Everything's Gone Green

Plum

The observant amongst you will have noticed that the countryside and even the city parks and roadsides are changing colour. The Plum blossom is floating like fluffy white clouds along the hedgerows; there's plenty of it and it looks like it will be a very good year for plums. 

Plum

So, if anyone has a good proposition for what we can use the bucket loads of fruit that we will get, come July, we want to hear about it please.

Plum

Blackthorn is also beginning to bloom too and these flowers are similar to the plum, the fruits (Sloes) are also related, although you might not want to eat Sloes straight off the tree! It looks as if it will be a good year for Sloes too, judging by the scale of the current bloom (provided the weather is not too stromy).

Blackthorn

People have often asked me to differentiate these two blossoms and so I am posting lots of images here to help you distinguish one from the other.

Blackthorn

The most obvious thing to spot is that the Blackthorn has large black thorns all along the branches. If at first you do not notice these, you soon will, if you put your hand in amongst the flowers.

Blackthorn

The Blackthorn has smaller, clumped flowers fizzing along the branches; it tends to be a smaller tree, often looking more like a bush. Whereas the Plum will grow into a medium sized tree.

Small Plum Tree

I say Cherry Plum but the blossom will be very similar on trees that will grow Mirrabells, Greengage, Damson, Bullace as well as plain Plums.

Big Plum Tree

Hawthorn is also adding a green tinge to the woodland fringes at the moment. The fruit and leaves of this tree are also largely edible, if you ever feel slightly peckish on a wander.

Hawthorn, just as prickly as Blackthorn

The next thing to keep your eyes peeled for will be Ransoms, Wild Garlic Bluebells & Cherry blossom. Personally, I will be looking forward to the launch of Printemps, the Unity Brewing Co. Spring seasonal beer, created in collaboration with the Urbane Forager Project using locally foraged Stinging Nettle tips.

A Real Plum Spot

Miraculously, just as the cherry trees were starting to look a little empty – I spotted a Cherry Plum tree that was laden with ripening fruit. I tried a couple, then quickly filled my empty sandwich box and headed back.

My First Cherry Plums of 2011

These beautiful little fruits are always simple to spot because people do not often bother to crop them at all, hence you tend to notice the fruity mess, squashed all over the pavement.

Squashed Messy Fruit - Look Up!

Cherry plums come in many colours and will differ likewise in taste but they will all cook nicely. I have seen Red, Yellow Purple and Green varieties, all of which taste great straight off the tree. It is easy to tell when they are ready for harvesting, as they will be falling of their own accord and should come off into your hand just by touching.

Many Colours but all Plums

Closely related fruits are the Greengage, Damson, Bullace and Wild Plum. Again, they vary greatly in size, taste and colour but all can be eaten or cooked.

The Usual Suspects

It’s worth remembering (especially if you have young children) that the pavement is not always the best place to pick from, especially if it is beside a busy road. Fortunately, there is often a field on the other side of the hedge, so this is where your young pickers should be installed.

Green Plums - Possibly Bullace

These tasty hedgerow fruits can be eaten straight of the tree or made into Pies, Jam, Chutney, Cordial, Schnapps, Wine and a hundred other lovely things. Most recipes that I know do not include the stones, so you might as well take them out as soon as you get home, if you intend to cook with them.

Red Cherry Plums

You can then freeze the halves in the same way as I described for cherries. Of course, they will keep on the windowsill (as they are) for a while, if you just want to eat them as the fancy takes you.

Pitted and Ready to Freeze

It might be worth experimenting a little with drying these fruits – home made prunes anyone? Actually these things often taste a lot nicer than they sound.

Another Loaded Tree Waiting to be Turned into Chutney, Jam or Pies

I think it may be about time to get the child supported blanket out again and shake a tree or two this weekend.

Summer Plum Recipes

Blooming Blossom



Beautiful Hedgerow Blossom



Spring is in the air at last, and it looks like it might be early this year. Daffodils are showing their bright yellow faces by the roadsides and you will begin to notice the hedgerows filling up with the beautiful, snowy haze of blossom.



Plum Blossom Heralds in the Springtime

This busy bloom is the flowers of the blackthorn (sloe is the fruit) and plum trees. It can be difficult to tell the two apart at first (they both belong to the same family) but the blackthorn has long sharp thorns on the branches and trunks, so the clue is in the name.

To Distinguish between Plum and Blackthorn - Press Your Thumb On These...

As the early flowers open, the trees are also filled with plump buds and soon all of these proto-flowers will burst forth in their full glory, smothering the trees in a haze of effervescent beauty.

This blossom is not just a thing to marvel at and wonder over. It is also a chance to register where delicious fruit may be growing later on.

At this early stage you will not be able to discern which variety of fruit (if any) will later appear; it could be damson, mirabelle, bullace, cherry plum, greengage or normal plums.

