Jam Making in Winter!!!!!

With the weather being so miserable outside, I often take the opportunity to do what I call “Inside jobs”.  You know the sort of thing, anything indoors which needs mending, rooms redecorated, cupboards cleared out.  The contents of the deep freeze is a good example, I have one shelf stacked with frozen soft fruit picked from the garden.  This frozen produce is used throughout the year in pies, crumbles and summer fruit puddings but just occasionally we have too much and by the beginning of the following year there is too much frozen fruit and not enough space.

 As you can see from the two photographs some frozen produce had been in the freezer for longer than I planned.  Once defrosted the fruit is safe to eat and to cook with. 

Not only did I have raspberries and tayberries which were grown and frozen in 2019 but I had frozen some blackberries in a plastic bag and failed to write a date on the bag. 

In our household, one of the food stuffs which I can guarantee will definitely get eaten is homemade jam and these three fruits will make a beautiful mixed berry jam.

Once defrosted I simply weigh the fruit including the liquid, make a note of the weight then tip it into the preserving pan; by the way I find it always defrosts to a semi solid/semi liquid state.

 

Then using a low heat the fruit and liquid is heated up and cooked through until the fruit is soft.

 Whatever the fruit and liquid weighed I then measure out an equal amount of preserving sugar.

I then add the preserving sugar to the cooked fruit and heat it over a gentle heat; I stir the jam mixture occasionally until all the sugar crystals have dissolved.  Once I am sure that no sugar crystals remain I turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil and boil it rapidly for about 5 – 7 minutes or until setting point is reached.

Lastly, I leave the jam to cool slightly, this gives me enough time to sterilise some preserving jars. I bottle the jam in the usual way and, of course, put wax discs on the surface to create a seal.

Delicious mixed berry jam to enjoy during the coming months – and a slightly emptier deep freeze.

Dreadful Weather but not in the Glasshouse

Here in Northumberland for the last three weeks we have had continuous torrential rain, gales and heavy snow fall.  The garden is sodden everywhere, it squelches when I walk to the guinea pig shed, even in the fruit cage where the ground is covered in a thick mulch of composted woody shreddings I can feel the ground is saturated.  I feel I really should be doing something horticulturally related in order to lift my spirits. Obviously doing anything outside is out of the question so I decided to sort out my glasshouse.  I do this annually generally in about April but this year I might as well to do it a bit earlier and I thought you might be interested to see what I do in order to maintain the plants in this artificial environment.

This gloomy picture taken from the bathroom window looking east doesn't inspire me to do anything except stay indoors.

  

Yes, I know, it looks quite a mess.  Dead leaves and fern fronds litter the floor; everything needs to be checked for signs of decay, dead leaves cut away and checking which plants need to go into bigger pots.

On the left near the door there is a fern, I’m not sure of its name but it’s been in that spot for a few years and it seems very happy, the dead and half dead foliage just needs to be trimmed off to make room for new growth.

Next I have two Vietnamese coriander plants which are still in the plastic pots they were in when I bought them from the garden centre.  Apparently they are very vigorous, so they just need to go into bigger pots with fresh compost. I bought these because of their tropical appearance but I should really try using them in cooking.

Next is Zantedeschia, only a few straggly leaves need attention. 

This is one of many small Musella lasiocarpas I have (hardy Golden Lotus banana).  Again dead leaves are removed and they are checked to see if any roots are bursting out of the bottom, if so into a bigger pot they go.

As you can see from this picture Hedychium aurantiacum has outgrown its pot – so needs repotting.

This Eletaria cardamomum, bought from Edinburgh Botanic Garden a few years ago, needs a trim and it’s good enough to go back in the border.

Not so for the Monstera deliciosa, as you can see its roots are badly congested, a few minutes later and a happy plant.

This corner is jam packed - in the front there is a potted Geranium maderense, which I brought in for the winter as in previous years I’ve lost them. 

