Summer Fruit

Well! Isn't that just like the thing! In April the weather was like June weather and all the crops were rushing ahead of themselves.

I grow lots of strawberries and have two fairly large 'patches'  - each two metres by three and a half.  It was looking good. I was preparing for a bumper crop and lots of jam making. This week - at the end of May - the weather has been described by our weather-men as being more like the end of October. I did harvest some strawberries - about a small punnet. They are not that vibrant red colour we expect but, are sweet and soft and ready to eat anyway - don't leave them if yours are like that, waiting for them to get redder. They will sit there until they rot or the birds and slugs will have them instead. However, the jam making will have to wait a while longer.

My raspberries are also beginning to ripen - today I picked a small bowl, a VERY small bowl. These are from last year's canes. As I have said in a previous Blog, I don't cut my canes back at the end of the year (neither summer nor autumn fruiting and I really don't understand why this is done!), I do take  the tops of them, for the sake of tidyness, leaving them about a metre tall, or perhaps a bit taller. Those canes are now in the process of giving me a crop, well in advance of this year's canes. The best raspberries in the UK are grown in Scotland where it is much colder than the south west of England. I don't expect that our present 'cold' snap will do any harm to my raspberry crop. But, do watch for yours ripening. Although birds are not a big problem for me with strawberries and raspberries, they will certainly take them if there is a shortage of anything else to eat.

Redcurrants and blackcurrants are now starting to colour-up. If we can see this, so will the birds and will take them all as well as your gooseberries before you have a chance to harvest them. If you really want these crops it is essential to net them. I have seen some of my fellow plot holders drape a piece of net over the tops of their currant bushes in the expectation of deterring blackbirds and/or pigeons from taking these crops. I have also seen these birds under the nets, tucking happily into the fruit until they are almost too heavy to get off the ground. I'm sure I have said this in every Blog lately but, net the bushes securely while leaving a gap for the birds to escape if attacked by a fox or a cat - that may sound like a contradiction, and it is but.........! I really do like the birds too.

Has anyone else noticed that we have more honeybees around this year? In previous years, while I saw lots of bees, they were bumble bees, solitary bees,though few honey bees. On my group of allotment fields we now have four beekeepers and interestingly a 'top-bar bee-keeper'. Do check out the information on this on the link to the allotment website. It is captivating!

Increasingly, we are having to net a wider variety of crops. This morning I had to cover my salad bed as the birds - I'm guessing pigeons - have stripped several of my young Romaine lettuces. I won't starve because of it as I grow a lot more than I need but, I don't want to lose my whole crop. Net is expensive and systems for lifting it above the crops is also expensive. Today I had to use the fine net I hate to protect my crop but, I will replace it as soon as possible as the birds catch their feet in the fine net and can die a miserable death unless we are there to rescue them.

I picked a small vase of sweet-peas from my plot today - sown in the autumn and over-wintered in my polytunnel, they are actually quite hardy plants. I planted them out in March and although they were slow to establish, they are now starting to flower. And! what an amazing fragrance they give to my house, even this little posy. If you do grow them, they need lots of feeding (best planted into well manured ground at the start),but, do keep cutting the flowers and removing the seed pods of any you might have missed or they will stop flowering.

Check out the website for recipes on jam-making, jelly making, chutneys and pickles