Like a Chinese Painting

Cherry plums make a sweet, firm afternoon snack; I often pick some during my lunchtime wanders and stash them in my lunchbox to munch on later.

Plum Blossom Normally Has Five Petals

The elusive greengage is quite simply delicious; they burst in your mouth like soft, delicate nectar-filled purses. There is a stone in there too mind you, so it’s best not to get too carried away.

If you are lucky you may even find a Victoria plum tree (the head Chef’s favourite) – We found one last year with big, fat beauties on it. It was in a Chandlers Ford car park and most likely a remnant left over from an old orchard or fruit garden.

A Blooming Wave

In the end though, it’s not the technical name of individual fruits that matters, it’s the fact that they taste delicious straight off the tree, freeze easily, cook well, make great wine and cost absolutely nothing.

Hedges Change Colour

There is always a positive glut of plums available every year. So, you should never need to buy them from the supermarket when they are in season next June/July.

Buds Bursting To Open

Free cherries follow soon after the plums.

The Phantom Limb Fruit Picker

I have been designing fancy, new fruit pickers for the children, in readiness for the cherry and plum season. The cherries are looking fatter and redder every day, so it won’t be long now. I’m salivating like Pavlov’s dog as I type...

The simplest picker I have made is for blackberries.

Blackberry Picker

It’s just a metre of thin PVC pipe sawn off at an angle at one end and cut back into two prongs. The prongs are then curled back using heat, and set like two crooked fingers. This is great for young kids, to help them reach inaccessible fruit. Attach a bag to the end of the pipe with an elastic band and the fruit rolls down the pipe to fill it up.

If you are feeling ambitious, you can try something a bit more dramatic like this...

The Phantom Limb Cherry/Plum Picker!
Who's shoes are those btw?

I scaled the original idea up to make new a cherry/plum picker. I used a prosthetic hand, which I crafted out of PVC by drawing round my own and cutting it out with a coping saw.

A Flat PVC Hand Shape

Then I moulded it into a functional shape and attached it to a small bore gutter down-pipe. I think the kids will love using this, and the hand came out better than I expected; it is actually quite spooky.

Moulded Over the Gas Hob (when I was foolishly left alone in the house)

Wait until the captain of the galley is out of the way before trying this shipmates!  If you are a child, get a responsible adult (if you know one) to do this next bit for you...

If you carefully heat PVC up, on a gas hob it becomes pliant and can be set in a new position as it cools. You can also use an electric (paint stripping) heat gun for the same purpose, the same warnings apply to either method.



The Finished Phantom Hand, Spooky!

I say carefully - advisedly because...

1.       The PVC gets very hot and you can burn your fingers on it.

2.       If it gets too hot PVC catches fire, melts all over the cooker (and you potentially) and gives off highly toxic smoke and fumes.

So be very careful, and then you can make great stuff out of it.

This Is Real, Not PVC. A lovely Stag Beatle I Found it in the Garden...
Look Out It's Coming Right At You!

Cherry Plum Wine

4lb. Plums

10cm Root Ginger

4 Cloves

1 lemon sliced

1 Gallon water

3lb. Sugar

Yeast

I used the cherry plums that I had previously frozen – there just happened to be approximately the right amount. I’m pretty confident that wine making, like cookery, is not an exact science, despite what some celebrity chefs would have us believe and this makes it much more exciting. If the plums have been previously frozen, this also helps to break down the fruit and release the juice. If you are using fresh fruit you will need to cut and stone the plums before continuing.

Now I Feel a Lot Better...

Bash the ginger with a rolling pin to release the flavour (and any residual stress left over from your day at work), add it to the plums with the cloves and sliced lemon. Boil the water, pour it over the mixture and stir. The boiling water will kill off any stress, which is now contained in the mixture; you can relax now and soak up the fantastic aroma.

A Lovely Smell and Colour

Cover loosely and leave for two or three days, stirring twice daily with a wooden spoon. I also added a teaspoon of Pectinase at this point, to help reduce cloudiness later. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag (a couple of layers of muslin or an old tea towel will do equally well), do not squeeze – be patient and allow it to drip.

And Wait...

Stir in the sugar until it is all dissolved and when the liquid is lukewarm add the (previously activated) yeast. Pour into a fermentation jar and insert an air lock. Then leave it to ferment to finish in a warm place.

Syphon off into bottles or a storage jar and cork.

Country wines will improve over time (apparently), although they can taste drinkable fairly soon after bottling. Even if your wine tastes great at first, it can be worth asking your beverage butler to set a few well labelled bottles aside in the wine cellar (kitchen cupboard/box-under-the-stairs/outhouse/shed etc.).

Cherry Plum Yum Yum Yum

Cherry Blossom

 March gives way to April, daffodils blur into bluebells and plum bloom passes the baton to the cherry blossom (apple and pear flowers will follow shortly)...

