We’ve covered a fair amount of the neglected or hidden edibles, but this one managed to hide in plain sight for a while. I noticed it when we drove past one of these trees recently and Aub and I came to the conclusion that it was red berry season.

Deciding to investigate it a bit further than the most base of observations, I found one again and was able to figure out that it is a Kousa Dogwood. It’s actually quite common, as it is a disease-resistant substitute for the American Dogwood. These particular trees are located on Ashford-Dunwoody Road along Blackburn Park. The fruit is a pleasant novelty, and tastes peachy. And as of September 2nd, there are still loads of unripe fruits on the trees there. Stop by and grab some.

Chris enjoying some cider as he grinds apples in our pedal-powered grinder

Well, it seems like the season has just begun, but we’re putting the word out here early so yall can make it: Ciderfest the Sixieth is happening this Octobruary the Sixteenthty. For all the apples and pears and weird stuff that we aren’t able to donate, we cut it up, freeze it, and turn it to delicious juice! Bring the family and come celebrate a great fruit picking season with us! More details are available at our official invite page.

A film about 5 homeless people in Atlanta, showing Friday at 5pm at the Carter Center as part of DocuFest and Sunday at 11am at the Hyatt Regency as part of the Peachtree Village International Film Festival. It comes very highly recommended, and I’ll be there tomorrow at the Carter Center.

Recently spotted at Briarcliff and Clifton. This passionfruit relative is easy to come by, but actual edible fruit is rare. If anyone can find one with actual fruit/seeds, I want it big time. You will be crowned ruler of the concrete jungle in honor.

Well, it seems that the folks over at Atlanta magazine decided that we were worth writing about. There’s a blurb about us in the August edition, out on newsstands now (or available here). We will be offering free autographs of these articles until the end of the year, after which time the price will be $1300. However, by our forecasting, our autographs will be worth much more on the open market at that point, and it’s still quite a deal.

On another note….we have also been named IMPACTOR of the month by Elemental Impact, a consulting organization for sustainable business solutions. Sweet!

And finally, thanks to everyone from the CDC that came out on last week’s pick — we just got the last of the apples off, and we’ve already just about matched our donation total for the entire year of 2009! We can’t do it without you folks, so I hope you’re know you’re appreciated.

Craig

Anyone have an idea of what this is? We found it last weekend while picking apples.

After writing this post and describing what it is, I suddenly have a strong inkling of what it might be. I submit to you exhibit A, an illustration of the Olea europaea, also known as the olive:

Many thanks to all who came out to pick with us this past weekend! As you can see from our truckbed photo at the end of the day, we picked many hundreds of pounds of fresh peaches and apples, and were able to donate over 200 lbs. to the food bank at Druid Hills United Methodist Church.

We’re now running in to a problem we face every year: sorting. This is something we have to deal with all year of course, but once we start bringing in 300+ lbs of peaches or apples at a time, it gets to be a problem. We wash and inspect all of our fruit, and throw out a fair amount of bug-ridden or rotten fruit. Any of you folks have ideas as to how we might streamline this a bit? We’re thinking robots of some sort, or maybe just a giant, brillo-pad-lined tumbler.

It is with great pleasure that I hereby do proclaim upon this 21st day of July in the year 2,010 that the season for picking fruit is heretofore commenced!

And let it be known that from this date we as Concrete Jungle will be going out at least every weekend from now through October.

So….

Come pick with us! We’ve got a goal this year of donating 3,575 lbs (5 times as much as last year), and to be honest, I’m secretly holding out for donating 10 times as much. Either way, we need your help! Donate your trees! Come out pickin! Tell your friends!

How could you pass these up? They’re just out there waitin for you.

Traditionally, June is a bit of a quiet month…mulberries and serviceberries are pretty much gone, and lots of other things are still fattening up. While things have definitely been quiet around here, we’ve discovered a lot of exciting things on the horizon.

The first is that, by all accounts, this is going to be an absolute bumper crop of a year for fruit. Every fruit tree I can think of is well laden. We’re going to be working hard. We’ve added over 30 new points to the food map since the end of last year and the ability to filter out specific fruits on the map, so hopefully you can find something tasty for yourself.

The second is that for as long as we’ve been picking fruit in this city, we keep discovering new things, like plums, nectarines, blueberries, and cherries. We’ve got a small pick scheduled for this Sunday, 4th of July to try to get some of these in-betweeners. Nothing too time-consuming, and we’ve all probably got plans later on in the day anyways.

Blueberries in Candler Park

We had our first outing this past Sunday, and it was all we could ask for — weather was perfect, company was nice, and we got a whole gang of tasty berries.

Items of note:

• Serviceberries! These are a new addition this year, and me, Lisandro and Aubrey were pretty wary of them since we didn’t know what they looked like and had never eaten them. We eventually took a leap of faith and ate them. They’re great! Everyone I know minus one person loves them. To put it another way, serviceberries are also known as sugar plums. Now you know what those kids were dreaming about the night before Christmas. And, now that I know what they look like, I’m spotting them everywhere, so check out the food map for some places, and I can point you to some more if you’re having trouble finding them.
• People! We had an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers along with us. Trang, Pam, Hillary, Kirsten, Dougall and Maria — thanks a ton! I really hope we have yall out with us again sometime soon. We also encountered two lovely ladies while we were out picking serviceberries who were extremely complimentary of Concrete Jungle and they said our mothers had raised us right. Who could argue with that?
• Pie! You probably some idea of what happened here.
• Photos! You can see what you missed out on at our photo stream.
• Data! Now that we’re off to a new year our donation counter has reset and if you click on it you’ll get some brand new graphs that we’re looking forward to filling up over the next couple of months.

See you on Sunday!