Saturday 2 September 2017

Soup, potatoes and juicing the plums 

Saturday is a doing day here. I made the soups I wanted to, some portions were froze and some eaten there and then. Tomato soup and split pea and ham soup. I'll have some of these for lunch this week at work.

I was telling Ste I needed some shelves in the greenhouse for the seeds I am sowing and look what he knocked up for me. I'm really pleased as they look good and are practical. 

Finally ste got to use his Christmas present from me. A fruit crusher and press. We decided to put the 3 zillion plums we have through the crusher, stones and all, as we've tonnes left on the tree for the rest of the recipes. It worked really well and we now have 2 demo johns of plum juice being turned into yet another alcoholic drink!

We all had a go at the press.


The drink we're making is called plum jerken. I'll let you know how it turns out!


I thinned out the lettuces in the veg plot, cut the foliage off the potatoes that have blight and took the leaves to the local tip. 

Ste got a shot of me at work!

Below are the leaves showing blight. If you zoom in you can see the chocolate spots on them.


Apparently anything with blight must be burnt or taken off site so we bagged it up and removed it as green leaves would be hard to burn.

We harvested one of the small beds of potatoes as Ste wants to get on fixing it and who am I to stand in the way of a man wanting to work?  I'm pleased with the harvest. They're drying out and we'll put into the sacks which incidentally I got off eBay for £1 each. Bargain?! This potato is Carolus and so far looks good with a reasonable yield. This one did not succumb to blight and they all seemed healthy so I'm pleased, we'll taste them tomorrow with Sunday lunch.



Tomorrow we're at a christening so have limited time in the day. I'll spend an hour outside before we go getting tidied up and make sure everything is hoed. We're not sure what time we'll get in so I won't do a Sunday dinner. Maybe a jacket spud using some of today's harvest.

I'm hoping to do something with elderberries shortly as they're in full swing here.  Pontack sauce is up first. 

Anyway, bed for me now, goodnight 

15 comments:

  1. Impressed with the fruit press, its al going full stem ahead at your place, I have had another year of blight.

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    1. It seems a lot of people have though I am learning from others they've had a great plum year too!

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  2. Blight...yep us too...such a blighter really! x

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  3. We'll be getting our fruit press out soon. We have the same scratter as you, but I've fixed it to a waist high wooden base with a built in chopping board to hold it steady and space for a bucket to cath the bits underneath to make it easier. I'll put some photos of it on a blog post shortly.

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    Replies
    1. I am going to bookmark your blog too , thanks for that :-)

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  4. Love the shelving in the greenhouse. Go up if you need more space! Great guns with the fruit press and the spuds look great despite the blight.x

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    1. Oh so do I Hun, you know one of those little things that means a lot? I love them! X

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  5. That plum juice looks pretty gruesome at the moment!
    Good idea for the shelves

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    1. Haha yes I suppose it does! Let's hang fire to see how it tastes! Thank you :-)

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  6. Good potato harvest! I have to confess to no bothering too much with spuds as I can buy 25kg for £6 down the road but I will grow more next year. A friend and I are goign to start getting his press sorted soon, determined to make some cider this year!

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    1. Thanks kev, this is only a few of them so I'm pleased. Best of luck with the cider, you of all ppl should be king at that!

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  7. We are getting a press - from Machine Mart - is this where you got yours from? Blogger is messing about with my comments so I keep missing them - off to do some sorting out!

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    1. No I got this off the internet, amazon it was for Christmas. Oh dear, blogger is a right pain sometimes isn't it!

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  8. Your work is very good and I appreciate you and hopping for some more informative posts. Thank you for sharing great information to us.
    juicing

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