Seasonal Fruit from an Author’s Summer Garden

I have gardened organically for the last twenty years in Hertfordshire, England. When I moved into a house with a medium size back garden overgrown with blackberries, thistles and nettles I knew I must invest time and money. So, I decided to make my money work for me. Instead of concentrating on ornamental plants I planted fruit trees. I now have a wild plum tree, a cooking apple tree, three eating apple trees, two pear trees, two plum trees and one cherry tree. And believe you me I have made mistakes. My Hertfordshire Russet Apple is in the wrong place – too close to a lilac bush that forms part of a living screen to filter the wind round the garden. And I’ve just realized that the cherry tree is not self fertile. I need another cherry tree for pollination but where can I plant it? I’m running out of space and also covet a peach tree. Apart from this, my investment paid off. This year the bullace provided a magnificent crop. The fruit is small a little bigger than large grapes. It can be eaten fresh or made into jam, chutney, pies and crumbles.

I thinned the plums in early July and looked mournfully at a large bucket of hard green fruit. However, this gave good results. The tree is loaded with plums as large as apricots. The pear trees a Conference and a Sweet William are a little disappointing because the fruit is on the small side but I’ve no doubt it will be delicious. The small crop from the Bramley Cooking Apple tree disappointed me this year. I think the tree needs a thick layer of organic manure in the autumn and organic fertiliser in the spring. The eating apple trees are heavy with fruit that will be ready for picking in late September and early October. When I first planted fruit trees I did not know that to avoid frost decimating the blossom in spring it is best to plant ones which belong to group three of four because they flower in late spring – hopefully after the last frost.

This year, I have been using fruit in season. My strawberries grown in a sunny spot in well-manured soil yielded a bowlful a day and enough to make strawberry ice-cream. Next came summer raspberries – a disappointing yield – but the autumn raspberries look promising. In 2011, I might dig up the raspberry canes and the strawberries and swap beds using new stock. It is said that strawberries do produce well for more than three years.

From the redcurrant bushes hung strings of red fruit as bright as jewels. As a result there is a row of jars of redcurrant jelly in the store cupboard and two containers of the fruit in the freezer with which I might make redcurrant cordial. Next to the redcurrant bushes are gooseberry bushes. These were star performers this year. Luscious yellow-green fruits bursting with sweetness to be eaten fresh and hard three-quarters ripe fruit for chutney and jam as well as a full container in the freezer for the delights of fruit fool or a pie. And now I’m eating the bullace – a small bowlful every morning as part of my five a day fruit and vegetables.

In addition to these fruits the rhubarb is growing well and I harvested enough to make pies but not enough to make chutney. Fortunately I have a couple of jars left over from last year.

Although I regard marrows as vegetables not fruit I have two giant ones. With one I shall make marrow and ginger jam with crystalised ginger as soon as possible. The other I will stuff and bake in foil.

Apart from fruit from my garden there are wild fruits such as blackberries which I eat raw, preserve and use with cooking apples to make pies. Elderberries make excellent cordials and various hips and haws such as rosehips from which jelly or a syrup can be made. Apart from free food it is very pleasant to forage in the country.

I enjoy growing and eating the fruits of my garden as well as preserving, pickling and cooking them in various ways and always hope for bump

An Author’s Garden in August

I wish I could bottle the fragrance of my garden in Hertfordshire, South East England. When I open the windows, front or back doors the perfume of lavender and roses wafts through the air. I have introduced biodiversity into the garden which bees, butterflies and hoverflies visit.

Unfortunately slugs and snails also inhabit my garden. I garden veganically and combat their attacks on the vegetable patches by encouraging wildlife – flat stones on which thrushes can smash the shells of snails and a garden pond – an old bathtub sunk into the ground – where frogs breed and a bird table to attract blue tits and other birds that relish pests.

My garden is generous. I have three compost bins, the contents of which enrich the soil that produces and abundance of fruit, herbs and vegetables.

Yesterday, while I harvested blackberries I thought about kitchen gardens in times past and tossed ideas about a historical novel in which a garden is central. My heroine would be responsible for the kitchen garden with its seeds, fruit, vegetables, roots, pot herbs and medicinal herbs.

According to A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow my heroine would keep a Receipt Book in which, amongst other things, she would note the best times for sowing and transplanting herbs and vegetables. According to Elinor Fettiplace of Oxfordshire in the sixteenth century “in midsummer at the waning of the moon, one should sow ‘all manner of potherbs, and they willbee greene for winter; also Lettice seeds sown at this time and removed when they bee of a prettie bignes at the full willbee good and hard Lettice at Michaelmas’.” So far, I have not sown according to the waxing and waning of the moon but I have read modern advocates of doing so. One day I might not be able to resist trying this although I’d hate the neighbours to think I am some sort of modern day witch.

