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| Tumbleberry flowers |
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| Bountiful |
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| Breakfast! |
Showing posts with label Fruit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fruit. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Tumbleberries
The tumbleberry is a remontant strawberry - it crops heavily all summer and autumn. I planted these last year, dotting them all over the garden, some in shade and some in full sun, in good compost and in damp, clay soil. All survived and grew into big clumps. These do not produce runners. To 'make' more plants, just break the clumps up, ensuring each bit has roots attached.
The most successful clumps were those grown in pots in semi-shade as fruits were allowed to grow to a full size. Those in the ground were usually half eaten by slugs, snails and creepy crawlies before they had a chance to grow any bigger. Soil quality did not seem to matter. Being buried under 6" of snow for a couple of weeks did not matter at all!
The fruit is sweet and very fragrant, described by a friend as tasting like "bubblegum wine". Definitely worth having in the garden.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
A tale of two cherries
I planted a bareroot 'Sunburst' cherry tree in the spring of 2009. It was grafted on Gisela dwarfing rootstock and expected to reach a height of 3-4 metres when fully grown. 'Sunburst' is a dessert cherry and has large, almost black fruit. Some say it is sweeter and has a more intense flavour than 'Stella'.
It pulled through the coldest UK winter in 31 years and burst forth with blossoms this spring.
Hoping that the birds and squirrels would leave these alone, I watched the colour change.....
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| 'Y' shaped sapling standing proud in 6" of snow |
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| White cherry blossoms |
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| Spring 2010 |
I eagerly anticipated a tree laden with juicy black fruit. The weather got warmer, the petals fluttered to the ground, the fruitlet dropped off...... leaving............
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| Just two! |
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mmm...juicy red |
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| getting darker |
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ready! |
Ooh yes, I did get to taste the fruit and it was absolutely divine - the rich flavour of the almost black, juicy fruit was worth the wait. Note to self: water and fertilise regularly = bumper crop next year!
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Spring blossoms in April and May
Flowers from the fruit and vegetable garden .....
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| Purple sprouting broccoli |
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| 'Sunburst' cherry |
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| Chive |
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| 'Brown Turkey' figs - inverted flowers |
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| 'Bluecrop' blueberry |
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Pear tree |
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| 'Azure Star' purple kohlrabi |
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Real food
I am interested in good food, cooked the slow way and served steaming hot, preferably three times a day. I blame my parents. Let me tell you why......
I grew up in tropical Malaysia with parents who were incredibly passionate about food. Most conversations would swirl around what dishes to eat or to cook, where to find the best ingredients or the best restaurant for a particular dish, how to cook such a dish and what subtleties of flavours to look out for.
My parents were fussy about food provenance and would go to great lengths to source the freshest produce. There were bone rattling trips on pot-holed roads to pick vegetables from a farm or select seafood ‘off the boat’ from a fishing village. Every outing was an adventure in tasting and sourcing ‘real’ food.
Earliest childhood memories were of harvesting fruit from my grandfather’s trees and of collecting warm eggs from my grandmother’s chickens. Once, my dad took me to a durian orchard at nightfall to wait for the fruit to drop off the trees! We sheltered in a wooden hut with the orchard owner and listened to the ‘thud’ of these huge spiky fruit hitting the ground from a great height.
On my most recent visit home, I overheard a mobile phone conversation my mum had with her greengrocer. She wanted some papayas and discussed at great length the preferred taste, colour, fragrance and texture of the fruit so that he would know exactly from which tree to harvest the fruit. How wonderful if this was a way of life everywhere else!
We ate ‘village chickens’ – chickens which roamed outdoors pecking at worms and greenery (they were caged at night for protection from snakes). When I eat these now, I would get confused about what I’m eating. The meat is dark, tasty and very lean, quite unlike the fatty, bloated chickens now available at the supermarkets.
My mum could grow anything (and still does) - we lived three floors up on the main street of a noisy, bustling town and one third of that flat was an oasis of lush greenery. Monkeys, birds and once, a civet cat found their way to our sanctuary. Dad’s friends wanted to cook the civet cat for ‘medicinal purposes’ but we fed it bananas and at dusk, released it back into the wild, next to the zoo.
Food and gardening were part of the fabric of my life. When I left home to further my education abroad, I could not cook but I knew without a doubt what real food should taste like. A lesson in how to cut up a whole chicken with a large cleaver (!) was the beginning of many little steps towards cooking for self and loved ones.
I Skyped my mum this morning. The first thing she asked was: ‘Have you eaten?’ followed by ‘What did you eat?’. Later, I spoke with dad, you've guessed it......
I grew up in tropical Malaysia with parents who were incredibly passionate about food. Most conversations would swirl around what dishes to eat or to cook, where to find the best ingredients or the best restaurant for a particular dish, how to cook such a dish and what subtleties of flavours to look out for.
My parents were fussy about food provenance and would go to great lengths to source the freshest produce. There were bone rattling trips on pot-holed roads to pick vegetables from a farm or select seafood ‘off the boat’ from a fishing village. Every outing was an adventure in tasting and sourcing ‘real’ food.
Earliest childhood memories were of harvesting fruit from my grandfather’s trees and of collecting warm eggs from my grandmother’s chickens. Once, my dad took me to a durian orchard at nightfall to wait for the fruit to drop off the trees! We sheltered in a wooden hut with the orchard owner and listened to the ‘thud’ of these huge spiky fruit hitting the ground from a great height.
On my most recent visit home, I overheard a mobile phone conversation my mum had with her greengrocer. She wanted some papayas and discussed at great length the preferred taste, colour, fragrance and texture of the fruit so that he would know exactly from which tree to harvest the fruit. How wonderful if this was a way of life everywhere else!
We ate ‘village chickens’ – chickens which roamed outdoors pecking at worms and greenery (they were caged at night for protection from snakes). When I eat these now, I would get confused about what I’m eating. The meat is dark, tasty and very lean, quite unlike the fatty, bloated chickens now available at the supermarkets.
My mum could grow anything (and still does) - we lived three floors up on the main street of a noisy, bustling town and one third of that flat was an oasis of lush greenery. Monkeys, birds and once, a civet cat found their way to our sanctuary. Dad’s friends wanted to cook the civet cat for ‘medicinal purposes’ but we fed it bananas and at dusk, released it back into the wild, next to the zoo.
Food and gardening were part of the fabric of my life. When I left home to further my education abroad, I could not cook but I knew without a doubt what real food should taste like. A lesson in how to cut up a whole chicken with a large cleaver (!) was the beginning of many little steps towards cooking for self and loved ones.
I Skyped my mum this morning. The first thing she asked was: ‘Have you eaten?’ followed by ‘What did you eat?’. Later, I spoke with dad, you've guessed it......
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