Garden update

Well, a little update.



The potatoes, well the dry period seemed to kill off the leaves and as such I worried about the potatoes so much I dug them up. I probably got about 4lbs of potatoes in total for planting 3. So not too bad for my first effort. After reading the instructions again, they were about ready. They are quite nice too. I will do some again next year, will try a different method and see if I get better results.



The tomatoes had a severe attack of aphids and not amount of spending the evening squishing them, squirting them with soapy water seems to help the plants. They have survived but I think its a bit late for them to produce flowers to give me some little tomatoes. Maybe next year.



As for the carrots, they are currently being eaten by slugs. Its seems to have been a fantastic year for our dear slimy garden pest. I keep going out and challenging them with vinegar which they really don't like but there are just too many of them. Will buy some slug beer traps next year.



The lettuce on the other hand was another story, I had tons of its, enough for me and the slugs.

Plum Jam

Well its that time of year when I remove what seems to be 3 ton of plums from the tree. This year my darling hubby has been helping me gather the fruit in whilst dodging those pesky little waspies. I do hate those creatures, they are just a menace. I wish they'd go hang around someone elses garden. Or maybe I should be honoured that my fruit is so attractive? Hmmm I think not.

Anyway, I've slogged my way through making a lot of Plum jam, more jam and a bit more.

I've also been experimenting with fruit leather, which is basically dried fruit puree (a bit like beef jerky only with fruit). After the first batch which took a week to dry and I ended up putting it in the oven for a while to stop it from going mouldy, the second attempt was a bit quicker to dry as I stuck it the oven for a few days. I don't think I did too bad for my first effort and it did use up some of the glut of plums along with my glut of apples which are rapidly falling from the tree.

I know its a bit early for Apples but they are refusing to stay on the tree for the duration, so they are being picked and cooked, but my priority has been the plums.

I've made a fabulous batch of Plum chutney which will be ready around December, it makes the house smell of boiled vinegar for a few days but the end product (after maturing) is lovely.

I recently came to the conclusion that I was never going to manage to get all the fruit processed. I contacted a friendly farm shop and asked if they would be able to sell some of them before they start going off. So 10kg were bagged up and delivered. I do hope that they will be able to sell them, as I hate to see food going to waste.

Well I now have plenty of preserved food for the coming year and the family may get some of it as pressies. ;-)