A Plethora of Plums

A Plethora of Plums  

There is so much fruit this summer that I find I am spending much of my time on the allotment harvesting then having to spend several more hours each day dealing with it.

My tomatoes are just getting beyond the stage of picking what I can use each day for breakfast and lunch. Apples are ripening and starting to drop. My pear tree, producing for the first time (I’ve had it for three years), has lost a branch due to the weight of fruit, though the pears are not quite ripe yet so, I will have to prop up the other two branches.

My Victoria Plum tree (which I have also had for three years) is groaning under the weight of fruit. They, at least, have the manners to ripen in dribs-and-drabs so that I have a chance to deal with them. They are not necessarily ripe when they start to soften but should come away from the branch without tugging too hard. I did give a punnet of them to a friend who said that, regrettably, they were still a bit sour so, I guess I tugged too hard. Don’t let them stay on the tree too long or they will be attacked by wasps, birds, etc, or they will fall and be too bruised to use.

So far I have picked about 6 lb (3 kg) and it doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent in the crop.

What can we do with them?

With my first picking I have made jam. Try these:

Plum Jam

2.7 kg  (6lb) plums,       2.7 kg  (6lb) sugar,      900 ml (1.5 pints) water

·         Wash the plums then cut in half and remove the stones.

·         Put the plums and water into a preserving pan and cook over a low heat until the fruit is really soft and the liquid reduced – about 30 minutes.

·         Add the sugar and stir over a low heat until all the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a rolling boil and boil until setting point has been reached.

·         Pot up in hot sterilised jars. Cover and label.

Try this recipe from  -The Best-kept Secrets  of the Women’s Institute, Jams, Pickles and Chutneys by Midge Thomas –

Plum & Mulled Wine Jam

1.8 kg (4lb) red plums, halved and stoned

½ bottle red wine (whatever is cheap or on offer)

mulled wine spices, eg. cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves or your own choice

piece of orange zest without the pith

1.8 kg (4lb) sugar

·         Put the prepared plums and wine into a preserving pan.

·         Place the spices and zest in a spice ball or muslin bag and add to the pan. Cook gently for 15 – 20 minutes or until the skins are soft.

·         Remove the spice ball or bag and add the sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 10 minutes or until setting point is reached. Remove any scum.

·         Pot into sterilised jars, cover and label.

( while this recipe specifies red plums, it should work just as well with any variety)

Damson Jam

Like greengages, damsons are a member of the plum family and damsons are mostly ready to harvest now. The jam is made in a similar way though it would be much too time consuming to remove the stones in the same way as for plum jam.

1.35kg  (3lb) damsons,          1.35kg (3lb) sugar,          500ml (1 pt) water

·         Wash the damsons and remove any stalks or leaves.

·         Put them, with the water, into a preserving pan and simmer gently until the fruit is really soft and the stones start to release from the fruit – about 30 minutes. Squash the fruit against the side of the pan to help push the stones out. Remove any stones which rise to the surface.

·         Add the sugar and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved.

·         Bring to the boil then boil rapidly until setting point is reached. During the boiling, the stones will rise to the surface of the jam and you should be able to remove most of them. (If you wish to remove all of them pour the jam into a colander or coarse sieve and push it through. This will also remove the skins and give you a smoother jam. However, I prefer my jam with the ‘bits’ in and am happy to remove the odd stone when I am eating the jam. )

·         Pot up in hot sterilised pots, seal and label.

Freezing Plums

Plums can be frozen with or without sugar syrup.

·         To dry freeze them – wash, dry, cut in half and remove the stones then lay the fruit in a single layer, on a flat tray, on absorbent paper.  Place the tray in the freezer. On fast-freeze the fruit should be frozen overnight.

·         Pack into freezer containers or bags.

However, packed in a sugar syrup the fruit will keep longer

·         Wash, halve and stone the fruit

·         Pack into lidded freezer containers

·         Prepare a sugar syrup  - Dissolve 500g (1lb) sugar in 500 ml (1 pt) water over a low heat. Allow the syrup to cool, then chill before adding to the fruit. You will need approx. ¼ litre (½ pt) for each 500g ( lb)  of fruit.

·         Add the chilled syrup to the fruit but allow a little expansion room. Freeze.

Alternatively:

·         Poach the fruit gently in the syrup until soft. Pack with its syrup into freezer containers an cool thoroughly before freezing.

