Blackthorn/Sloe gin/sloe port

I would love to make sloe gin but have never been able to find any bushes here in Scotland. I did think of buying some but put it out of my mind until now. Mmmmmmm! Might look again. :0)

They need to be about six feet tall roughly,and will take a number of years to begin flowering but I would warn you to be very cautious about planting them in the garden because they sucker very enthusiastically. I have blackthorns here left over from field edges when the house was built. The blossom is beautiful, sloes appear in some years and not others, but suckers pop up everywhere all the time, sometimes a long way from the parents. I have found them even in the lawn many yards from the parents and just today I was taking a couple out of the rockery..
They are very much a plant of the wild hedgerow for me.
Plant them in a local hedgerow...

Sloe gin and then sloe port are very easy to make if not a bit messy. I used to sit there with a tooth pick pricking every one of the 1bl of berries it takes to make the gin but now I just freeze them 1st and when defrosted they go solf so just need to give a gentle squeeze to split the skin. Laura really hunted around locally and a xmas present so don't feel cannot plant. Will just have to keep a very close eye on them but thanks for warning. Jen

Perhaps there's a reason why they were hard to find in a nursery...

Perhaps you could use a barrier membrane? Good luck anyway - one of our members much further north than I am swears by them as wildlife hedge plants so maybe its worse further south.

We have lots of blackthorn growing wild around the hedgerows here.
I once(in 2010) cut one down for a customer as it was growing at the back of his garden that backed onto fields.
I knelt on one of the cuttings by mistake and a thorn went through my knee pad .......I thought I had pulled it all out but, my knee kept swelling up and then going down over the next few months but, in April 2011, it came up and didn't go down again. I was in agony and ended up in hospital for 4 days on anti biotic drips. They dug it out and WA S only the tiniest spec had been left in but it certainly made its presence felt. understanderby, probably,I don't think I'll be making any sloe gin or port ...ha ha

Ouch! Carting cut off branches to the bonfire is a dodgy business too though so far we've avoided anything as nasty as that. Definitely not a plant for a small garden.

Ditto, ouch. Poor you. Gardening can be such a hazzard zone but all all love it. I used to be a nurse and saw a lot of injuries from gardening over the years.

Might be interesting to have a blog of all our injuries - pokes in the eye, forks through the foot etc!

Lol I'm sure we have all had them! At the moment I'm clearing my side of next doors holly hedge. My fingers are sore from the holly getting through my gloves :-) and they are extra thick gloves! Well can't complain, couldn't do any gardening for the whole of april beginning of may as I had a dog bite that nearly went through my hand and wasn't allowed to use it. The bright side is I can now attack those weeds. So are you going to start the blog on garden injuries :-). Coffee break over back to those weeds.

Ha Ha...yes, I'm sure you did Jen....
The young nurse on my ward laughed out loud when my wife brought me a magazine in (Amateur Gardening) and when I was looking through it after shed gone I found an article about a man who had to have his arm amputated after ignoring the signs.
I showed the nurse and although, not really funny...she thought it was funny in an ironic way and every nurse/doctor/cleaner etc who came on the ward had to be told the stroy by her.She certainly saw the funny side!

Nurses get a very warped sense of humour am afraid. Love the mag your wife brought in for you, but not the arm bit. I take it knee ok now.

Yes.......no problem since it was scraped out although, I wouldn't want to go through that again....ha ha, I thought I was being brave allowing the doctor to scrape out the abscess and debris without anaestecic but, in hindsight, it was foolishness ....not bravery!!!!

Lol. My hubby and daughter hate needles. Daughter got to have wisdom teeth out. She is booked to go into hospital to be knocked out :-).

My father, the gardener, used to say that the black thorn was best avoided!

We used to collect sloes locally and I recall making sloe gin one year. To hide it away I placed it carefully right at the back of a bottom shelf in the kitchen. Then I forgot about the two bottles there.

A very long time later I smashed some Pyrex dishes in that cupboard. I carefully (!) put my arm inside to pick up some of the larger pieces and was horrified when I saw that my arm was now covered in "blood".

My Other Half panicked until we noticed a delicious, pungent aroma. Yes, the Pyrex dishes had smashed both bottles of sloe gin!

Eirlys thank god your arm was ok but shame about the gin :-). I never realized black thorn bushes were so controversial. Its hard after all you have said but you see for a long time I was a single parent with my ex living abroad. My daughted has grown up with the biggest heart towards me and goes the extra mile to do thoughtful things. When she was 14 she saved up her pocket money to take me out for dinner, she has organised birthday days up to london and west end shows which she insisted on paying for. The black thorns were just another one of those thoughts from her and that why as troublesome as they will be I will kept them. :-)

Yes, you can do no other under the circumstances. They should hopefully be OK for a number of years . Your daughter sounds a lovely person.

Thank you Steragram. I think she is. I could not be more proud of her. You always hear the horror stories of kids from single parents. She was only 6 when my ex husband went and 16 when I met my hubby. I'm lucky, as far as she is concerned he is her Dad.

I make Sloe Gin every year Jen we put it away for a year always using last years this year and then melt chocolate putting the left over sloes in it then let the chocolate go hard again ,lovely Sloe Gin chocolate ....remove the stones if you would rather not have them ...

Hi Amy, thank you for your message. The site that I found the recipe for the Sloe Port said about that but have never got around to doing that yet. Like the idea of using the same berries to make the Gin then Port then lastly cover with chocolate :-) I would highly recommend doing the port. Had some friends come up from Kent so got the Port out and left on table and next morning bottle was empty from them. They had sore head that morning lol. Hows your garden doing after the flood?

Sorry Amy, I ment to add that if you fancy it and want the recipe let me know and I will PM message it to you.

Thanks Jen I would like the recipe I haven't made the Sloe Port , we have friends who ask " is the Sloe Gin ready yet " always at Christmas time and yes they do drink too much its yummy but stronger than they realize ... the floods have vanished leaving a thin layer of dusty dirty we have more rain this afternoon its never ending ,what happened to summer ? :o(