Blackberries

We want to become self-sufficient in fruit and veg and wine. Blackberries are great for jams, crumbles and wine. I'm currently using the last jar of apple and blackberry jam from last year.

We can make jams and wines from various fruits, but they're not all easy to get hold of. We had just one plum on our plum tree this year and the roadside plum trees don't have many plums either. That means only 2 gallons of plum wine and no plum jam. Fortunately, brambles grow everywhere, so we should be able to get loads of blackberries.

I've set myself a target of 20 gallons of blackberry wine, 10 jars of apple and blackberry jam, and a handful of blackberries to throw in apple crumbles. I'll need something ridiculous like 75-100lbs of blackberries.


We picked just over 3lbs of blackberries from the mother-in-law's garden at the weekend. They're now in a bucket, slowly turning into wine. That's a good start!

My son came out blackberry picking with me this morning. We went to the usual spot on the common, only to find virtually nothing. It looks like the brambles had been cut down early this year. Lots of nettles growing where the blackberries were. I normally visit there once a year and pick several pounds of blackberries, but today we got just a handful. We walked over a mile on the common and still managed only about 5oz.

Fortunately we found two small spots on our street where the brambles had grown over the fence, so managed another half a pound from each place. I've now frozen them all.

Ho hum ....

Transplanting Leeks

We started our leeks in medium sized pots - about 6-8in pots. Just a pot full of compost, sprinkle the seeds, hope for the best. Each pot is now packed with baby leeks, so we're very happy.

The leeks will go in the potato bed once I've dug up the potatoes, but the potato foliage has only just started to die off. That means I won't be planting out for a good few weeks yet. The pots are far too crowded for the leeks to thicken up.

After pulling up some carrots, I had two deep troughs empty. We have a lot of large 12in pots spare now that we've destroyed the blighted tomato plants. I've decided to temporarily transplant the leeks into these pots and troughs. This will give them room to grow properly for a couple of months and then I can transplant some to their final positions in the ground. 

I've seen some people trimming the roots and top-growth on their leeks, but I've also seen others not trimming. I've definitely seen a video on YouTube of Monty Don planting out without trimming and pretty sure I've seen a video of him trimming the leeks too.

I spent a while reading up on whether to trim the roots or not, and the pros and cons of trimming or not. It seems that that only reason to trim the roots is to make planting easier - as we're dropping them in to holes, a bundle of roots just gets in the way. However, if the hole is big enough, it should be easy to twist the leeks as we lower them into the hole, thereby twisting the roots.

I decided that as our leeks are still very small, I would prefer not to trim the roots. If roots are trimmed, the leeks (as with all aliums) will grow new roots. Trimming the roots might slow down growth as it's putting more energy into growing new roots than in to growing the leek. This shouldn't normally be a problem, but we've had really poor weather this year, so the leeks are a lot smaller than they normally would be at this time of year.

I separated the Musselburgh leeks and planted them into the deep troughs. I made holes about 3in deep just using my finger - there's no point making the holes any bigger at this time. I planted out 90 leeks in total. They were a bit fiddly with the roots there.

The Bandit leeks are being transplanted into the 12in tomato pots, 9 per pot. I've decided to trim the roots on some, and not on others. Apparently if we trim the roots, we should also trim the leaves back, so I've done that too. 63 done so far, plenty more to do later.

The Autumn Giant leeks are looking good, but I haven't touched them yet. Probably a job for this evening ....

Cherry Plums

We have a large conifer hedge dividing our driveway from next door's driveway. I've always known about the big red plum tree at the front of the drive - it only produces a few plums per year.

Yellow plums in my front garden

But while trimming the connifer hedge, I found another variety of plum. They were green, now turning a lovely shade of yellow. Most seem to be heart shaped.

The photo doesn't really show the true colour - they are a brighter yellow in real life.

Not sure what variety they are, but I'm sure they'll make a nice crumble sometime in the winter. As with any other plums, they'll be picked, stoned and frozen, ready for when we want to eat them.


Next month I will have lived here for 19 years. I can't believe I've never spotted these before!

Sloe Hunting

I love the whole foraging thing - free food! Or even better, free wine! Unfortunately I'm not very clued up yet. I can spot a few basics like plums, elderberries, blackberries and so on, but not much more. I probably walk past loads of free food every day without realising it.

Sloes turning blue in August

I finally found some sloes. I had to do a lot of research to find out what sloes looked like, how big they would be, the likely places to find them etc. I had to send photos to other people to get confirmation, and finally, I have it.

I know other people will be eyeing them up, so I'll keep watch on them for a while. Hopefully we can pick them before everyone else does. Naturally I won't reveal the location - it's my little secret!

Sloes are apparently best after a frost - the frost sweetens them up. We'll pick them before the first frosts and freeze them - the freezer should do the same thing as a frost. Once we have them, we'll be making loads of wine and sloe gin.

Potatoes

We've done fairly well with the spuds this year. We haven't had to buy any for a couple of months now.The yield per sack is fairly low though - I'm sure we could get twice as many per sack in a good year.

The Charlottes are nice. We had Swift were good, We had another variety that I forgot the name of, which is a real shame, because they were very very nice.

Charlottes left, Desiree right

I've emptied the first sack of Desiree potatoes. They're a nice red colour, not as big as I'd hoped for, but easily enough for a dinner. They'll make a nice change from the Charlottes we're still working our way through.

We have another 9 sacks of Charlottes to empty. That should be enough for about 25 dinners. Might be better next year if we grow more maincrops in sacks rather than salad potatoes - the bigger the crop, the better!

The greenery in all the sacks has died off. The greenery on the King Edwards and Desiree that were planted in the ground has started to die back. I'll be leaving these potatoes in the ground for a few more weeks yet. When I dig them up, I'll plant leeks out straight away - the leeks are slowly thickening up.

I'm going to get some seed potatoes today so that we can have new potatoes for Christmas.