The Humble Blackcurrant

My childhood summer holidays, growing up on a country farm, was all about saving something.

If it wasn't saving the Hay it was saving the Turf.

Essential for the winter months ahead.

Then there was saving the fruit, from the birds.

My mother had ten Blackcurrant bushes (and four Gooseberry bushes) growing in the garden.

And once those juicy wee black berries started to ripen it was 'all hands on deck' to pick them.

Thankfully there were plenty of hands (I am the eldest of seven) so the job was a little easier considering the amount of bushes.

Then we lived on jam sandwiches for our school lunches!

We all love Blackcurrant jam our house and in our first year here we planted three Ben Lomond Blackcurrant bushes behind the polytunnel. And they love it there.

In June I put up a 'fruit cage' of sorts, some wood and a large sheet of netting, to keep the birds out.

And thankfully I had a bit of help picking the ripened fruit.

This was our third harvest and a wonderful harvest it was too, nearly 4kg for jam making in the future.

Garden reflection

I love Spring, and the Summer isnt too bad either, both full of colour and growth.

I love all new things regardless of what they are.

But Autumn is different, its about harvesting and easing into the hibernation that is Winter.

Its also a time of reflection, looking back at what I did grow, or tried to grow, how it did and what I might do differently next year.

This year was a bit tough for growing vegetables and not just for us, for all gardeners from what I have read in blogs and on twitter - it has been such a wet year that the slugs took over, they came and destroyed nearly everything in their path.

In our garden they started at the Rhubarb in the Spring, and every evening I went out on 'slug patrol' picking them off the leaves and putting down beer traps.

Thankfully the Rhubarb survived and I have been harvesting it since (and baking plenty of Tarts).

Yummiest in a Tart

Then the slugs turned their attention to the Carrot seedlings.......they ate everything, not a carrot survived.

After that it was the Onions turn, they didnt do so well either. It seems that Onion greenery was this years delicacy in the slug world and so the beer traps and my evenings of 'de-slugging' were needed again. I think I lost that battle.

I do believe the slugs had more beer this year than myself!

We have lovely Onions (albeit small) but because they have no green stems left they wont store very well unfortunately.

Sarpo Mira spuds/wee Onions

The Homeguard potatoes got blight and the slugs helped 'clean up' so the harvest was very small.

But the Sarpo Mira potatoes which are blight resistent did very well (as well as expected considering how wet the soil remained all summer) and I havent found any signs of slug attack either.

We are still harvesting them, but I must harvest them all this week and harden them off in the polytunnel so they store better.
I pulled this mutant one the other day, gorgeous isnt it? not.


Mutant spud (size of tablespoon)

The Parsnips are actually doing very well, (slug free) but I think the soil has been a little too fertile for them so they are all very leggy. I am learning, slowly.

Spindly Parsnips

We also tried growing Beetroot this year but they failed miserabley.

Have to start planning next years crop soon. Think its time to start ordering seeds.

Storing our fruit..yum yum

Well at the beginning of the year we never thought we would have so much fruit, and not have anything to do with the growing of it!

In spring we didnt even know we had a Plum tree, and only realised we had Damson trees growing in our ditch when the fruit started appearing, much to our delight!!

So the past couple of weeks have been spent making Plum jam, trying out Plum vodka and then this week I harvested the Damsons.....with help

The trees are laden down

But unfortunately most of the fruit are too high up for us to reach, even with the ladder, so we'll have to be content with 2 kg of 'em

But we dont mind really, I managed to get 11 pots of jam from them...yummy

As for the never ending fruit from the Plum tree I harvested the last of the fruit the other day, before the wind or the wasps got them. The tree gave us nearly 18 kg of fruit!  So apart from loads of jam I tried to make some Plum Compote but decided to blitz it instead and make a coulis. After trying some on ice-cream I spooned the remainder into ice cube trays to freeze

Then bagged them for use whenever we feel like some..

Its September already!

I cant believe how fast the last few weeks have gone, whats that all about?

I feel like we havent had a break, but I blame the fact we are getting an extension put onto the house for that. We have kinda been tied to the house for most of the summer.

The kids are gone back to school today and now its time to start looking towards the winter, and start storing what veg we have left.

We have to decide how we are going to store the spuds we have yet to harvest, (we have loads of British Queens still in the ground) and get them before the slugs do!!

The onions we planted late have started to fall over, and look nice and big:

The hail last wk damaged them a bit

We will have to take them out too in a week or so.
We're still learning, so everything has to be fully researched first before we go ahead and do it.

The parsnips are gonna be left in the ground for the forseeable future, and we have already started eating the turnips, and will probably leave them in the ground too for another while.

Our greatest harvest this year has been Plums and we didnt even plant the tree! have over 10kg so far..

and loads of jam made...

With Xmas presents sorted I had to find another way of using all those Plums...Last year we tried making Sloe gin for the first time and it turned out great (still have some left over). So found a recipe for Plum Vodka....

Plums, sugar, just add vodka

All shook up!

It should be ready for Christmas!