Preparing for Winter V

Floss

@basketcase pink elderflower berries can be used, but be mindful that whatever the colour, if all the flowers are taken there will be no berries!

Laura_Elsewhere

Floss said:

@basketcase pink elderflower berries can be used, but be mindful that whatever the colour, if all the flowers are taken there will be no berries!

Yes and I should have said - the general rule of thumb is: only ever take less than a third of whatever is there... 

@basketcase - oh yes, the apple-pectin works well, ditto lemon peel and pips if you have those leftover (freeze them from Pancake Day?! ) 
Lots of old recipes are something-and-apple, or use a bit of crab-apple juice. Strawberries are just such a notoriously awkward fruit to make dependably into jam that keeps - I'm a reasonably jam-maker and have made perfectly good Strawberry Jam - but also I have made batches of Strawberry Concrete, and of Strawberries-in-syrup, and of Strawberry Glue!  
We decided at one point just to buy strawberry jam, but we do both like it, and good strawb jam is pricey so I've decided I will make a few jars each year but using jam sugar - I reckon it's cheaper than buying it, but I would love to become expert enough to make decent strawb jam dependably! 

basketcase

Thanks for getting back @Floss and @Laura_Elsewhere

I've been toying with the idea of getting an elderberry for my allotment.  I prefer the pink flowered one but didn't just want it to be ornamental, so it's good to know it isn't!

Thanks also for the advice not to take all the flowers.  That I did know, but I didn't know the ratio.  As the pruning rule tends to be 'lop a third' I'd probably have gone with that.  But, again, it's good to now for sure.

Good luck with the strawberry jam-making, Laura.

Primrose

If you plant an elderberry on your allotment give some careful thought about where you plant it as they can grow quite tall over time.  Look for the angle of the sun throughout the day to make sure that it won,t eventually shade out part of your plot which needs a sunny site for growing other veg, especially if you crop rotate.

That  may mean, of course that any adjacent plot will eventually become partially shaded out so you may need to tread a little thoughtfully here. 

basketcase

Primrose said:

If you plant an elderberry on your allotment give some careful thought about where you plant it as they can grow quite tall over time.  Look for the angle of the sun throughout the day to make sure that it won,t eventually shade out part of your plot which needs a sunny site for growing other veg, especially if you crop rotate.

That  may mean, of course that any adjacent plot will eventually become partially shaded out so you may need to tread a little thoughtfully here. 

Thanks for the advice, Primrose.  I hadn't thought of that.

Fortunately I don't adjoin any other plots.  The place I want to put it is against the south facing wall which is at the top of someone's garden but they've built a lean-to along that wall so any shadow would fall along the roof.  Mind you, to be on the safe side, I could probably plant it in an old, partially buried water butt - which might contain the roots a little and is certainly a bit further away from the wall!

maryb

I used jam sugar once but it seemed to give the jam a funny taste.  Now I use one third jam sugar to two thirds ordinary and that seems to work ok and is a lot cheaper.  I do find cane sugar seems to give a better set than beet sugar (and beet sugar really stinks when you open the lid of any jar you store it in)

Laura_Elsewhere

We've taken our winter feather-duvet to Timpson's for washing and tumble-drying - so now it's put away, all clean and ready for the autumn. 
I've seen advice saying to get your duvet dry-cleaned but imo the huge industrial-sized washing-machines and tumble-dryers are a much better idea - after all, who wants loads of powerful harsh chemical residues to breathe in as you sleep?! 

PipneyJane

Morning All

Since our two-year fix finishes this weekend, I did the sums yesterday.  We ended it with small surpluses on both accounts.  Our energy provider’s opening gambit was to double our direct debits, which I’ve now reduced to the lowest their website would let me go. We’ll still be paying about 60% more. The change pushes our joint account - only used for household bills - from a monthly £43 surplus to a £17 deficit.  Still, we are luckier than some. For now, we don’t have to increase our contributions to the joint account; we can spend down some of the cushion that’s built up from earlier months’ surpluses and the £150 council tax rebate.  There’s enough for a year-or-so’s inflated energy prices.  Just waiting to see the impact of the autumn’s promised £400 grant. (NB: Joint savings are kept separate.).

Earlier in the thread, someone mentioned “canning”.  There are two varieties:  water bath canning and pressure canning.  I’ve done a little of the latter, while the former is only recommended for jars with acidic contents.  For pressure canning to be worthwhile, you need a pressure cooker that reaches 15lb of pressure and is large enough to take multiple jars. American pressure canners are around 20L in capacity.  Mine is 10L in capacity and was the largest pressure cooker on general sale in the UK 20 years ago.  (I have since seen 12L ones in kitchen stores in France.) With padding - folded tea-towels wrapped around the jars to stop them touching anything - it will take 3 x 1L Kilner jars at a time.   It didn’t come with a trivet, so I layer the base with another 2 or 3 tea towels for insulation.  

Another point to note:  American canning books will often say that if you are using a pressure cooker instead of a pressure canner, you need to add an extra 20 minutes to the canning time.  When I queried this somewhere on the internet, I was told that the reason why is because American pressure cookers only reach 5lb of pressure.

HTH

- Pip

Doveling

Just topped up our coal bunker with two sacks of Supertherm smokeless.
£52.00 !!!! Where's the screaming emoji? 

MingVase

Doveling said:

Just topped up our coal bunker with two sacks of Supertherm smokeless.
£52.00 !!!! Where's the screaming emoji? 

My god - we went through 2 bags a week every week for ten months of the year. Maybe we moved at the right time!!!