Author Archives: Katrina James

Where there is a couple there is always a gooseberry

Posted on by under Cooking, Garden

We were thrilled to find three bountiful gooseberry bushes in our back garden, so we’ve made some gooseberry jam to use as favours at our wedding in the autumn. This is our recipe.

  • Tonnes (actually 2kg) of gooseberries
  • A lemon
  • 2kg of granulated sugar
  • A really big pot

Put three saucers in the freezer – more on this later…

We got jars from Amazon and sterilised them by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing in boiled water and drying in the oven. We also spent ages topping and tailing all of the gooseberries. It took a LONG time.

We bunged the gooseberries into the pan with the juice of the lemon and 400ml of water, and simmered it for about quarter of an hour. Then we added the sugar and stirred the mixture (at a lower heat, if it boils the sugar crystallises) for another 15 minutes until it was all dissolved.

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Now boil the mix hard for at least 10 minutes. I panicked at this point because it started going red, and why would green gooseberries go red right? But it turns out that is what happens when you boil them with sugar, it is correct and you don’t need to ring your sister in a panic that you’ve done it all wrong…

Then we got one of the saucers out of the freezer and dropped some of the jam onto the cold surface and let it cool. The test is that if you run your finger through it, it should wrinkle up. It took a couple of tries (and a lot more boiling of the mixture) for us before this happened, but as soon as it did happen we put the mix into the jars and it set perfectly.

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Apparently you should put the lids on the jam jars while the mix is still hot as it creates a better seal and helps to preserve the jam for longer – no idea if this is true but it is what all of the advice online seems to say, so that is what we did. So far, that seems to have worked!

What’s the point of the asparagus pea?

Posted on by under Garden, Vegetables

James Wong told us to plant asparagus peas, and although I am a huge (HUGE) fan, I’m afraid this is one ‘homegrown revolution’ I could do without.

I was very excited about little bushes covered in deep red flowers followed by mini asparagus-flavoured delicacies popping up in my garden.

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Unfortunately, the reality is a couple of stringy stalks, a scarce spattering of tiny flowers and fairly tasteless little peas.

We’ve tried boiling, steaming, frying and eating these raw, but they really don’t taste of much. Fried with courgettes was best (slight nutty flavour, maybe?) but they take ages to slice into tiny x-shaped pieces of vegetable confetti – its hardly worth the effort.

I think this is one crop we’ll give a miss next year!

Growing our wedding

Posted on by under Garden

We are both really enjoying our garden and have spent every spare moment in it this year, so when it came to thinking about our wedding it seemed like a natural decision to make our garden part of it.

So – we’re growing our decorations…

We’re using an autumn harvest theme, so we’re growing colourful popcorn, gourds, squash pumpkins, some sunflowers (maybe?!) and we’re also planning to use apples, leaves and berries from around the garden.

Fingers crossed that everything is ripe at the right time!

Pop-stars!

Posted on by under Garden, Vegetables

Before you read this blog, here is some music to go with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBYjZTdrJlA

Right, now you’re in the mood, lets talk popcorn. I have to admit, this is another James Wong suggestion, and one that I am loving so far.

We planted our popcorn seeds in toilet rolls – they don’t like their roots disturbed so when you plant them out you can plant the whole toilet roll and it will biodegrade. Just like the biodegradable plant pots you can get in the garden centre but free from the bathroom instead.

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These seeds grew so quickly, it was six days before they’d all popped up, and another week before they looked pretty strong. When we planted them out we probably planted them too close together, but we have been giving them a comfrey feed once a week and they have shot up, nice and tall and strong.

Our neighbour Mike is growing sweetcorn (as are most of the farmers around us) and it looks almost the same – the main difference is that ours is deep russet red around the tips of the leaves and on the forming husks, unlike the golden yellow of the sweetcorn.

Popcorn husks are very colourful, usually a mixture of reds, yellows, oranges and browns. We’re planning to use the popcorn as decoration at the wedding, I’ve bought some screw eyes to fix in the ends of them and we plan to make colourful autumn harvest bunting with them!

If you want to eat them though, all you have to do is brush butter on the outside of the husk and pop it in the microwave whole. I can’t wait for our winter film nights!

 

To bee or not to bee

Posted on by under Garden

That is indeed a good question. We decided against chickens as there is a healthy local fox population, we’re rarely home in time to shut them up before dark in the winter and didn’t really want to confine them to a run. However bees, while still needing a lot of work, don’t need shutting in at night and we both love honey.

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We’ve also both been following all of the news about declining bee populations and we’re keen to fill our garden with bee-friendly plants and spaces. Keeping a hive of bees seems a natural next step.

I’ve been in touch with Bath Beekeepers Association and we’re hoping to get to one of their introductory courses next spring. We’re also researching how to plant our garden up for bees next year. In the meantime we’re reading as much as we can and learning a huge amount. Any advice, experiences or resources you can share with us would be much appreciated!