Plants and Trees | Zeb Bakes

The bees that visit adore these drumstick alliums

This is my pic. I try to plant alliums and purple geraniums for the bees as they love them and the bees need all the help they can get these days. These (allium sphaerocepahlon or round headed leek) flower later than the big ones that we have in the Spring. We get visited by bees with many different coloured bottoms; red, white, yellow and orange, we get small honey bees, large bumble bees, solitary bees. I think there must be lots of bee keepers in Bristol. Sometimes they fall asleep on the alliums and I find them there in the morning waiting for the sun to warm them up.

Brian came out to see if he could take a better shot and the bee flew behind his glasses. He closed his eyes and waited politely till the bee left. He needed pudding though to compensate…

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2nd July 2010

As I trailed around the local woodland with the dogs I looked at the wildflower meadows planted by the schoolchildren a few years ago and thought that I must get better at flower identification. It’s on my list of things to learn…

Wildflowers sown by the local infants school

Then I noticed something…

What’s that in that tree?

A quick investigation revealed:

Cherries – billions of them!

Small, sour-sweet, dark and juicy, trees full of them! I don’t remember seeing these at all last year…and they’re everywhere, trees full of them, dark red, bright red, big ones, small ones…

Never being without a bag, I’m a dog walker remember? I stood and picked a dog bag full, about 3lbs in weight. I looked as if I was a member of the cast of the recent promenade version of Macbeth the students did here with my hands stained red with cherry juices.

At home, I washed and sorted my cherries out.

Beauty in a colander

Then consulted Pam Corbin; no cherry jam recipe. Cherries, high in acid and medium pectin it said though. So I de-stoned them, one of those contemplative activities, in which one half of the brain says, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this’, and the other half says, ‘Yeah, yeah, but once in a while it’s fine to do this and you started this by picking them in the first place so just get on with it. ‘

Then I washed the fruit, put them in a pan to heat up and gently cooked them till the skins had softened. Don’t add sugar till the skins are soft. Added the sugar, heated it till it dissolved, completely, added the juice of a lemon and a little commercial pectin and then brought it to a roiling boil (I love that word!) and it was ready in about 7 minutes. I use a sugar thermometer to monitor the temperature, usual setting point is 104 – 106 C. Test for a set by putting a teaspoon of jam on a cold saucer, turn off the boiling jam while you wait to see if it has set enough. It should wrinkle slightly when you nudge the test spoonful once cooled. If it hasn’t then turn the heat back up again and bring it up to temperature once more.

Tip: the time to stir is when you are slowly dissolving the sugar, once you start boiling the jam, don’t stir as it stops the jam coming up to temperature quickly which is what you want, in order to have a nice fresh tasting jam.

This first batch pictured here was made with 50 percent sugar to fruit weight and was destined to go in the fridge and be eaten quickly. I wanted a tart jam that really tasted of cherries. I made a second lot later with 1 kg of sugar to 750 g fruit that was hopefully to be kept longer. But I was guessing here as to what the correct ratio is. Edit: I have done a little bit more research and the most commonly advised proportions are : 60 per cent sugar to 100 per cent fruit weight. If the cherries are sweet then add a tablespoon of lemon juice for each kilo of fruit. You will probably need to add some pectin, either home made or commercial. Suggested proportions and lots more useful information can be found here where I found it on the Allotment Vegetable Growing site.

Bubble, bubble…

I love cherries and cherry jam is my joint favourite jam along with damsons, and I’m down to my last jar of that, so the cherries should keep me going for now :)