Japanese Wineberries

Japanese wineberrys are a relatively new joy I look forward to each year.

I didn't realise how much the kids look forward to them each year as well until today.

Yacon Harvesting

The frost has killed everything it's going to.

Now I really need to get harvesting some root crops. One in particular is the yacon I planted.

I went a bit mad this year and put in a 20ft row of the stuff. It has cropped heavily, so I've no idea what I'm going to do with it all! 

The boy and I set to digging some up last week. I was impressed with the size of the roots, and the weight! They are difficult to harvest without breaking though! Careful digging is needed, pulling them out the ground really doesn't work.

He wasn't sure what to make of them! 

 It's lovely when I do a job and he feel useful. You should have seen him carrying the buckets and digging with his little shovel, then crouching down to have a look. He loves it!

Proud helper

Managed to harvest two buckets full from just two plants with plenty more to go yet! I need to deside where I'm going to store them all! 

Any ideas on what I should do with it all?

Balloon Berry

 I'm always trying to find new and exciting things to grow. 

Over the years I've discovered some that we really like growing and eating. We grow Cucamelons every year now, along with Peruvian Black Mint, Quillquina, Electric Daisies, wine berries and more.

New fruit, I think, is something to get excited about. Maybe it's just my sweet tooth but I love to try out anything like that. I remember going to Asia for the first time and being blown away by the choice of tropical fruit, but I love our temperate fruit even more. 

When I stumbled upon a fruit I hadn't heard of, a balloon berry, I just had to buy some and plant them. Latin name Rubus illecebrosus if you want to goggle it. 

When they came they were far smaller than advertised and smashed to pieces, I got some money back and set about trying to keep them alive. 18 months later I've had my first fruits from them.

They're bigger than a raspberry, growing on a tall strawberry like plant. They look beautiful, like three raspberries fused together, but all the little bubbles are somehow finer.

And how do they taste I hear you ask?

INSIPID I think would be the best word to describe it. 

They tasted of very little, even the long wait and anticipation couldn't improve the taste. Don't get me wrong, they didn't taste bad, they just didn't taste of anything really, just sweetness and a little sour. 

I'll keep these two plants growing as a bit of an oddity in my garden, who knows when they crop heavy they might make a great preserve. But if I was short on space I'd rip them out and plant some more Japanese wine berries instead. I might even move them out to the coppice and add them to the forest garden area as they will tolerate shade.

Maybe with some plant breeding these berries could be the next big thing, but they need some work before then!

Have you heard of or grown these berries before? 

What did you think to them?

What unusual fruit, veg or herb do you think i should try to grow next?

Harvesting Yakon

Heavy frost last night so that means I get to harvest my Yakon and try them for the first time!

Watc the video and let me know what yopu think.

Do you grow this type of tuber? What do you do with them?

Vietnamese Coriander and my Chilean Guavas

 Added a new plant to my collection this week - Vietnamese Coriander. 

On Wednesday I went to a garden show with mum organised by The Red Cross. It was a lovely little show set in the grounds of an old manor house with a walled Victorian garden to walk around as well (more on that another time). The stalls were made up of lots of local specialist nurseries so it was nice that there were no "big brands" there and the stall owners really knew their stuff.

I got talking to the owners of The Cottage Herbery about my dislike for growing coriander. Although I love the taste, it bolts so easily it's hardly worth growing, when ever I want it its run to seed. I was enquiring if they had a herb called Papalo or knew where I could get seeds in the UK from, this is meant to be a great alternative with a similar taste but the plant grows much bigger before if flowers (between three and five feet I think) so you get a much longer harvest, used a lot in Mexican cooking. 

She didn't have this but wrote down my details and of the herb to look for it and said that a good alternative they sell is Vietnamese coriander which gets bigger than normal coriander before going to flower. It's unusual for me to buy a herb instead of seeds but I did as I quite fancied trying this, apparently its easy to take cutting from so I'll be doing that later to propagate my own plants from it and hopefully I'll get some seed as well to plant if it's any good.

Last year when I got them in May

 I also had a comment on a post I'd written last may about when I bought my Chilean guavas, asking what they were like, how they grew and how they did over winter. 

What they look like now

We had quite a mild winter so it's not been the hardest test for them but they've all pulled through. I simply stored them in an unheated greenhouse and made sure I watered them as they needed it. As you can see the plants have grown like crazy in a year and measure about two foot high with a really good spread.

Read about the fruit amazing tasting fruit here.

 I took a couple of cutting last summer and they both rooted easily and have started to grow well. I'm planing to take lots more cuttings this year and I might experiment with growing them in the ground and not bringing them in. They seem to grow so fast that I think they'd make great hedging in a sheltered place (which we aren't in) and because of the fast growth it's not the end of the world if I loose a few plants, I'll make sure that I over winter a few in the greenhouse still. Maybe a small border in front of my new porch when I finish building it!  

Cuttings I took last summer doing well.

Who else is growing Chilean Guavas? Anyone grown one from seed?

Also how does everyone else stand on coriander? Any other suggestions for alternatives?

More Unusual Seeds Ordered And Thoughts On Hybrids

I know I shouldn't be buying things for the garden so close to Christmas but I decided that there was no way anyone was going to buy me these - Yacon, Oca And Fat Baby Achocha! Tubers and seeds to get planting next year. 

I'm blaming James Wongs book and Dawn's blog the other day for showing me her Oca harvest (view Dawn's post here) for buying these and a few more!

I found a small seed growing company on the internet that sold Oca and after reading a bit about them decided I really liked their ethos. They're called the The Real Seed Catalogue and they've got loads of interesting and unusual seeds for sale and none of it is hybrids or modified. In fact they send instructions with every pack so you can save your own seed and not have to buy from them again! 

