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| 'Discovery' apples |
I did promise a blog on the fruit harvest, but have been too busy in the face of party conferences writing ranting posts on my other blogs to settle down to something calm and happy. It is now time to take a break from shouting 'spineless b*****ds!', 'nutters!', 'selfish b*****ds!' and 'hypocrites!' at the TV and look back at what has been a fantastic year for fruit.
We missed a lot of it. The best of the summer raspberries came and went (down the throats of grateful blackbirds) while we were on an epic narrowboat journey along the waterways of North West England and many of the earlier red, white and blackcurrants went the same way.
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| Currant jams - and other uses! |
Not all - there were still enough about when we came home on shore leave mid cruise to make copious amounts of jam and the freezer has still a substantial stock of 'summer pudding mix'. And grateful colleagues tucked in to freshly picked strawberries while we watched an open air production of 'Much Ado about Nothing' while being strafed by housemartins at Little Moreton Hall.
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| Plums and Damsons |
It was the 'top fruit' that really did us proud - with the exception of the pears. Other people have reported problems with pears this year - ours are fairly sparce and cracked. Never mind - everything else was frankly amazing and mercifully free of wasps. We collected plums by the bucket load, made industrial quantities of jam and invited the neighbours to help themselves; a stunning crop from just three dwarf trees - a 'Merryweather' damson, 'Oolins Orange' and 'Victoria' plum.
The apples have done well too. 'Discovery' never fails to deliver a crop of rosy eating apples but was absolutely loaded this year and, thanks to some determined pruning over the last couple of years, the 'Cox's Orange Pippin' also cropped well.
'James Grieve' has also given us a generous number of nice clean apples this year, having been scabby in the past and there are some big 'Bramleys' to gather - in fact, now the weather has turned properly autumnal, I should check that the best of those haven't come down on the lawn and been reduced to slug fodder. We also got a good crop of hazel nuts and, although the tree will need to be cut back hard this year to stop it overshadowing the greenhouse, that should also ensure I have a good supply of bean poles for next year.
It's now time to start tidying up and planning for next year, so while the rain batters the windows, I'll be curled up by the fire with my plant a seed catalogues wondering what 2015 will bring. As well as a General Election, that is.