According to Jenny Uglow in Chapter Nine titled Wife into thy Garden, “Grandmothers and mothers handed on country skills…many women kept their own household books, filling the creamy pages over the years with recipes, details of cures and tip’s for the garden. An elegant version, purporting to be Henrietta Maria’s own (hardly likely) household book of secrets, was published as The Queen’s Closet Opened in 1655. Recently, I have been considering keeping a modern day Receipt Book. I would record the successes and failures in my garden and note recipes and the use to which I put herbs. For example, yesterday evening I was hungry and tired. I needed a quick meal before I popped round the corner to baby sit my daughter’s young sons. So I put some organic brown spaghetti into a saucepan of boiling water. While it cooked I liquidized fresh basil, parsley, marjoram and time with pine nuts, parmesan cheese, pepper and olive oil. When the pasta was ready I drained it and stirred in the sauce. A delicious meal that took me ten minutes from start to finish.

The herbs from my garden add taste and subtlety to most dishes and it gives me great pleasure to view them in their terracotta pots from my office window.

From the window I can see the path that divides the garden enclosed by a mixture of native English hedging and conifers which filter the wind. At the end of the path is bird bath which, as well as the bird table, attracts a large variety of my feathered friends, including fat wood pigeons that peck at the leaves of my cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli.

Despite the woodpigeons that are so fat that their chests wobble as the strut down the path or flutter onto the roof of the garden shed my cauliflowers are nearly ready to crop. As well as the cauliflowers I have enjoyed an abundance of different varieties of crisp lettuce, spinach and courgettes. My greenhouse is full of green tomatoes and the outdoor ones are doing well and so are the carrots, beetroot, brussel sprouts, carrots, greenhouse

A Writer’s Plans for a Summer Day
Two of my interests in life are writing fiction and gardening. These activities complement each other. For the first I need a fertile imagination, for the second fertile soil suitable for the requirements of various plants. Sometimes I think that I would be happy if I had nothing more to do than write and garden.

So far, this morning has been typical of an early summer day. Here in Hertfordshire, England the sun is shining but the air is cool. As soon as I woke up I hurried downstairs and started the dishwasher and washing machine to take advantage of cheap rate electricity called Economy 7. I then unearthed the ice cream maker from a kitchen cupboard and put the bowl in the freezer so that I can make mango ice cream later on. Next I turned on the sprinkler to give one of the vegetable patches a good watering.

For the first time in many years I have not grown runner beans. The bees have suffered a disease which has reduced their numbers so the flowers were not pollinated. Instead, I’m growing French Beans. The butternut squash is slow to take off but the beetroot, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, swiss chard, courgettes, cucumbers, new potatoes, different varieties of lettuce, spinach and the outdoor and indoor tomatoes are flourishing and so are the herbs, soft and stone fruit.

The miniature water lily in my garden pond is also flourishing. Pond is a grandiose name for an old bathtub sunk in the ground. My youngest son and I went to a garden centre to buy a pre-formed pond. Those on sale were too shallow. On our way home we saw a bathtub in a skip. All I wanted was a pond to attract wildlife so we asked for and were granted the bathtub. The builder said he would deliver it later and my son excavated a hole for it. Later the builder knocked on my door. ‘Thought you might need these,’ he said and handed me the bath fittings obviously pleased with his good deed for the day. The dear man thought I am too poor to afford a bathtub.

Edged with paving stones my pond looks great. At one time I kept goldfish and the pond became home to a refugee. One night my daughter-in-law woke and screamed. Something wet had flapped on her face. Capri, her tortoiseshell cat had brought her the gift of a large goldfish. My son woke and put the fish in the bathtub. On the following day he put it in my pond. Sadly, another cat or – maybe – a fox caught all my fish.

Near the pond are my potted herbs. While I walk back down the garden path to the house I imagine gardens in times past when herbs were essential for health and flavouring.

When I moved into my house the garden was overgrown and subconsciously it fired my imagination. In my novel Tangled Hearts set in England in 1702 during Queen Anne’s reign, the heroine, Richelda, has inherited a neglected manor house with unkempt grounds which I use to emphasise her situation.

“Dudley opened the lichen-stained wooden gate. They entered the weed-infested drive, on either side of which only the hardiest of the untended ornamental plants survived.

Back straight, head held high, Richelda strode past parallel orchards towards Bellemont House. Embarrassed because she had declared her love, she battled against the urge to weep.”

After turning on the tap and checking the sprinkler was working properly I went upstairs to a small book-lined bedroom converted into an office. This week I will blog, e-mail and tell people about Tangled Hearts. (You can read the first chapters on my website and my blog.) Sometime this week I will work on part Three of my brief history of the Cinderella princess who became Queen Anne.

On most mornings I work from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. with a very short break for breakfast. Today will be no exception. I plan to dig over a patch in the front garden which resembles a cottage garden filled with lupins, roses, delphiniums, cranes bill geraniums and many self–see