It seems that the strawberry season is slowly coming to an end here on plot 15c and I am a little relieved. Don’t get me wrong, I love strawberries but there was a massive glut of them and after making lots of jam already I was a little bemused about what I could make with the rest. I came across a recipe for some strawberry cordial and it sounded delicious! I had already made lots of elderflower cordial and amongst it being really yummy I found that you can use it as an ingredient in so many things such as jelly (there will be another post all about my elderflower jelly very soon!) I used half of my strawberry harvest to make some more strawberry and elderflower jam because I love it so much, and then I used the other half to make the cordial.
Recipe: (to make roughly 2 litres or cordial)
1kg crushed strawberries
2 unwaxed lemon, thinly sliced
1.8kg caster sugar
1litre of water
- Place the strawberries and lemon in a large glass bowl with the sugar and citric acid.
- Bring the water to the boil and once boiled, pour it into the bowl and stir until all the sugar has dissolved.
- Leave to cool, cover and place in a fridge for 4 days.
- Strain through a muslin and decant into sterilised bottles. Keeps in the fridge for up to 6 months.
It tastes delicious with water, lemonade and it can be mixed with wine for that perfect summer drink (adults only!). If I don’t drink it all over the next week then I might try and make some jelly with it, or maybe even some ice lollies if the sun keeps shining 
It is officially summer time and the harvests are starting to come in thick and fast, as a matter of fact I can’t keep up with all the crops! It doesn’t seem like long ago that I was planting the seeds and now I have peas, broad beans, potatoes and peas coming out my ears. I shouldn’t really be complaining because they are all delicious but it’s a full time job trying to freeze them, make jams, cordials or think of new recipes to try with the gluts. At least the potatoes tend to look after themselves and store rather well in the ground until I am ready to use them, they are the most delicious jersey royals I have ever tasted, I just wish I had planted more!
As for the rest of the allotment it is all starting to look lovely and green. The legume bed is by far the busiest with the broad beans and peas in full swing. The french beans and second double row of peas are growing nicely and I have yet to put in another row of peas for my succession planting. The borlotto beans are climbing rather high up my hazel archway and I just can’t wait until they have reached the top and produce lots of yummy beans to store away for winter. The fruit bed is also showing signs of a small harvest soon with a few very large gooseberries and some blackcurrants too, theres even 4 raspberries growing too! I even managed to squeeze some swiss chard into the fruit cage and over the past couple of days its doubled in size, it must be all this nice weather we are having.
The strawberries are going crazy and so are the tomatoes, I have to check daily and remove side shoots before they get out of hand and the poor basil is being overshadowed! The root bed is left to go it’s own thing, all the potatoes are ready so they are just waiting to be eaten. The only thing that hasn’t grown well in this bed is the carrots, which reminds me that I need to sow some more. Last but not least is the brassica bed which is slowly filling up. Now originally there was going to be one row of red cabbage, one row of purple sprouting broccoli, two rows of flower sprouts and 2 pumpkins in that bed. There has been a slight change in this plan and the broccoli is now moving over to my Dad’s new large plot so I have a spare area of soil where I can grow some cut flowers. I know I keep moaning about it but my plot is so tiny, there isn’t enough room to grow eveything I want to grow so this extra bit of space is most welcomed. Now all I need to do is decide on which flowers to put there while there is still time to grow them. On the other hand the pumpkins and red cabbage are growing great and the flower sprouts will be moving in this week once I get the netting and structure up and running to keep those pesky cabbage whites at bay.
I seriously can not get over how quickly things are growing, everytime I go up the allotment everything seems to be greener and bigger and the crops just keep coming. It makes all that hard work and blood, sweat and tears worth it thats for sure
The strawberry patch is going crazy! There are so many strawberries growing and an endless amount of big red juicy ones, if I’m being honest I’m getting a tad fed up with eating strawberries. So I came to conclusion that it was about time to dig out the jam making equipment and get making some preserves. I managed to collect a whopping 5.5 lbs of strawberries from both my raised beds, that would be more then enough for the two types of jams that I wanted to make; plain old strawberry jam and a new recipe; strawberry AND elderflower jam (two of my favourite things combined!)
Now I’ve made jam a few times and along the way I have collected some equipment like a large enamel jam pan, a thermometer, various funnels and lots of jam jars. The only problem I have is getting the right setting point, I’ve found that if I don’t rush and take my time to do the wrinkle test at different times during the making process then I can’t miss it!