Plum Chutney

Plums lend themselves very readily to chutney and there are many, many recipes featuring them as a main ingredient.

I like my chutneys to be fruity and quite hot so this is my favourite recipe (that said, as with all of my chutney recipes, each time I make this it tastes slightly different from the previous batch)

1kg (2lb)plums – washed, halved and stoned

2 large cooking apples – peeled, cored and cut into chunks

3 large onions – peeled and chopped

3 large cloves of garlic

Two or three red chillies – thinly sliced (if fresh chillies are not ripe yet, dried ones will do – I use Joe’s Long as the flavour and heat is usually fairly reliable). Leave the seeds in if you like your chutney hot and add more if you wish.

350gm  (12oz) sugar
570ml (1pint) malt vinegar

25gm (1oz) salt

Spices – 2 tsp yellow mustard seeds (can be crushed), 3 tsp ground allspice, 1 tsp ground black pepper,

                a small cube of fresh ginger finely chopped( 1 tsp of ground ginger will do).

·         Place all the prepared ingredients in a preserving pan. Stir over a low heat until all of the sugar has dissolved.

·         Bring to the boil and simmer until the ingredients are soft  and the chutney is thick and pulpy.

·         Pot up into hot sterilised jars, cover and label.

·         Chutneys are best left for a few weeks before eating to allow the different flavours to blend well.

And, a couple of puddings using plums:

Cooking with Plums

Plum sponge pudding

500g  (1lb) ripe plums – washed, halved and stoned,   50gm  (2oz) sugar,   1 dsp water

For the sponge

75g ( 3oz) butter or margarine,    75g (3oz) castor sugar,    110g (4oz) SR flour

2 large eggs,      ¼ tsp baking powder.

·         Stew the plums with the sugar and water until lightly cooked. Cool.

·         Cream the butter and sugar and gradually beat in the lightly whisked eggs.

·         Sieve the baking powder and salt. Fold it into the creamed mixture.

·         Put the partially cooked plums in the bottom of a pie dish and cover with the cake mixture.

·         Bake in a moderate oven(180°C, no5 gas) for approx. 40 mins. Reduce the temperature slightly to prevent the cake mixture from burning, if necessary.

·         Serve with crème fraîche, cream or ice-cream.

Plum Pie

500g (1lb) ripe plums – washed, halved and stoned,      100g (4oz) sugar

Short crust pastry

175g (6oz) plain flour,  80g (3oz) margarine or butter,   pinch salt,    approx. 6 tsp cold water

·         Sieve the flour and salt.

·         Rub in the margarine until like fine breadcrumbs.

·         Add the water to ensure the mixture forms a firm dough – don’t make it too wet.

To make up the pie

·         Prepare the fruit and layer with the sugar in a pie dish. The dish should be well filled as it will reduce during cooking.

·         Roll out the pastry. Use a few slices from the side to line the edge of the pie dish the top the pie with the pastry. Seal the edges.

·         Bake in a hot oven (200°C, no 6 gas) until the pastry is golden/light brown, then reduce the temperature to ensure the fruit is cooked – approx 40 minutes in total.

·         Sprinkle the top with caster sugar and serve with custard or whipped cream.

Enjoy!

soft fruit - raspberries, strawberries: bush fruit - blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries

Soft and Bush Fruit

All the fruit is magnificent, so far, this spring. The plum tree is flowering and already dropping its petals – my favourite, Victoria,(suitable for eating, for desserts and for preserves). My pear tree, which I almost killed last year is covered with flowers, (this tree, planted two years ago, was also covered with bloom last year at this time but, then failed to thrive. This surprised me as the other fruit trees in the same area were growing well. A neighbour pointed out to me that, perhaps, just maybe – the mint which surrounded the pear tree, was a metre high and very lush , might possibly be taking all the nutrients and water from the tree. Of course he was right but, what a shame to have to dig out all that wonderful mint – and the bees were loving it. Still, the pear tree came first. It did recover, just, and this year I will make sure the mint doesn’t make such an extravagant takeover manoeuvre. I am not any sort of expert on tree fruit having started with them only 2 years ago.

