Fruits of my Labour

21 comments

Apples & Pears. All are eaters, but I do use some for cooking as do The French.
Apples:- the pale green are ‘Greensleeves’, what’s left of them. They don’t go red, and don’t store very well. Emptied trays stacked up.
The green and red, ‘September’.
The large red a triploid ‘Jonagold Red’, is sterile and needs a pollinator, out of view at the back in stacks, with more pears.
Pears, Concord and Conference

Pear, Doyenne du Comice, a huge dumpy shaped pear with a wonderful flavour, but needs warmth. More in the trays underneath the one in the pic.

Chilean Guava, first season I have grown this. Tried the fruit in September, hard and tasteless, now the small berries are soft with an intense strawberry flavour. Would like a lot more of these. (I didn’t notice the flowers on the plants. Wonder what the look like)

Jams & Jellies
First pic:- Crab Apple Jelly. You don’t get much preserve from the fruit collected. Two batches made, one with root ginger added. The fruit is from the tree in the verge outside our property, a huge tree, producing a bountiful crop.
Second pic, Red currant jelly jam, what’s left, eaten the others. I hate making this, such a faff!
The large pic:- blackberry from my Thornless Giant. The berries made into jam, when we couldn’t keep up with stewed blackberry, apple and ice cream for lunch desert.

Anyone for G &T, the green fruit needs to ripen a bit. There are already more flower clusters opening. There are 9 fruits in various stages of development. Ps the yellow fruit is a plastic con, for decoration only.

Calamondin Oranges beginning to form. The blossom, must be 70+ is filling the conservatory with scent, delicious.

What to do with the small bitter Calamondin Oranges.
Preserve them in sugar syrup or dry them in this solution to candy them.
These are the remainder from last year.

Blackcurrant jam only one pot, already eaten. I love them as do the birds, who had most of the fruit before I netted the bush.
The birds also had most of the Raspberries.

I had 4 Pear trees and 4 Apple trees but removed one of each last year. Still we’ve had so much fruit, I’ve been giving trays and tray to friends, and although on dwarfing rootstocks the tree are so large that I have cut them back drastically. I can’t be doing with hanging off ladders at my age anymore.

My Fig, as I previously mentioned dropped its two crops of 13 fruits this year, so disappointing and the supposedly self-fertile Kiwi, although it flowers in abundance has never produced a fruit. Think I was sold a dud there, but it is very ornamental.
One gooseberry bush, always get sawfly, not in a very suitable situation, hardly produces any fruit. One more year then it’s of to a new home if it doesn’t improve.
A rhubarb, which we rarely eat.
Just remembered the Loganberry, as I’ve been tying the new shoots in today.
A young root from my next door neighbour but produced some fruit this year.
Just need to finish pruning the blackberry, then all these plants are finished for the winter.

6 Oct, 2017
5 likes

Comments

Thorneyside

You've got your own greengrocers going on there Siris! I made lots of jam from plums at the nursery and have a lot of blackberries in the freezer to make jam when I've got some time. Still picking the odd raspberry but I don't tell my grandaughter. By the time she comes home from work, gone!

6 Oct, 2017

Cottagekaren

Wow! Great harvest Sue! I love Greensleeves. I first tasted them when I was studying and used to pass a fruit shop on my way home. They have been a favourite of mine since, but never see them in Scotland. I took out my Chilean Guava this summer. It was nice for the evergreen foliage, but the fruits were too small and sour to bother with.

6 Oct, 2017

Siris

Karen, maybe your Guava berries weren't ripe enough. The ones I've just eaten were soft, sweet and delicious.

6 Oct, 2017

Cottagekaren

Yeah...probably just too far north for it here.

6 Oct, 2017

Steragram

Wow Siris that is so impressive! They would keep a small army going over the winter.

I had to smile over you hating to make redcurrant jelly. My OH can't have sugar to its no use me making a lot so I let a neighbour pick them.She took them nearly all away and came back with two jars of lovely jelly - can't be bad?

6 Oct, 2017

Cottagekaren

Brilliant Stera! Takes all the hard work out of it :) I forgot I was going to say that I also cook with dessert apples Sue. Because my vars. don't keep well either.

6 Oct, 2017

Seaburngirl

lots of fruit there and so well organised storage. I need to do something with my cooking apples. they don't store well either.

7 Oct, 2017

Gnarly_gnome

Well thats you sorted out .... have you a juicer ? that would come in handy ....
Calamondin Oranges I soak mine in brandy and have over christmas with icecream

7 Oct, 2017

Eirlys

Siris: I am really envious of the fruit crop. My Other Half isn't a vegetable or fruit grower and I was always used to masses of fruit trees and shrubs. :O(

This year our one Bramley tree had around two dozen apples. Our other tree lost all its flowers one frosty night and we had not one apple. Cherry tree still too "young" to do much bit is seemed to be trying. My two gooseberry bushes produced enough fruit for one dessert....mine! The only success: the wineberry. This cropped brilliantly.

We are usually given bags of Bramleys but none this year. I did stew and freeze given pears, though.

Lucky in that we have friends who treat us to home made jam but I am the only one that can eat that (OH is diabetic)

Gnarly gnon : Ever used a rumtopf jar?

7 Oct, 2017

Lincslass

My remaining apple tree has been loaded this year, I've been religiously collecting them and placing in trays as I have done every year since we moved in, normally they store well and I use them gradually, the birds love their tasty treat through the winter months, other years I can keep using them well into March/April. however this year they are not storing, every day I'm picking over the trays and having to discard loads, I've not done anything different, wondering if its to do with the fact that they have ripened at least six weeks early and its simply too warm, luckily there are still plenty on the tree and the temps are dropping so I might manage to save some of them.....

7 Oct, 2017

Gnarly_gnome

Eirlys

Just had a look at them "rumtopf jar" very interesting thanks for the heads up

7 Oct, 2017

Siris

Stera, like the idea of someone else doing the preparation and you just doing the eating.
Special Rumptof jars in Germany, as you probably know Eirlys, large and can be quite decorative.

7 Oct, 2017

Siris

Lincs, last of the fruit is was taken off the trees at least 3 weeks ago. I start with Greensleeves and do a bit a day, eating the bruised ones, that's the ones I've managed to drop.
I have designed a special apple picking apparatus for the ones out of reach. It's a clear plastic bottle cut in half, the hole at the neck end inserted into a broom handle. The wide open middle has a V notch cut and you push this notch to where the apple stalk is attached. If it is ripe it drops into the bottle, simples!

7 Oct, 2017

Steragram

That is Clever Siris!! OH was very impressed too.

When I was given a lot of windfalls I froze the ones that wouldn't store ready cooked and thawed them out for crumbles. Varied those by adding whatever else was available - red or black currants, sultanas, frozen raspberries etc.

Has anyone tried juicing them to store, and if so how did you prevent the juice oxidising before you finished the batch? Adding lemon juice affects the flavour.

I've been making apple carrot and celery juice for break fast lately, or apple and green pepper. Sounds unlikley but its really delicious!

7 Oct, 2017

Siris

Sorry Stera, I don't have a juicer. Think Gnarly is the one to ask.

7 Oct, 2017

Gnarly_gnome

I do have a juicer but only drink it fresh I never store more than a couple of days

Siris that bottle apple picker sounds a great idea

8 Oct, 2017

Thorneyside

That picker sounds good and just the job for the Conference pears along our lane. Brilliant idea.

8 Oct, 2017