I managed to make 3 large jars of plain strawberry jam as well as 2 small jars of the strawberry and elderflower jam. I just love strawberries and I love elderflower so I knew the recipe wouldn’t disappoint, unless I mucked it up of course. But I was very careful and stopped the process at the right setting point so the jam turned out perfect, and it tasted delicious too! I think what makes it extra special is the fact that I used homegrown strawberries freshly picked from my allotment and elderflower cordial which I had previously made from foraged elderflower. I will definitely be making some more of this jam once more strawberries turn red in my little patch, that’s for sure
Here’s the recipe for my strawberry and elderflower jam, you can simply double the ingredients if you want more jam (which I recommend as it’s so tasty!)
Recipe:
- 500g of strawberries (hulled and chopped)
- 1/2 of a granny smith apple (peeled and chopped)
- 400g of granulated sugar
- 6 tablespoons of elderflower cordial
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Prep and cooking time; 45 minutes.
Put the strawberries and apple in a saucepan or jam pan, add the sugar and stir it up. Heat the pan on low until the fruits start to get juicy and the sugar becomes wet. Add the elderflower cordial. Now turn up the heat to medium until it becomes a rolling boil, do not stir from this point on. Set the timer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat after 15 minutes and test a teaspoon on a cold saucer for the wrinkle test (Let the jam cool and then move your finger through the centre of the jam, if it wrinkles and leaves a track then the jam has set and it is ready) Let the jam cool down and then stir in the lemon juice. Transfer to a jam jar and allow to cool in a dark place. Once opened keep refrigerated.
I do love a good juicy red strawberry and there is nothing better then homegrown ones. I have two raised beds on my plot, each bed has 25 strawberries so that’s 50 altogether. The plan is to use one bed for making jam and the other one to eat straight from the plant. I first grew strawberries on my Dad’s plot back in 2011, I collected runners and moved all the plants over to my new plot as I was going to be growing the fruit (I didn’t just nick them, honest!) Last year we had a bumper crop of strawberries on my Dads plot and they were delicious, my Dad made a chicken wire and wooden cage for them and nothing was able to touch them. This year however has started off rather bad. I was over the moon when I noticed lots of juicy red strawberries appearing, I draped some netting over them and 2 days later they were demolished! It was a little heartbreaking having to cut away all the red juicy strawberries which had been nibbled by the mice. There were also a few small rotten ones where they had been touching the soil, I blame cats for this! It seems that before I netted the beds the local cats used them as a litter bin and in the process had flattened and moved all the straw that I had carefully laid around each plant. I guess the beds looked like the most perfect straw litter bins in the world for the cats!
So the mission began to create a cage for my beds so that they would keep the mice and birds away. Because my Dad’s original chicken wire cage worked so perfectly last year we decided that this would be the way to go (his cage is now being used to protect his nursery raised bed which was previously the strawberry bed) The problem however is the lack of space on my plot. My Dad can lift his cage on one end and rest it on the grass patch behind his raised bed whereas I would have to lift the entire frame and rest it on top of the other frame on the neighbouring strawberry bed. One, I am not strong enough to lift the frames (they are rather heavy!) and two, manoeuvring the cages might knock tomatoes off their plants in the nearby trough. It seems that I was trying too hard to fit too much into my allotment without realising that you need space to move easily around!
After much thought and nearly getting rid of the tomato trough completely, my Mum chipped in with a genius idea: ‘why not put lids on the cages?’ It was that simple! So off I went to the local diy store to buy some treated wood and I spent all of Sunday making the cages for my strawberries. My Dad helped a lot, I cut the wood, he put the frames together and then I attached the chicken wire to the frames. And ta-dah! My strawberries are saved!
We popped up the allotment to put the cages on the raised beds and they fit perfectly. They have 2 hinged lids each and one of the lids can be flipped over to rest on the other half which allows me to reach in and collect strawberries. I spent the rest of the night cutting away rotten and nibbled strawberries and I tidied up the straw which the cats had trampled too. I am so unbelievably happy with the final results and they are so practical!
I’m sorry mice, but it looks like you’ll have to go look somewhere else if you want to eat yummy strawberries (I’m sorry to other plot holders too!)