The Summer Harvest
This is such a busy time of year. My intentions, when I go to my plot are:
• to spend some time maintaining the ground – weeding, strimming, pruning, etc.;
• to harvest crops which are ready;
• to water where necessary;
• to keep in touch with my allotment neighbours.
Well! I spend so much time watering, harvesting and chatting to my neighbours that I’m finding that the general maintenance is falling behind. Let’s face it:
- watering is essential for life;
- harvesting is essential for the satisfaction of having achieved;
- chatting is essential for the feel-good of life.
The maintenance will just have to be done as and when. I usually spend about 3 hours, 5 days a week on my plot. Occasionally this can extend to 5 hours and rarely- can reduce to 2 hours, depending on my reasons for going there. Really! If this is not enough to maintain my plot then – TOUGH!
I hope this doesn’t put prospective plot-holders off but, really – once a week with kids in tow who will not let you stay there to work will not result in a productive plot.
It is most important that we understand that ‘what we put in – we get out’, as my daughter put it so succinctly. But, this is not really what I want to talk about today:
Tomatoes – I’ve just harvested my first for this year – really too few to photograph and actually, well behind many others (including my son who has just started on the allotments experience – his were ripe three weeks or more ago!). This year, my firsts are Sultana – a small plum-shaped salad tomato from Dobies. Each year, following a suggestion from my daughter, I try something new, (this is not always successful but, new products and different varieties are always worth a shot if you have the time and space). The Sultanas – I picked all two of them which were ready were very delicious, though somewhat hard-skinned. I’m sure that is a positive in preventing –disease /blight maybe (give me time to research).
Don’t forget to keep removing the side shoots. These will re-grow and will keep coming up as your plant grows. Unless you are growing bush varieties, it is most important – very important – extremely important that you remove the side shoots as they appear (always, as the year progresses some side shoots will have escaped your notice. If this becomes apparent you must decide to leave them or remove them, depending on the amount of damage you might do the mother plant). If you don’t remove the side shoots you will find that you have hundreds of small green tomatoes of which, few ripen.
It is also very important to (as well as watering your plants regularly) feed your tomatoes. They are quite greedy feeders but, let’s face it, when we get it right they will continue to produce wonderful crops until the weather become too cold for them to do so. You can buy tomato plant food which is excellent though, last year, I decided to make my own organic food for my plants. I have a large bath tub on my plot which I filled with a mixture of nettles, comfrey and cow manure – topped up with water. This produced a thick black liquid that, I thought, was better diluted. This year I think it has been diluted enough with rainwater so am adding it to my plants neat – nothing has keeled over yet. Over-winter I will put the sludge out on my plot and start again.
Don’t forget that tomatoes can get blight – similar to potato blight. If you are growing outdoors you might want to look at ways of protecting your crop. In the past, I have used Bordeaux Mixture (essentially copper sulphate). This worked well and I believe was accepted by the Soil Association. However, it has now been removed from the market and I am growing all of my tomatoes in my poly-tunnel. If you have an organic solution for this problem (or even one which is not organic but is not too poisonous), please let me know and I will pass the information on.
Peppers/ chillies – these have been slow to establish this year and after a poor outdoor harvest last year I have dedicated a larger area of my poly-tunnel to this crop. I am amazed when I see tiny plants producing full sized peppers but, I do hope that they will grow a bit more and give me a better crop. That said, last year I had one particular plant, grown from a free packet of seed on a gardening magazine which I had bought – Sweet California – from a little plant, no more than 30cms high ( 12”), I had 8 full sized beautiful, ripe peppers. -perhaps I will be able to recreate that crop this year but, although my various pepper plants are looking hopeful, I don’t think it will be so spectacular.
Fruit – Blackberries and Cooking Apples
Blackberries are now ripening so, apart from just eating them straight from the briars we must think of ways to preserve them.
