Get jammiin’’
It’s easy to make home-made jam, and you won’t have tasted anything like it.
I’M HEADING into my second summer of the year, having avoided the worst of winter 2015 by spending a month of it with my daughter in the northern hemisphere.
It was wonderful to see the array of berries growing in her garden: gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, red and black currants, all ripening on vines and canes, strawberries sprinkling the leafy sidewalks giving glimpses of bright red.
Her garden was alive with birds and squirrels, and even the odd fox came out at night. Protecting the garden bounty from wild foragers became a daily and nightly challenge. It was really disheartening to wait for fruit to ripen and then find the plants stripped of their bounty.
Harvesting early seemed to be the best way. I picked all the red currants for jam and we ate fresh raspberries daily. Netting can protect from the birds, but the UK is full of grey squirrels which are very cunning and manage to get through. Here, it’s thieving possums stripping my fruit trees.