A pudding of summeriness June 28, 2008

Never made a summer pudding before, but when you’ve got a total crop of 13 redcurrants, 2 blueberries, 6 ripe blackcurrants, five ripe raspberries and a whole ton of strawberries, it’s the obvious option. Seems like a traditional summer pudding doesn’t use strawberries at all, but I cobbled together various recipes from the internet – mainly using delia’s – and the sky didn’t fall in. 

The key is to simmer the currants and blueberries for about five minutes and only add the softer fruit – the strawberries and raspberries – a few minutes from the end. 

I’m always amazed when I follow a recipe and the result is edible. It’s also nice when growing fruit and vegetables in a garden 45×15 foot actually results in a proper dish – which turned out to be absolutely delicious of course (when are you ever going to hear a home-grown person saying otherwise?) –  as opposed to barefoot dressing-gown snacking. And I picked sweetpeas today and put them in an actual vase. Oh God, I’m turning into Martha Stewart. I’m sure at one stage I used to have a life, with a desk and a social life and lunch at Pret a Manger. I blame childcare. 

Saved by the man with the pony tail? June 6, 2008

Sometimes, when Eric Robson’s ‘jokes’ aren’t rendering me temporarily deaf in self-preservation, elements of Radio 4’s Gardener’s Question Time creep into my subconscious where they linger and fail to drop into the slop tray of forgettances. One such tip, given I think by Pippa Greenwood, but possibly he of the extremely creepy ponytail Bob Flowerdew, was about how to get two crops out of autumn-fruiting raspberries. My ears pricked up at this since, with a little city garden, I can only fit in one raspberry bush, Autumn Bliss.

The traditional advice for pruning autumn-fruiting raspberries is to cut the canes to an inch of the soil in February, so new canes can grow up and fruit by September, giving you one crop. But, aha, if you cut only half your canes back in February, you’ll not only get early raspberries around now, but your September crop too! I can now report the momentous news that it works.

It may be sad to get excited about this, but it’s 9.46am, I’m pregnant and therefore go fuzzy and weird without food, there’s no bread in, and the milkman hasn’t come yet (yes, I live in London but apparently London via Trumptonshire) so no cereal. Popping out this morning and eating four (count ‘em) raspberries may therefore have stopped me coming over all peculiar. Try out this newfangled pruning tip and you may be similarly saved. You read it here first (via Gardener’s Question Time – or was it Gardener’s World… or Cash in the Attic - please someone give me some food).