Behind is a Bougainvillea in winter dormancy, also in this group of pots is an avocado which I grew from seed and at the back on the far right is a Cestrum elegans and an abulilton.

This rabbits foot fern (Davallia canariensis) is growing quite happily in a large plastic aquatic basket, I find these pots are ideal for aerial plants. 

Underneath there is another fern growing through a painted bamboo seat.

Both ferns look a whole lot better after a haircut.

After I had finished the glasshouse was tidy and every plant looked a whole lot better.  All that was left to do was to cover all exposed compost with Strulch.  I find Strulch deters slugs and snails from damaging the plants; it also helps the soil retain moisture.

What a gloomy morning

Wednesday morning I woke up, opened the curtains and saw this gloomy view down the valley facing west.

Oh No, I thought, not another overcast miserable day – perhaps I should turn on the SAD light.

Then gradually the clouds cleared, the sun came out and by mid morning the view had changed to this.

My spirits started to lift so I took a walk around the garden to see what splashes of colour were still about.

In the orchard there were a few small cooking apples left on one tree, rosy pink skin – I’ll probably leave these for the birds to eat during the winter.

 

In the hedge some primroses were flowering, sheltered from the elements by the elder bush growing next to them. I love their delicate blooms and scent, they are so pretty.

 

Surrounded by a low growing box hedge this Catananche Caeulea Major and a neighbouring Salvia Apricot Sprite were enjoying the morning sun.  Both of them are slightly tender up here and it will be a difficult decision to make when to cut down and mulch them.  But right now I think their colours are so bright and cheery I haven’t got the heart.

 

Down on the sunken terrace a little eryngium was glowing cobalt blue, just like lttle pin cushions.

 

 

As I walked towards Julius Caesar I could smell the scent of Coronella glauca Citrina, it seems to have been flowering non-stop since spring – a good purchase from my local branch of B&Q.

 

I love taking photographs of the round and shiny Sea Buckthorn berries, lovely aren’t they.

On the main lawn, I thought my large cast iron urn made a handsome portrait in the dappled morning sunlight.

 

On the pink border I found several plants basking in the sunlight - a delosperma

Salvia Hot Lips

 

And lastly I found a little Tulbaghia violacea

 

With the warmth of the sun seeping into my joints I made a cup of coffee then sat outside and enjoyed the rest of the morning.

 

Not another boring "What you can do with autumn leaves" article

The garden is just under an acre in size and in one area there is a small wood,  mainly sycamore with some white beam and holly.   For two or three months every autumn, the wood produces lots and lots and lots of wet floppy leaves.

This is how T and I cope with the large numbers we get.

There must be wind eddies around the garden because in certain places large piles of leaves congregate.  They collect in corners on the drive, against the house, in the courtyard area and in a drainage gully between the house and the courtyard. In fact, they collect in large piles everywhere.

Fortunately, these heaps make the job so much easier and quicker for us.

I find the simplest way to deal the amount we have get is to have a weekly routine of raking/sweeping them up. This means that at least one day out of seven I do approximately 5,000 steps (according to my wrist worn activity counter) just sweeping up and putting them in the leaf mould store.

Here are our two leaf mould bins, T made them from unwanted broken pallets.

As you can see the bin on the left is full up to about 3 foot, the leaf mould has been rotting down since the previous year (in this case 2018 to 2019).  Incidentally, as the contents of this pile are fine and crumbly we have already started to use it around the garden.

On the right is the section for this year (2019 to 2020).  We have so many leaves which fall over such a large area that it  is not always time efficient to shred or mow over them before they go into the bin. 

Every week before adding fresh autumn leaves to the pile, I use the garden hose to drench the contents of the bin, I then sprinkle powdered compost maker on top of the pile. 

Next, I start adding newly collected leaves on top, occasionally we have to trample the leaves down to get them all in.

We do a final sweeping and raking session when we can no longer see leaves on the trees, and at the same time take the opportunity to tidy up the borders.

