Our Family and Other Animals

And now, over to SW19, for the latest from Wimbledon...

As it’s been so long since I sent news from the big smoke I thought I would take this opportunity to update you on our garden. We have now dug three beds down the left hand side of the garden. The one nearest the house is onions, garlic, salad, beetroot, radishes and spring onions. The middle bed is mainly tomatoes, but also celery (because mummy gave us sooooo much, thanks for that), a globe artichoke, brussel sprouts and a snowman pumpkin. The far bed is mainly beans (broad, cannelino, borlotti, climbing French and kidney) plus more celery and another pumpkin.

In addition to this in pots we’ve got another 20 or so tomato plants, about 15 cucumber plants (although I keep finding more that I had forgotten about!), some peas (which look very pathetic), 6 butternut squash plants (grown from seeds from a squash from the supermarket), some chard, lots of herbs and about 20 peppers/chillis (they got mixed up so I don’t know which is which), an aubergine and 3 window boxes full of salad. We’ve also got our fruit – 3 blueberry plants (which we planted last year), 2 raspberries, 2 strawberries and a blackcurrant.

I can’t quite believe we’ve got so much and we are constantly fighting with our menagerie of pests:

• Slugs
• Aphids
• Black fly
• Moths (giant ones, they can definitely smell my fear)
• Rosemary leaf beetles (apparently new to the UK but thriving in Wimbledon)
• Wood pigeons
• Cats
• Foxes (Geraldine, who lives at the end of our garden, and her cub)

You wouldn’t believe we’re in London! Added to all of this is the fact that we are going on holiday for two weeks so we are hedging our bets and asking 2 separate friends to water for us in the hope that they will remember at least once each. I hope it all lasts!

We haven't got any up to date photos but this is our bean patch, before the beans started growing like crazy...

Strawberry Fields Forever

Hello! It's guest blog time again.

This week sees a brand new collaboration. Pyotts Products have been producing a high volume of summer fruits so it’s sister (or should that be daughter) company “South Wimbledon Organic Foods” has come to the rescue. The fruit survived the tropical temperatures of Long Sutton and a completely different type of jam on the M3 to make it safely back to London. Matt has now expertly turned the strawberries (even the squishy ones) into 3 jars of “fridge jam” which, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall assures us is “a sort of halfway house between a full-blown preserve and a fresh fruit sauce”. This is Hugh’s recipe:

Makes about 2kg (about five to six 340g jars).

1.5kg strawberries
The juice of 1 lemon
750g jam sugar with pectin

Divide the fruit in half, putting the smaller berries in one bowl and the larger ones in another (if the small ones are nevertheless quite big, cut them in half). Roughly crush the large ones with a potato masher (or by hand), then combine the crushed and uncrushed strawberries, and add the lemon juice and sugar. Stir to combine, then leave for an hour to draw out the juices.

Transfer the mixture to a preserving pan. Bring it quickly to a rolling boil, then boil hard for exactly five minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool a little (this stops the whole fruit rushing to the top of the jar when poured).

Pot in jam jars that have been sterilised by being washed in hot, soapy water and dried in a low oven (or put through a dishwasher cycle). Seal the jars while hot, and label them when cool. Once opened, refrigerate the jam and use within two or three weeks.

I can’t take any credit for the jam, Matt did that all himself, but I did bake some yummy scones to put it on. Here they are together: