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.

A bit of growth - finally.

*blows the cobwebs from the blog*

It just feels like it was the longest and coldest Spring ever didn't it?

Maybe it is just me but it seems everything is much slower growing this year than last. Even the slugs are slower! (which is great, I am not complaining!)

So in between showers yesterday I took my camera out for a 'walkabout' to capture a few things in our garden.

When out weeding the other day I came across this sapling at the side of our house, and after a bit of research (my youngest sister) it has been identified as a baby Ash tree ! No idea how it ended up here as it certainly wasn't planted here by the previous owners and there are no Ash trees anywhere in our locality. Just have to thank Mother Nature I suppose. Now we just have to find somewhere to plant it.



Ash sapling

 After planting our seed potatoes we had a few left over so my partner decided she would like to plant some for our patio, so two seed Red Duke of York potatoes were planted in an old pot. And they are thriving!

The ones in the raised beds are coming along nicely too..

Red Duke of York

Our other potatoes, Sarpo Miras, look like they are never gonna grow, but when I looked a bit closer I found them starting to peep through at last (just hope there has been no frost this week because I didn't top them up with soil).

On the other side of our garden our Rhubarb is flourishing, and we have already had two Rhubarb tarts from this lot!

And the Strawberries in the polytunnel are coming along nicely too! the bigger ones to the front of the picture are in their third year, the smaller ones their second year. Looking forward to some yummy fruits soon!

And last but not least (a rain shower sent me back indoors) our three Blackcurrant bushes are also thriving, and are getting a few visitors too! Heres one fella I caught working away...

Something for a Winter's night in

This time two years I was telling a friend over the phone about the little blue berries that I had found growing on a few old gnarled and moss covered bushes, down by the shores of Lough Sillan.
Myself and the boys had been on an 'adventure' walk down a hidden lane not far from the house we were renting at the time.
I didnt know what they were; she thought they may be Sloes and if they were we could make Sloe Gin with them. I had heard of Sloe Gin before but it was one of those obscure things that you hear of but dont really know how it is made and I had no idea what a Sloe was.
So I did a bit of research on Sloes and after the first frost (its recommended to leave them until then)we hit off down the lane again, armed this time with plastic bags to collect these wee blue berries. As it turned out I didnt get much help from my offspring as these wee berries were on very thorny bushes, they are not called Blackthorn for nothing!
Armed with a bag full of them I made over a litre of Sloe Gin.

And that was the start of my love of fruit flavoured Vodka/Gin making. Last year we tried Plum and Sloe vodka (we prefered the vodka to the gin), both delightful liquers to drink and they came in handy as extra wee gifts to family and friends last Christmas.

This year because we have no Plums and there are very little Sloes in the hedgerows I decided to try out other fruits.

I halved our harvest of Blackcurrants (the rest will be made into jam when winter starts) and put them in a sterilised Kilner Jar, added some caster sugar...

Then the vodka..

 

Closed the lid tight and gave a nice shake from side to side.

Next fruit is Blackberries (idea courtesy of a fellow blogger, @edibleireland, who made Blackberry Whiskey last year ).

Have to give them a shake twice a day until the sugar has completely dissolved, then a quick shake once a week.
I will store them in a dark cupboard for about 6 - 8 weeks. After that I will strain the fruit (using muslin) and put the liquer into sterilised bottles for the Christmas. The wonderful thing about these fruit liquers is they can be left to mature for a year (or more if you can leave them that long).

Cant wait to try them out. I will post an update later on in the year to give my verdict on these particular fruit liquers.

A work in progress..

Woke up yesterday morning to no rain, which considering the week we've had was a surprise.

And as the old saying goes 'make hay while the sun shines' I was up and dressed and out to the garden as fast as my legs could carry me (not necessarily true but I can pretend).

I've so many jobs to do in the garden that I try to do them all at the same time, so a bit of this then a bit of that.

But one job that is a bit easier to do when its not raining is filling the wheelbarrow with sand/clay/pebbles and moving it to the veg patch.

A few weeks back I laid down sheets of black plastic inbetween some of our raised beds to kill off the grass and weeds. The idea is to eventually get rid of all the grass inbetween the raised beds and have nice pebbled walkways around them (easier said than done).

I've removed some of the plastic to reveal dead grass and mud. Next step is to put a layer of sand down before putting the polythene cover, and then covered this with pebbles......

our Sapro Mira potatoe plants

Its hard work, and theres only so many barrow loads I can manage in the one day, this is one job that will take some time to complete.

On the other side of our garden our so called lawn is now a meadow, we havent been able to mow it due to it being so wet but we dont really mind because the wildlife are loving it.

Another job I had been planning to do this year was make a permanent structure to enclose our 3 Blackcurrant bushes, a fruit cage of sorts, but I think it will have to wait, because the berries are starting to ripen and the birds wouldnt be long about finding them and eating them all on us.
So I've just covered them in netting instead.

In the polytunnel all of our 20 Tomato plants (Gardeners Delight) are starting to flower, I have to say I am so excited. Even the four extra that I have planted in pots are flowering. Hard to believe that from such a tiny flower comes one of Mother Natures juicy mouthfuls.

Holding our breath.....

After spending the time and energy sowing seeds, watching them germinate, harding the young seedlings off and eventually planting them out the last thing any gardener wants is to see them die.

This is really our first time being proper gardeners, our last garden was nearly too small to count!
So every plant is precious to us.

But I have had to learn to accept that sometimes the slugs win, or sometimes our plants just dont grow.

But on the positive side we harvested our Blackcurrants............ all 220g of them !!

We also managed to grow Garlic, and harvested them the other day!

But while half of our Tomato plants are thriving, the other half look as if they are stunted.

The one in the middle isnt growing!

Out of the 9 Gardeners Delight we planted only 3 look like they are growing, and will have some fruit, and out of the 9 San Marzano plants we have 5 with Tomatos on them...

Cant wait for them to ripen!

Our Pepper plants have babies!

Even the spare plants in the 2 litre pots

& the ones I didnt pot on...