Tickle your aubergines; as this is the only way I am having success. Water and feed them too, regularly. The current warm weather is envoy ageing the flowers; when all seemed to have stopped.
There are a handful of baby aubergines, all on the black prince F1 aubergines. the ones sown from seed are yet to do anything other than flower.
Today we rhubarb’d. Same recipe. 1.5 litres of fruit. I had harvested a lot of rhurbarb, hoping to get a better fruitier flavour. No cinonman, but some fresh root ginger.
The sticks were chopped up into half inch pieces and boiled with the water. After some mashing, which happened rather quickly. The whole thing was passed through a tea cloth and a sieve. 400g of sugar was added and the liquid simmered to dissolve. Liquid was then cooled and decanted.
This recipe required:
1500g blackberries, I had 1kg,
With a few raspberries, plums and 3
Small sticks of rhubarb.
400g of sugar
Enough cold water to cover them, but let say a litre per kilo.
A stick of of cinnoman, I used powder
A teaspoon of lemon juice.
I put fruit and water into a pan, and boiled til burst. I did mash to be fair and probably shouldn’t have. Then with Ma’s fine mesh sieve, filtered the juice. Returning this to the hob, I added cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice. The recipe said to simmer, then boil for 20 minutes. I got as a far as 11 and the sugar had dissolved. Cool and then decant.
The taste test. Well I had double measure in that glass as it wouldn’t fit into the bottle. Not bad! A bit warm, bit nice.
It’s not that the cabbages are wild rampant beasts. They are quite slow and docile creatures really. They do need some structural support though.
Today about 30 plug plants were plugged in. These were Duncan and sennen cabbages, as well as claret brocolli, and dwarf Curly kale. Each plug was plugged into a small hole with some lime. I had already scattered chicken poop pellets across the bed.
Watered, there was some scattering of blue pellets of doom. Then came the cage itself. A structure made of bamboo canes, lots of them, lashed together. With yogurt pots perched on top to support the netting. Netting was then draped across the top and secured with heavy bricks. Also had to reinforce the structural integrity of the cage built previously. Whilst a few gave succumbed to slimers. Most are doing well. There are however lots of weeds in there that will have to be hoed out. Thinking about removing the make shift fleece and adding netting across now that we have a supply. My only fear is weather damage. Heavy snow or rain could finish the lot.
As the vine has now got Powdery mildew and started to die back, these darlings have been harvested. A very productive vine, but so very viscous! Have an entirely scratched arm. Think altogether I have harvested 17 of these beautifully ugly orbs. No idea what to do with them though, as these are not edible.
Was doing a bit of clearing today, though the aim had been to plant Cabbages and other brassicas. The Cinderella pumpkin vine has been felled as the fruit are now off. So having harvested a few more green tomatoes, a couple of plants have to make way for the cabbage cage; I popped into the poly.
It has been very quiet in the poly, I can’t say it’s gone particularly to plan in there. There is lots of foliage, with flowers coming from time to time. There has however, been a flurry of purple flowers. These are on the diamond, dancer and black prince aubergines. So these have been tickled and carefully observed. In rummaging today, I have found a few of what look like baby aubergines nubs. It’s quite hard to spot them in all that foliage. Will keep an eye on them to see if we get anywhere.
Three cabbages were collected having been cultivated under the heavy duty debris netting. The hearts are tiny, but that is of no consequence to Ma’s
Saag making. The outer leaves are a little filligreed. There was even some kale leaves were plucked.
Last one, I think. A couple of pounds of blackberries, brown sugar and some basics French brandy. Will have to be inverted twice a day for the first week and then once a week to be left for three months.
Wonder if there is a posh name for this?
Both of the ghost riders have now been harvested. The second is bigger, heavier and off the kitchen weighing scales at 6lb. The heaviest we have ever had!
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