Yet more produce from the garden

I went outside to check on Fleck the broody Serama hen and give her some fresh food and water.

I then spent 5 mins in the veg garden and Orchard

This is what I picked. 

And the peppers and tomatoes which are from an earlier 5 min trip into the polytunnel.

8 lb of Tom Putt apples, 6 lbs of Beth pears, 6 lbs of Victoria plums, 3lbs of Runner beans (Lady Di) 3 lbs of Climbing French beans (Blue Lake)

8 lbs of Courgettes (Black Beauty, Yellow Zuccini and Nice du Rond)

4 lbs of Red Peppers (Sweet California) and 5 lbs of assorted coloured Tomatoes.

I need to make freezer Soup/Chutney/Jam to clear out the freezers of last year's produce, so we can have room to start to process this year's produce.

And get the Dehydrator out of the loft! 

Decanting old cider.

I really do NOT know why the photos are so big...I am putting them up as small, as I always have done, but they are coming out huge....?


This is last years cider waiting to be decanted into smaller containers.

We sterilised everything then started the syphoning process.






Mmmm lovely cider

and the end result! The cider tastes good!

We will bottle a demijohn into some glass wine bottles to keep, but the rest can stay in these plastic 5 L containers... they are water bottles but are exactly the same as the plastic demijohns one can buy...so we have recycled them!

That way if the cider is still fermenting there will just be a mess and not a mess AND shards of glass!

Clearing out the Polytunnel, Jam making and other domestic things.

We have had a terrible crop of top fruit this year. Most of the plum trees had virtually no fruit; the one tree which ALWAYS has a good crop (the Blaisdon) the fruit was rotting on the trees before it was ripe. due to the continuous rain we had in August. Compostman managed to pick about 10 lbs of fruit, normally we pick nearer a couple of hundred!

So having picked the fruit ealier in the week, last night Compostman made some Blaisdon Red Plum jam .

It is very tasty!

As we have had such a dreadful fruit harvest this year, these jars of Jam will be a most welcome addition to the Jam and Chutney Store.









While Compostman was making jam ( note the late hour on the clock face!) I was washing and slicing in half 4 Kg of cherry tomatos, picked yesterday from the polytunnel.





I have cleared nearly all the toms out of there now, just a few left at the top of the plants to ripen. I always feel that THIS IS IT, the end of Summer and the start of Autumn.



I have HAD to clear the tunnel out because the mild damp weather has bought on an earlier(for us) start of Botrytis and other mould growth in the PT and I do NOT want the ripening stuff to go mouldy!

So...a nearly empty PT...

always makes me feel sad, somehow.....

Sunday produce and work

Well despite my previous post I seem to have still got a lot done yesterday!

Eggs 3 ( Thank you Ginger, Cathy and Henny)

Cherry Tomatos picked 3 kg
Peppers picked 4 Kg
Marrows 4 Kg ( 4 )


Also
Blanched and froze 3 Kg courgettes and 3 Kg whole toms
Put to dehydrate 3 Kg courgettes and 4 Kg of toms

The dehydrator can do 1.5 Kg cougettes and and 2 Kg tom slices at a time and it takes about 8 hours to do at a cost of about 35 p

4 Kg peppers picked waiting for me now...and 4 Kg ( 4 ) marrows...also waiting for me to chutney? or do something with them...

need to start wine and make jam from damsons frozen last year....as we have precisely 3 damsons on the tree this year!!

but not right now......

Weighing and counting the produce

Normally I just have an idea visually of how much food there is in the garden and polytunnel and adjust our eating habits accordingly. We are usually (apart from last year) self sufficient in apples, plums, berries of various sorts, spuds, onions, spinach, leeks, green beans, tomatoes, herbs, salads, courgettes and parsnips, by a mixture of growing them and freezing/bottling them for later use. We also grow most of our requirements for peppers, aubergines, cucumbers etc in the summer

AND I grow and dry herbs, rose petals and lavender ( for both culinary AND cosmetic/pot pourri uses!)

