Canada: ‘Almost Compost’ Crisp – How to capture food before it ends up in the landfill

Vancouver is a trove of fresh seasonal fruit!

By Doni Gratton
City Farmer Volunteer
Sept 14, 2026

Have you ever walked by a blackberry bush, full of ripe berries, and not picked at least one? What about a cherry or plum tree in the Spring? And in the late Summer, have you been tempted by the apple and fig trees, full of fresh fruit, ripe for the picking! Fresh fruit is widely available on the streets and wooded areas in cities across Coastal BC, including Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. For Free! For the price of sugar, oats, pectin and a little butter, you can create delicious desserts to keep food out of the landfill.

I regularly pick wild blackberries, salmon berries, huckleberries, saskatoon berries and salal berries in the early Summer, and wash and freeze them until I amass enough to make a batch of jam or baked dessert. The freezing also kills any remaining bugs or larvae that washing may have missed. The jam, muffins and crisps created by these delicious berries are popular with my family and make for a nice dish to share with neighbours! Salal and salmon berries are also less sweet than raspberries or blueberries, so by adding them, I create a much less sweet jam after adding the necessary sugar and pectin.

Harvesting plums, cherries or apples from a neighbourhood tree may involve a lot of scanning and trimming of tiny bugs or worm holes, but if you have the time, it’s worth it! I estimate that for every 3 intact ground apples, I can use 1. That’s not bad odds for something that is often left to rot on the ground, attracting rodents or ending up in our compost bin. If using a ladder, ensure the tree is on public property and bring a friend along to spot you and help collect the fruit. Better yet, if you have noticed that no-one else is using the fruit of a neighbour’s tree, ask them if they mind you collecting some of the fruit.

One of the ways we can reduce food waste, as well as our dependency on increasing prices at grocery stores, is to use up the fruit dropping from trees in our neighbourhoods. Observe the bushes and trees over the year, and time your harvest with the season of the fruit. Whether it’s cherries, berries, plums, figs or apples, Vancouver is a trove of fresh seasonal fruit!