Pressing Needs

Garden Grapes

When Autumn arrives we always get very busy. There's lots to harvest and lots of juice to press and process. First up this year was the grapes growing in our garden. I crushed them first, with a potato masher, then squeezed them, within an inch of there tiny lives, in our decade old apple press. Two Gallons are now bubbling away merrily in demi-jons. I was tempted to pasteurize the delicious juice but fermentation is a simple way to preserve fresh produce.

Grape Juice

Next up was the apples and we normally gather around two hundred Kilograms from parks, car parks and common ground around the city. However, this year the crop was massively depleted by relentles heat waves and consistent lack of rain. 

Apple Picking

Almost all the trees have been severely stressed and as a result the fruit yeild was way below par. Many of the trees had tiny apples and a lot of trees had no fruit at all.

Telescopic Game Changers

However, over time we have mapped out a vast amount of fruit trees, and this gives us many options. Even though the harvest was poor by comparison to any other year, and we've been doing this for fifteen years, we still managed to collect enough to make it worth our while.

Northam Apples

I didn't have time to weigh them but we definitely had over one hundred kilograms, and this was more than enough to cover our event at the British Science Festival. This event was attended by thirty plus people, and I led a short fruit and nut based walk over Southampton common, assisted by my family and the BSF volunteers. On our return, everyone mucked in with the chopping, milling, pressing and drinking of juice.

Apple Day in the Garden

Then a couple of days later, we did it all over again in the garden. We had our own harvest festival with friends, family and lots of fruit. Plenty of the juice got guzzled straight from the press, I pasteurised eight bottles as mitigation against the apocalypse, and two gallons were donated to a young cider maker who helped us with our picking endeavours.

The Juice is Loose
(British Science Festival)

September Remembers

 

I believe Autumn will arrive quickly this year. The trees are already stressed by the prolonged heat and drought the Summer brought, as a result, many have dropped their leaves early already. Fruit and Nut yields have been affected too. 

Early Leaf Fall Caused by Drought

Apples and Pears, normally abundant by this time, are often very small or even non existent this year. We have been out and about searching all our regular trees but the yield will be sparce this year for sure.

Tiny Apples

Hazelnuts, in the city and on the common, have been affected too, the nuts falling early and many with the shells empty, without kernels. Generally, when I collect these nuts, I do it gradually - I know a couple of trees on my route to work and fill my pockets on-route each day, they soon build up.

Hazelnuts

On the gardening and produce growing front, we have struggled to keep the vegetables watered sufficiently, lugging watering cans up and down the garden from our water butts. The Butts (We have 10 blue barrels) were already dry by June and we subsequently had no significant rainfall until September. It's been difficult to keep things alive and we will be reassessing our situation during the Winter, and increasing resilience for next year.

Gardening and Home Grown Produce

Elderberries are having a great year, seemingly unaffected by the weather. I will be topping up my port-wine supply to keep us going over the dark months. I recently harvested our grapes, which have thrived well on regular buckets of used washing up water. I made two gallons of delicious red juice, so it does show that you can find successful work arounds. More on this later...

Elderberries

The good, old fashioned Medlars that grow in the University grounds are looking nice and healthy and we will be looking at them briefly during my presentation for the British Science Festival (17th September).

Medlars

Next month I will be looking forward to Walnut gathering, Grape wine and Sloe Gin making and possibly even Chestnuts.

Apples, Pears, Grapes & Walnuts

It has been a very wet and very busy October. We have processed about 300kgs of apples. I needed a faster way to chop them on my own and a stainless steel Spear & Jackson did the job perfectly!

Gallons and gallons of delicious juice has been produced, some has been Pasteurised for later, some has been turning into cider and lots has been glugged back straight from the press by keen, thirsty workers.

Apple Day at Mansbridge Community Orchard was delayed by stormy weather but we delivered the following week and a gang of curious local kids and adults came out to help, which is what it is all about. We had wheelbarrows full of apples, boxes of pears and even had a bucket load of grapes to press.

The grapes produced a gallon of juice, which is now fermenting into red wine along with my cider and various other alchemical concoctions. We have also been collecting lots of Walnuts, to go with our Hazelnuts; there is a huge tree in Mansbridge, near the orchard. It has delivered a fantastic crop this year, most of which is lying on the green waiting to be gathered or gobbled by hungry squirrels.

My Apple Store is now completely filled to bursting and this should keep us in fruit through the winter, with a little luck. Unblemished Apples will keep for many months if stored in a cool dark place. They should not be left touching each other, so that if one goes bad, it will not affect the others and can be easily removed.

Harvest Moon

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is once again upon us. A baleful harvest moon illuminated the evenings of the equinox weekend, and the traditional Autumnal storms came billowing in from the Atlantic. None of this prevented us from breaking out the Apple pressing kit. 

We had been harvesting loads of Apples and on the Saturday, we set about pressing them into 35 litres of juice; I filled my demijohns, and several gallons are now merrily bubbling away, tuning into cider. The remaining juice was pasteurised and bottled up, ready for the forthcoming year.

We also collected enough Pears for me to produce my essential annual stock of Chunky Pear and Walnut Chutney. We still had Walnuts and Hazel nuts left over from last year, and fresh ones are falling already, early, like so many other things this year.

It turns out that the 2018 weather was perfect for vineyards and it promises to be a special vintage - we harvested our own grapes from our allotment and produced several gallons of tangy juice, most of which will be fermented into a new rose wine, Chateau Vin du Witts Hill, perhaps.

Sweet Chestnuts also look like they will be falling soon, we will be out gathering, and competing for the largest, fattest fruits to bring home and roasting them on our fire as the cooler, darker evenings draw in.

Vine to Wine

While doing our walk over Peartree Green and also at the Apple Day we met John and Pixie; they mentioned that they had too many grapes growing in their Southampton garden. They wanted help harvesting their hoard of fruit before it dropped all over the garden.

They did warn me that there was a lot and so I popped over. It was only when I saw the size of the vine did I realise the scale of what was required, but I set about picking as many as I could, before having to pick the kids up, after their swimming lessons.

I managed to fill my big bucket and as the weather was nice we set about crushing and pressing the fruit that same afternoon. It was a sticky job but a very tasty one non the less.

We added Uncle Loz's white allotment grapes, while we were at it. They were a bit sweeter than the dark ones from our friend's vine.

I pasteurised several bottles and set the rest off to brew into wine, it is bubbling away merrily now but there's no way of telling what it will taste like until it has finished fermenting. I am already very pleased with my cider this year, it's definitely my best batch so far.

We also put a couple of pints of grape juice aside to turn into Grape Jelly. I haven't tried this yet but it looks very promising.