You know that Spring is well under way when you can spot cherry blossom by the roadsides. Once you can recognise the antenna like branches, festooned with pink or white flowers, you begin to realise how very common these trees are.

White Bloom on a Blue Sky

The Cherry is a native tree, they grow wild in woodland and fields but they are also highly ornamental and are often planted to line roadsides, avenues and even supermarket car parks.

Close-Up of Cherry Flowers

Some of the more decorative blooms will not later develop into useful fruit but a great many of these everyday trees will bear a huge crop of juicy dark red cherries.

A Cherry Blossom Vortex (perhaps)

The thing that always surprises me, is that nearly all of these delicious beauties will be eaten by the birds; I rarely see other families out picking cherries locally even though they cost a fortune in the supermarket; we gathered bucket loads just in the St Deny’s area of Southampton last year.

Cherry Trees are Common, Even in the City

Cherries ripen around June/July and many will be sweet enough to be eaten straight off the tree. Others will taste tart, so these will be better for cooking. After the huge success of my poached pears, I’m going to have a go at bottling some cherries this year. The benefit of this is being able to eat cherries with ice cream, out of season.



Antenna



What we really need this year, is a local machine hire company to lend us a Powered Cherry Picker to drive us up into the branches of the larger trees, in order to relieve them of their ruby red jewels, this would enable us to beat the birds at their own game and stock up our kitchen cupboards.

It would also represent an interesting PR opportunity for a suitable machine hire company, so if any readers are employed in this field, I’m looking for suggestions and would like to stage some Cherry Picknik events this coming summer.

This Tree is in a Well-Known DIY Store Carpark

Spring Forward - Fall Back on Planning

This year (2011) I intend to make Elderflower cordial for the kids and Elderflower champagne for my wife and myself, although I suspect that the EU will insist that we call it fizzy wine. I also aim to make elderberry and plum or damson wine, I will eat plums if I have to but I feel sure that there are better things to do with them.

Hard to believe it, but this is quite simply the best apple tree

 Chutney uses plums apparently, so I might try that, and chutney seems to last forever as far as I can tell. Plum jam could work too, I'm sure. There are so many trees in the hedgerows and they ought be utilised somehow. I guess all this planning means we will need to start saving up and preparing some suitable bottles and jars, so I’d better start drinking some wine!

Beautiful Springtime - Plum blossom bursts forth first heralding the new season

I am loosely planning to have a stall at the school summer fete, but I need to get organised and find out what date it is held. The children and I can pick fruit, process it in some appropriate way and then sell it at the fete. We could also sell freshly picked fruit if the timing was right. I imagine a stall brimming with chutney, jam, pies, and fresh fruit like plums and cherries all picked processed and sold by children… We could use some of the proceeds to give to the school and the rest to buy new picking/pickling equipment or to pay for website upkeep.

The first cherry blossom I spotted this year

Through the winter months I have been spotting tree types by their shape and bark and logging the trees positions on my map.

A frozen shower of catkins on a Hazel tree

 Now that March is nearly over, Spring has fully arrived and I have been able to detect trees by their blossoms as they arrive. This is proving a very useful method because Plum comes first, followed closely by the Cherry and later Apple and Pear, giving you a chance to focus in on each type as it arrives.

Cherry tree bark - easily identified when you know what to look for

Catkins are also a type of flower and even through February you can spot Hazel stands by observing them. They always look to me like tiny isolated rain showers, frozen into the hedgerows. The straight stands of hazel sticks and branches become fairly easy to distinguish soon too.

  




Plum Picknik

Everyone is invited to a, Plum /  Cherry-Plum / Mirabelle / Bullace / Greengage - Foraging Picknik (I don't care what they are all called, as long as they taste good). 

This event will take place this Sunday morning, in Avenue Park, Stoneham. Anyone who joins us, can also take in a visit to the lovely First World War shrine in the park.

The event is suitable for families or adults. The lovely plums here are plentiful, they taste great straight off the tree and would equally be great for baking, jam, chutney, pies, wine etc.

The Usual  (Plum) Suspects

Fruit pickers are handy, if you have them, but we can share and there will be plenty within reach or on the ground. You can always hold a blanket out and shake the branch. Bring suitable containers (buckets/baskets)  if you want to take some fruit home with you. It's always nice to bring some cake to share too.

This event will go ahead regardless of the weather ;-) so dress appropriately, bring a brolly in case or just come to see where the trees are and then come back when you have time.

Venue: Meet in the Cricket Pitch Car Park (almost opposite the Cricketers pub), Chestnut Avenue, Eastleigh - mind the bollards if you're driving.
Date: Sunday 19th July - this Sunday morning.
Time: 10.00 am (plenty of time for the Sky Ride later)
Cost: It's all FREE!

N.B. This is a casual event, everyone is responsible for their own (and their children's) health & safety.