Strawberry plants, now tidied, have already got their flowers on. I have two beds (1 is now on its third year and will be dug out this autumn. The other is two years old this year and can stay for another year. I will plant another bed from runners in the autumn). I do prefer the fruit from the first year plants – they are usually huge and juicy though there are fewer of them. With each year, it seems they get smaller but, more plentiful. I plant my new runners in beds covered with porous woven matting – approx, 2 metres by 4 metres. This keeps the weeds under control and the strawberries out of the mud. To some extent it also keep slugs away as the area around the plants stays fairly dry. The disadvantage is that in years where there is not much rain, the ground can become quite dry but, even last year when there was little rain in the strawberry season, I still had an excellent crop – far too many for me to use(and they don’t freeze well). I don’t cover with net to keep birds off. I hate to see the birds caught under the net and there really are enough for them and for me. It does annoy me slightly that the blackbirds like to take a bite out of several fruits until they find the sweetest but.....!

Blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries have their flower-buds opening now. Although it is important that the bees get in to pollinate the flowers, you will need to keep an eye on these when they start to ripen. Birds will not share them with you. My experience has been that pigeons and blackbirds will strip the bushes before you have a chance to pick, so – do net them- the bushes, not the birds! Pigeons are really quite clever and can find a way into the most ‘secure’ of cages. However, much as I don’t really want to share these with the enormous flocks of greedy pigeons, neither do I want to see them being caught under netting they can’t escape from. Prey to cats and foxes – I love cats and foxes, I just don’t want to catch their lunch for them.

Many of my blackcurrant plants have ‘bigbud’. You can see these enlarged leafbuds in spring, which fail to develop into fruiting stems. When I took over my plot, a few years ago, I dutifully cut out all the branches showing ‘bigbud’ and burned them (it is caused by a mite/bug, which lives in the new shoot and prevents it from developing). A neighbour asked me what I was doing. When I explained, he laughed and said that, on the allotments, ‘bigbug’ was endemic. There was no point in trying to get rid of it. Since then, I just let the bushes ‘get on with it’. I might consider replacing a few of them with modern varieties which have bigger fruit – perhaps next winter. The smaller fruited varieties - about half of the bushes I've inherited - are a nuisance to harvest unless you are desperately keen on blackcurrants. My one redcurrant bush is a real star. I discovered it under 2 metres high, of briars when I took over the plot. It provides me with a bucketful of fruit each year. I have pruned half of it out each year. Last year, it was so overladen with fruit that a couple of large branches collapsed. However, it is a wonderful amazing bush. I am in the process of taking layered cuttings from it :o) I do  however, give it a good mulching of well rotted manure each year,as with the other bush and cane fruit.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money building professional cages. I use tree posts hammered into the ground leaving about 1 and half metres above ground (it is helpful if you can actually get inside the ‘cage’ comfortably to harvest). Cover the tops of the posts with plastic bottles to prevent the posts cutting through the netting. Pin the net down with large ‘staples’ or pegs. Leave a largish hole high up for birds to escape but not suitable for access. And, hey! I don’t get it right all the time – I’m working on this. Last year, one of my cages was a mass of pale grey feathers when I arrived. I'm assuming that a fox found the same way in as a pigeon. No cat nor other bird could have produced the feathery devastation presented.

Raspberries – now this is a plant I am curious about! And I would be really, really happy for someone to enlighten me. The accepted practise, where I live, is for the previous year’s productive raspberry canes to be cut back to the ground, leaving about 3ins(6-7cm) above ground, either in the autumn or spring. It is understood that raspberries fruit on the new season’s canes – now appearing above ground. However, in my experience, last year’s canes will also fruit this year – the flower buds are now appearing on last year’s canes. They will produce a crop May/June, before the new canes start to crop. This extends the harvesting season from May to October (depending on your varieties). My plants are not suffering from this extra crop – the canes grow to 6ft ( 2 metres) or more and are very productive. I do cut the tops off the ‘old’ canes in the autumn - more for the sake of tidiness – to about 1 metre high. It really isn't necessary to 'cage' raspberries. Although birds may take a few, bigger threats are ants and woodlice - they will destroy the fruit and the ants will sting - very nasty!

If anyone can give me their thoughts on why they are cut back before their time, I would really like to hear it. Do give your raspberry canes a good mulch of manure each autumn. If they are not productive or have very small fruit, think about replacing them. New varieties are really quite superior. Try a mixture of summer and autumn fruiting.