flavor.
I will search on the net as well for a blackberry curd recipe–who knows, maybe we will both get lucky.
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Isn’t it wonderful when you absolutely hit the spot with the fruit, how you make it and the end product all being perfect! Your mention of rose made me remeber when I made rose petal jam – I had a rose bush in my garden then with the most delightful smell. They were a deep deep pink, and I decided to try and make a jam – without a recipe and there was no internet then. It was so successful and so delicious, it was wonderful – like your wild blackberry jam!
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