But after the disaster that was last summer, where we had no store spuds or onions, we had to buy a lot of fruit and veg and I didn't like it one bit. It also made me realise how much I take for granted being able to harvest what I want and eat it half an hour later, or eat our own frozen french beans in winter, or get a spud from the store to have Baked spud for a quick lunch.


So....I have started to weigh some of the stuff I harvest, especially from the polytunnel. I am NOT going to do it for the spuds from the garden at the moment, its just silly as there are too many! We have been eating entirely our own spuds since the start of June, but I WILL weigh the maincrop spuds when we actually DO lift them to store them

I am also not going to include salad stuff or herbs either as that would just get plain silly too! I do not buy any salad stuff from April through till October at all and we eat salad only sporadically during the rest of the year and that is only what I can grow in the polytunnel....


This year we are not yet harvesting the Onions as they are still putting on growth but they are looking good for a fine crop to store and use through the winter. The French Beans are not yet ready and the Leeks and Parsnips, although they will be good, are obviously not yet ready either. The Broad beans were rubbish this year, as were the Shallots. Carrots we are eating now are the thinnings from the rows although I shall begin to dig up the big ones soon...and freeze some of them for winter use. I have also got some more Carrots and Turnips in for a quick crop to eat and store in the autumn! Brassicas don't do well here...the pigeons massacre the lot and if they don't, the squirrels do........so I have not bothered to grow any previously.........BUT I am trying a few in the polytunnel this year so we shall see....

Sweetcorn...well I grow some as a treat but only about 30 plants and quite often the squirrels get a lot of them.

We now get 5 or 6 eggs a day from the 6 hens, even though Thursday keeps laying soft shelled eggs ( which she then treads on, the silly girl.....)

So...a lot of food and if we eat a fairly restricted diet we could not buy much in the way of fruit or veg!

And as an excercise to help my feeble memory I am going to note down as much of the stuff I harvest as I can remember!

I didn't do this earlier in the month day by day but I HAVE weighed the stuff as it comes in the house so.....

what has been harvested from the start of cropping, earlier in the month, until 24/07/07... EXCLUDING what we have also eaten !

Tomatos 8 Kg,
12 Cucumbers 500g each,
Courgettes 8 Kg,
Carrots 3 Kg
5 Kg Blackcurrants (frozen, some made into Blackcurrant Vodka)
4 Kg Redcurrants (Compostman made into 8 jars Jelly)
2 Kg Gooseberries (frozen, awaiting me to get on and make Chutney)


Tayberries ahem they get eaten before anything can be made from them I am afraid!


NO Rivers Early plums..( damn those squirrels!) and Pears likewise...and it is going to be a rubbish year for plums generally by the look of it...a combination of weather and squirrel I suspect.

THEN everyday for a few days I shall try to remember to post what I harvest!

25/07/08 2 Cucumbers 500g each, Tomatoes 2 Kg , Courgette 4 Kg, 6 eggs
26/07/08 Cherry Toms 600g, 1 Aubergine 150 g! ( first one hurrah!) 6 eggs
27/07/08 Toms 500g, 1 Cucumber 750 g whopper!, Courgettes 1 Kg, 1 Aubergine 200g, 4 eggs
28/07/08 Toms 1 Kg, Courgettes 2 Kg , 2 Aubergines 250 g each, 5 eggs


The Aubergines are a long thin variety called ( surprise) Long Purple which are really good for Ratatouille. The Tomatos are a mixture of Beef, various eating and cherry varieties.

I shall try to remember to do this every time I post...as it will help me to keep track of what we DO get from the garden! And if you ever visit at this time of year be prepared to be fed on tomato and courgette omlette, potatos and salads!

(Actually thats what we seem to be eating a lot of!)

Harvesting the fruit!

We have a couple of gooseberry bushes, one dessert, one for cooking, a couple of blackcurrent bushes and one redcurrent bush...and this year we have had a mixed crop.

The gooseberries were ok but not many on the bushes.

The blackcurrent bushes...one has none, the other is loaded...and the redcurrant bush is also laden.

Compostman rigged up a fruit cage over the redcurrant bush again this year ( no prizes for working out what it was in a former life!) ...as the birds really love the redcurrent and leave the blackcurrents alone in preference...



























SO...jam, jelly and chutney on the way I guess!