The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Floss

I always found working on my plot very rewarding - the then husband would do the heavy digging and any construction or tree work, but everything else was down to me. Do you divide your labour on your plots @boazu ?

[Deleted User]

He digs, I pick, He sows seeds in the greenhouse and garden and I do the watering and weeding, I help with the harvesting and I do all the prepping, preserving, drying and freezing.  It works out at 50% each...he eats more of it than I do though! He clears the plot and does the pruning, I do it in the garden.

[Deleted User]

We're harvesting early courgettes, the rhubarb is still going strong, we've lettuce in use (pick and come again) in the garden and more of a different variety almost ready on the allotment. Potatoes are looking good this year both in new and maincrop varieties, onions are swelling nicely, plums in abundance on the allotment tree and everything else growing on nicely at home and on the plot.  Looks like it might be a very good and abundant berry year for logans, blackberries and raspberries as well they're absolutely covered in masses of flowers and bees.  Much jam!

-taff

One of my friends let me pick some of her blackcurrants about 7 years ago. I made that into the best blackcurrant jam I've ever tasted. There's one pot left for special occasions I must remember to add in blackcurrant bushes, maybe two to the future garden redesign....

We have got plots available here but I don't have the strength or stamina to work them at the moment, here's hoping for the future....Mind you, if I was well, I'd be working and have no time to do it...swings and roundabouts isn't it?

GaleSF63

-taff said:

One of my friends let me pick some of her blackcurrants about 7 years ago. I made that into the best blackcurrant jam I've ever tasted. There's one pot left for special occasions I must remember to add in blackcurrant bushes, maybe two to the future garden redesign....

We have got plots available here but I don't have the strength or stamina to work them at the moment, here's hoping for the future....Mind you, if I was well, I'd be working and have no time to do it...swings and roundabouts isn't it?

Or more than two... it is incredibly difficult to find blackcurrants in the shops - no tinned or frozen (except in a mix)  and has been for a year or two. 

VJsmum

I do find blackcurrants such a ball-ache to top and tail, but i really like blackcurrant jam.  Had thought about going to the fruit farm to get some jamming fruits but we just don't eat enough jam to warrant it - although i really like the process of making it. I'm not sure that there is a single jar of jam in the house!

I'm in the process of using up stocks to rethink what to get in for the winter.  I bought a lot of soups last winter that are barely touched.  I'm a bit fussy about the quality of things and tinned soups are rather too 'tinny' for me (as in I can taste the tin). THe only one we seem to use is tomato, which DS rather likes. I may put the remainder in the foodbank..  I've a lot of peanut butter and a lot of crackers/flatbreads/oatcakes and so forth so I am gradually working through those. 

Baileys_Babe

If you enjoy the process of making jam @VJsmum can you make some jam to give as gifts? 

Floss

@VJsmum I used to make blackcurrant jelly rather than jam 😉

Whitefiver

Floss said:

@VJsmum I used to make blackcurrant jelly rather than jam 😉

Yes, I much prefer the jelly - not just because my teeth have a number of pip sized gaps, and those pips are the devil to hoick out....

It is definitely worth the hassle to me, and I don't mind the overnight straining process.

[Deleted User]

I'll be making blackberry and apple jelly when the blackberries are ripe, it's our Christmas morning breakfast ritual to open a jar of bramble jelly and smell summer and remember the day we picked the fruit and be grateful that in the depths of winter summer lives in our house in a beautiful sweet purple jar of deliciousness and will come again, it's the turning of the year and as the daylight hours increase I look forward to next years harvest, it's the connection to the seasons and life going on full circle again, rather lovely that is!