It generally takes a year to 18 months for the leaves to rot down to material which is friable and ready to use, however, if we use the compost maker the leaf mould is ready to use within a year.

I find leaf mould is incredibly useful stuff to have about and it’s totally free.   I put it to so many uses around the garden, once sieved I mix it with home produced compost to be used as a potting compost, I gently fork it in around plants so it can pep up the soil, or I use it as a mulch around plants.

I hope you found this post interesting and that it made you stop and think about what it’s like to own and maintain a large(ish) garden.  As with all gardening jobs, we have to think big and do things in such a way that saves time and, most importantly, doing them properly.  

 

Wishing you happy gardening in your own patch of paradise.

Should I rename it the Bedrock Orchard?

I don’t know about you but I find that with gardening sometimes you have to admit that no matter how hard you try or what you do, at some point a plant, tree or shrub has reached the end of its life.  A good example of this happened a few weeks ago in our orchard and I thought you might be interested to hear how we replaced an ailing plum tree and at the same time discovered why it and all the other fruit trees in the orchard have suffered from disease and poor growth over the years.

The orchard the year we moved in

The oldest Victoria plum tree was beyond saving; it had dead and dying branches, suffered from leaf curl aphids and more terminally had a hole in the trunk which was visited by a woodpecker on a regular basis.   We needed a fruit tree to go in its place so visited a local garden centre and on the advice of staff chose Prunus Meteor Korai.  It should produce cherries for eating and cooking.

First things first, the destructive bit was to get rid of the old tree. Using loppers and a pruning saw we removed (husband and me) all the dead and dying branches, these were piled up in another part of the garden and left to be shredded in the usual way (see my blog How I Dispose of Wood Garden Waste). This left only the three main larger branches.

T (husband) then dug out an area radiating 2 foot away from the base of the tree. As he dug he used an axe to cut through all the roots.

Eventually all the roots had been freed and we were able to lift the tree out of the hole.

 

I then dug out the remaining old soil from the hole the tree had been growing in.  I couldn’t dig very deep down as I hit the bed rock which was about a spade’s depth under the top soil.

As you can see from the picture below the tree had a very shallow root system which was definitely caused by the thin topsoil.  As a result of this, the tree was beset with disease over the years.

Now can the fun part – planting.

 

 I mixed my own garden compost .........

with good quality compost bought from a garden centre and .......

shovelled it into the hole.

Then I pulled the root ball out of the pot and used my fingers to tease out the roots.  This is to encourage the new roots to grow outwards instead of continuing to grow around the root ball.

Next I made a well in the planting hole which I had just filled with fresh compost.  In the tree went, I then swivelled the tree around until it was facing the right way.  NB.  Plants, shrubs and trees have a front and back so when planting you should work out which side of the plant you want to face front. Basically you swivel the plant around in the hole until it looks right to you – the arrangement of the branches could be better on one side than the other.

Having decided on the right position I filled up the gap between the planting hole and the root ball using more of the new compost.  I then used my heel to firm down the soil just outside the root ball.

  I then gave the tree a jolly good water.

    

Lastly, I wrote its name on an aluminium label and hung it on one of the branches.  I always use good quality metal plant labels as I find the plastic ones become brittle with age or blow away in strong winds.

Now that I know about the issues with growing fruit trees in this garden, in future I will manage the trees slightly differently from your average orchard.  Each tree stands in its own mound of earth, this is kept free of grass and weeds, it is fed and mulched and watered in dry weather. I will prune the trees to keep them to a height and spread of no more than 12 feet, this is to limit the size of the crop and the number and weight of the branches.  There is only so much jam, chutney and pies I can make before the family gets sick of it.  So far this approach has worked with the other trees, for example, the neighbouring Bramley has a lovely thick trunk and only produces a manageable number of apples of good size and quality .  As with all the trees there is no sign of diseased or deformed, misshapen fruit.  The odd windfall is cut up and left on the bird feeder. Success!

I will post any future developments if and when they occur.

 

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