What are you doing with your excess garden-grown fruit?

It has been a good year for apples, hasn’t it? We pick ours and either make apple sauce in small quantities or basically do what your friend has. The two things you should never do is leave them on the trees (they drop and attract all sorts of beasties) or put them out on the pavements. If you do that, they ferment naturally and before long the now unemployed worker wasps appear in droves.

We only have one tiny apple tree now and that has not fruited, but at our previous house we had a mature Cox’s Orange Pippin apple tree that was laden with apples and we used to store them in a cool corner of the the summerhouse. They lasted for several months and it is quite easy to do. Each apple should be wrapped in newspaper [which will stop any that go bad from affecting the rest] and they should be put in trays or baskets. A basement, garage or outhouse would be a better storage place than a wooden structure but it worked for us. Why pay good money in December to buy apples that someone else has stored? It is possible to keep hard apples for a few weeks in the chill drawer in the fridge.

We have a small plum tree which produced a marvellous crop this year – not a large number but superb quality. We caught them just at the right moment when they came away from the stem very easily, the stalk came out of the fruit without pulling, and the stone was free of the flesh. There was no wasp attack or decay on any of them and they had the best taste I can remember for many years. Only a couple of kilos of fruit but every one a winner. Certainly the climatic conditions have been excellent this year.

Although it is grown under industrial conditions beyond its natural seasonal norms, I have found that UK fruit in the supermarkets has been better this year and far superior to imported produce. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries have been good and the later crops from Scotland have been sweeter than usual, and nice gooseberries and greengages were also plentiful, but plums were a little disappointing with Victoria’s on the small side and Marjorie’s lacking in flavour. I don’t think the commercial picking and storing arrangements suit them well, and supermarkets still struggle to present fruit at its optimum condition despite saying it is ‘ripe and ready to eat’. M&S go the extra mile but Waitrose, despite its reputation, is only a bit above average in offering top class fruit.

Independent greengrocers [if there are any left] and farm shops are better places to buy, but the number of local produce markets where retailers could select their stock have declined massively with the march of the supermarkets who pre-order on contracts direct from the growers. I fear that as a nation we have lost touch with the true taste of many of the fruits for which we were renowned. To grow your own is well worth the effort in my opinion.

Our apple tree has also been incredibly productive with over three full trugs carted away to the heap, I am considering apple vinegar next year, The freezer is full and we have also the 1000 plus cherry tomatoes roasted, dehydrated, and simply frozen and occupying space.

The plums were wonderful, the pears OK, the figs a failure so far, and the cherries abundant. We have been looking at purpose built dehydrators as using the ovens is not totally successful as we think they are not allowing moisture to escape.

dehydratorbook.com/food-dehydrator-blog.html

From 2003 but also read the comments
motherearthnews.com/real-food/choosing-a-food-dehydrator-zmaz03jjzgoe

There has been a bumper crop of fruit this year. I generally clear the apples off the grass (otherwise it is difficult to cut) and pile them at the bottom of the garden. Wildlife gradually disposes of the surplus. I’m happy to support birds, foxes, insects and anything else that lives – it is just as much theirs as mine.