Always look forward to the first strawberries of the season and today I picked this beauty!
First Strawberry of the Season
Tag: fruit
Arbutus unedo (Strawberry Tree)
Arbutus unedo, one of my favourite trees is flowering in my garden at the moment. Also known as the Strawberry tree, it has pink tinged white, bell-shaped flowers which hang in clusters from the branches and which are magnets for bees and butterflies.
The strawberry tree is full bloom is a fantastic sight
Flowers and fruit appear at the same time
These flowers will become next years fruit, which unusually appear at the same time as the flowers. The fruit is said to be edible, but doesn’t taste like a strawberry, and can be used to make jam or liqueur. The birds eat them before I get chance to!
Arbus unedo is an evergreen shrub with a bushy habit. However, you can prune the bottom branches off so that it reveals the brown-red bark which peels rather attractively. It is a member of the Ericaceae family so the leaves go yellow if it is not on acid soil – I give mine an Ericaceous feed.
Arbutus unedo fruit (Strawberry Tree)
Arbutus unedo (otherwise known as the Strawberry tree) is unusual in that the current year flowers appear as the fruit from the previous year’s flowers, ripen. The fruits are said to be edible, but the blackbirds seem to eat them before I get chance to do anything with them! A wonderfully wildlife-friendly tree – I have previously posted a photo of a butterfly on the flowers of Arbutus unedo and bees love the flowers too!
Apples and Pears
Harvest time!
Raspberries, Autumn
I find the autumn fruiting raspberries are much tastier than the summer ones. They fruit on canes they grow that year, rather than the previous season’s canes, as with the summer raspberries. Simply cut all the canes down to the ground in February and new canes will form and fruit the same year.
Cayenne Chili Pepper (Red Hot Chili Pepper)
Have had a great crop of cayenne chili peppers this year. The cayeene is considered a ‘hot’ chili, on the Scoville scale it is 30,000–50,000. I shall be making chili sauce very soon!
Blackberries
The blackberries seem to be ripening much earlier than normal. Who can resist foraging for wild blackberries? Eat a few whilst you pick and take some home for blackberry and apple crumble.
Homemade Strawberry Jam
For the last 10 days we’ve been picking strawberries faster than we can eat them, so I made a batch of strawberry jam today. There is absolutely nothing as satisfying as preserving fruit that you have grown yourself and the taste is sublime, compared with shop-bought jam. In fact I don’t even buy supermarket jam any more.
Home Grown Fruit and Veg
I decided to investigate the first early potatoes (variety Rockets) that I planted on 9 March and discovered quite a large potato – a bit bigger than I would have liked for new potatoes, but I suspect the warm, wet weather we’ve had recently has made them grow rapidly. I dug up the first root and this was the result. I added a sprig of mint in the saucepan when cooking them and they smelt and tasted delicious!
I also picked another 2.25lbs of strawberries. I saved this tray from some I bought at the supermarket last year. Strawberries bruise easily and spreading and storing them like this is ideal for a longer storage time.
Strawberries
I picked my first home-grown strawberries of the year today – a sure sign that summer has arrived (albeit with torrential rain storms! This variety is called Hapil and I have grown them for quite a few years now. They are the sweetest, tastiest strawberries I’ve ever eaten.
