Summer update: jam

It's been a while since I've had time to blog. Work continues on the plot of course, assisted, sometimes punctuated by, the tiny human. Over the summer I've been combining evening trips to the plot with dog-walking duties, so Moog has had more than his normal share of visits.

Mrs Moog Keeper has mastered the art of making jam this year, so instead of having no idea what to do with all our raspberries, we now have a steady supply of delicious jam. In fact I now can't keep up the supply of raspberries to match Mrs Moog Keeper's new-found appetite for jam-making. Thankfully the autumn bliss variety is just coming through to keep her in fruit. I may have to extend the amount of fruit I grow at this rate. Jam can be very easily made in the microwave, I recommend trying it. All you need is the fruit, some jars, plus some special jam sugar (easily found in the sugar section of the supermarket)- there's a recipe on the side of the pack.

Sadly we were not able to make such good use of the strawberries which looked so promising earlier in the year. The plants were laden with young fruit at one point, but I think mainly due to a lack of watering at the critical time (remember the really dry spring we had?), lots of them dropped off the plants, still green. We had a reasonable crop but not as good as I was expecting. Better luck next year.