Friday 4 September 2009

Home grown

I was up in Lincolnshire visiting family earlier this week, who, being in possession of a reasonably sized garden, are much more into growing fruit and vegetables than I am! Actually, the apple trees seem to have produced an abundance of fruit this year compared to previous years.

They have also had an excellent crop of runner beans, although I think everyone ends up in the same position with runner beans in that you wait for ages and then they all come at once! Someone from work was selling runner bean chutney a couple of weeks ago - a product of a glut of runner beans and wondering what to do with them I suspect, but an enterprising one at that.

The squash were also looking good:

And, I couldn't help but notice that the hawthorn berries were ready to be picked:

So, I have gathered a good crop of hawthorn berries. I plan to have another go at making fruit leather in the manner described by Ray Mears on TV a couple of years ago. I tried this once before (see here), but it didn't really work properly, so I'm keen to have another go. Watch this space!

2 comments:

Gavin said...

We used to have an apple tree and we found it only gave a good crop every other year.

Dr. B said...

Yes, I've heard other people say similar things. The interesting thing is that the Cox apple tree mentioned here has never really done very well, except for every four or five years when it produces a bumper crop. To be honest, it's probably not regular and I suspect it depends a lot on the weather conditions, which seem to have to be just right. Amazingly, the Bramley apple tree yielded 120 apples! That's a personal best.