When I first took over my plot, half of it was overgrown with a very strong, invasive, 2 metre high bramble thicket. I spent a long time cutting back and digging out the roots which only mediocre success – I have been cutting out new young shoots ever since but, I’m winning. Of course, I was beguiled by an advertisement in my favourite seed and plant catalogue for a blackberry which produced amazing 2-3cm long fruits. Stupidly, I planted this about a metre from the door of my poly-tunnel. It established itself very quickly and started to fruit in its second year. It was quite good though, since I left childhood, I’ve not been a huge fan of blackberries. The fruits are nice enough but, the thorns are wicked.(I hate thorns and nettles!) This year, I find I have to hack my way into my tunnel about once a week as the plant is now putting out amazingly strong branches and side-shoots for next year’s crop. I can’t quite regret it, however, as it is also giving me a good crop of large succulent fruits and I now have to think what to do with them.
Do try:
Apple and Blackberry Pie
I can’t believe that my old college cookery book has no recipe for blackberry and apple pie. When I was a child this was definitely the dish I waited for all year. (well! apart from Christmas dinner!)We went out blackberry picking when I was very young – my mother said that I ate more than I picked. In wet years, I remember, the blackberries were full of maggots - well, each berry may have had its pet maggot but, I soon learned to ignore them in favour of the berries themselves. Blackberries are one of the real wild fruits available to us as the ‘brambles’ – the plants they come from are very hardy, deep-rooted, tenacious, so – are particularly difficult to eradicate. So, let’s make the most of them. (Don’t be put off by the reference to blackberry maggots, I haven’t seen a single one this year, in spite of the rain).
Ingredients – for a 1 litre ( 1½ - 2 pint) pie dish
2 good-sized cooking apples – Bramleys for preference
1 good sized punnet of blackberries( 1lb or 450 -500gm). The amount is not critical. The fruit must fit into your pie dish to fill it well.(the fruit will drop as it cooks)
3 Tblsp. sugar
Short crust pastry
150g plain flour (6oz)
75g margarine or butter (3oz)
Pinch salt
6 tsp cold water approx.(this amount may vary slightly depending on the weather and the flour you are using – you need the ingredients to bind together without being sticky).
Method
• Sieve the flour and salt into a baking bowl. Add the margarine and rub in with your finger tips to create a texture like fine breadcrumbs – don’t allow the mixture to become sticky.
• Add the water slowly to ensure the ingredients combine without becoming too soft.
• Knead gently to combine the ingredients for a short time – 1 minute.
Making the Pie• Preheat the oven to 180°C, Mark 6 gas
• Peel, core and slice the apples and place half of them in the pie dish.
• Put in a layer of blackberries and a layer of the sugar.
• Repeat this process until the dish is full.
• Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured board to ½ cm thick approx.(¼in)to the shape of the pie dish. Cut off a strip of pastry wide enough to go around the rim of the dish
• Wet the edges of the pie dish with water and apply the strip to the edges. Wet the top of the pastry strip with water.
• Put the pastry on top of the pie. Trim and seal the edges. Put a small slit on the top of the pie to allow the steam to escape.
• Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes then reduce the temperature and bake for a further 15 – 20 minutes to ensure the fruit is cooked. Don’t allow the pastry to burn
• When baked, sprinkle the top with a little caster sugar immediately and serve with cream, ice-cream or crème fraîche.
Try also:
Ingredients
Blackberries (the amount is, up-to-a point irrelevant, they must fit easily into your preserving pan)
Perhaps a little water to start the juicing process - ¼ - ½ litre if needed- depending on the amount of fruit..
Lemon juice
Sugar – depending on the amount of juice
A knob of butter
Method
1. Pick over the fruit to remove any leaves, etc.
2. Put in the preserving and over a very low heat, simmer gently until the fruit has broken down and is totally tender, (with the water if you feel it is necessary).
3. Strain though a jelly strainer.
4. Measure the amount of juice.
5. Allow 1 kilo (lb) sugar for each litre of juice (pt) – don’t mix up the quantities from metric and imperial measurement.
6. Put the fruit juice and the sugar into the preserving pan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon juice.
7. Bring to the boil in a preserving pan or a large saucepan to allow the preserve to come to a rolling boil.
8. When setting point has been reached, add the knob of butter and mix in well to reduce the amount of foam on the top of the preserve.
9. Pot, cover and label.
Blackberries can freeze easily, similar to raspberries – choose perfect, dry- if possible, fruits. Pack them gently into freezer tubs ( don’t squash them) and freeze.
On storage of cooking apples – more later.
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