They don't sell a large selection of each type of vegetable, just ones they grow and know work well for them and ones they think taste good.

Their site is really interesting and I think you should all check it out regardless of where you live. There's instructions on there for saving all sorts of seeds, how to stop cross pollination or to cross pollinate to create new stains (for squash and others) and how to build a seed cleaner with free plans.

They also talk a little about the terminology used by seed catalogues and how to read between the lines. Phrases like "Good For Freezing" mean that it all ripens at one time so it can be mechanically harvested and we'll be left with a glut, the other they picked out was "straight long shanks" usually means 'bred to fit the packing machine".  I had a look in a seed catalogue as I was writing this and found one straight away "excellent fruit uniformity" not much use for me but the seed producers have bred it for the supermarket where uniformity counts and taste is a secondary concern. 

Up until a while ago I guess I always thought that having F1's (hybrids) seeds was a good thing but the more I think about it the more it means we're being controlled by someone else, and having to buy new seed year after year. I will post about my seed swap soon to anyone that's still interested, I haven't many types to offer but they're tasty! 

What does everyone else think about F1's and hybrids?

Medlar Harvest

My little medlar tree hasn't produced many fruits this year but the ones it has are huge!

The whole harvest!

I now need to let these blet before eating them. That is to go slightly rotten and soft, you then eat them with a spoon and they taste a little bit like custard. Apparently this fruit was popular in medieval times and was often referred to as " a bull dogs bottom" - no idea why!!

I have got another tree that I planted at my parents house around 10 years ago, we went on Sunday for a roast dinner (and to see my parents) but the tree had been pecked bare. Not a fruit left on it!
I was disappointed as I was looking forward to making some more spicy medlar chutney. The one I'm eating now (dated 2010) is quite possibly the nicest chutney I've ever tasted but blinking labour intensive to make. I think it took a total of four nights to put together as you have to make a jelly first - a true labour of love and then it needs at least a year to mature.

Anyone else got any medlars growing?

Barberries

Another unusual fruit this week! Barberries (Berberis thunbergii)

Grown as hedging and small decorative shrubs in gardens across Britain, many people don't realise these are edible. The berries are used a lot in Iranian and middle eastern cooking cooking, chucked into rice to give it a sharp pop when you eat them.

 My friend has a massive tree sized bush growing on his grounds, covered in berries, so I decided to do a bit of scrumping (with permission) to get some to try.

 I like the berries straight off the bush and so did both my children, but I can see they'd be a bit tart for some, they taste like a sweetened cranberry. I picked a small tub full and set about sorting out the berries so I could preserve them.

 They are quite a fiddly berry to pick and in the end I just picked a few bunches and then sorted them out at home, whilst trying to stop Ev from eating them all. 

I then put them in my little dehydrator and set them to dry for a few hours. It was tricky as they kept falling through the slats so I had to do it in two goes, I could do with getting some gause to lay them on as they'd dry a lot quicker if they wouldn't keep falling through. 

I managed to dry a small jar full.

When dried they taste even better, they'd be a good substitute for raisins (if you don't mind a much tarter flavour) or dried cranberries and much easier to grow as you largely leave the bush alone and the birds don't seem to affect it much. I'm looking forward to trying these in some rice and maybe scattered over my breakfast.

Anyone else eat these or have them growing in their garden?

Strawberry Tree

As you know from previous posts I have somewhat of an obsession with unusual fruit and veg. Normally I have to plant a young tree or plant and wait years before I get to sample the fruits. 

 Luckily I have a friend in the village who lives on an old estate with lots of unusual, mature trees. One of these happens to be the strawberry tree. And when I went round on Thursday last week they had a fruit waiting for me to try. 

 The fruits themselves look gorgeous, exotic even. Like a red lychees dotted all over the tree, picked out against the sun. The tree is beautiful as well, having lovely flowers and white leaves in spring and a great structure to it. 

The tree is quite beautiful though.

And how does it taste?

One word.

Disappointing. 

I don't think I'll ever bother to try one again put it that way. 

Tasteless, but the skin leaves an almost bitter taste in your mouth. Maybe there is some value as a survive food, but at this time of year there is so much else to eat I can't see why you'd choose this.

Bland tasteless flesh and a horrible skin

It does make an attractive tree in the garden and the birds love eating the fruit so I can see why people plant them but I don't think it's going on my grow list any time soon. Good job I didn't have to wait ten years to find that out!

Anyone else ever had to wait years to try something they've been growing and then been really disappointed by it?

Blue Sausage Fruit Tree

James Wong has got a lot to answer for in our house at the moment. After reading his book I've been doing my research to try and buy a few things from it, so we've got a few things to eat that aren't "run of the mill".

 The Blue Sausage Fruit or Dead Mans Fingers seemed to fit the bill perfectly. They have edible fruit in the autumn that looks like a blue broad bean pod filled with edible flesh. I found a small plant on eBay quite cheap and order it.

It came from Jurassic Plants and was really well packaged with good instructions and even some plant food for the first six months. If I'd ordered it straight from their web site I would have gotten a free tree as well but never mind - there's always next time!

I potted the plant on into a much bigger pot to give it room to grow, the tree isn't huge but buying it small like this saves me some money as I'll just grow it on until it's big enough to be planted in the ground and not need too much attention. 

Only time will tell whether this tree is worth growing or not but I'm intrigued to say the least. If the fruit isn't tasty it still has attractive foliage and might make a nice tree in the garden.

Anyone else got any interesting and usual fruits I can look at growing over here in our climate (we get quite heavy frosts in the winter)?