I'm not making jam this year - I don't eat it and even though we have used up jars of the stuff while in Lockdown I don't want it using up my cupboard space....so recipes please! I have dozen some after cutting in half and taking the stone out.

I made this pudding yesterday. The recipe said Apricots but I subbed with plums - and OMG! It was delicious. There wasn't any left this morning!

Plum and Almond Upside Down Cake. 

8-9inch cake tin. Buttered.
Slice the plums in half.
For the sauce:

50g butter, plus more for the tin
fresh apricots - I used plums - halved        and stoned. Enough to line the tin
125g caster sugar
1 tbsp runny honey

For the cake
150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
100g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
1 tsp vanilla extract
125ml full-fat milk


Butter a 20-23cm cake tin and prepare the apricots.
Put the sugar and 75ml water into a small saucepan. Heat slowly until the sugar has dissolved. When the sugar has melted bring to the boil and watch until the syrup starts to turn to caramel (it will turn golden first). Swish the pan a bit. Once it becomes caramel (you will know by the smell and colour) take off the heat and add the butter. Stir once the butter has melted. Pour into the tin and place the apricots, close together and cut-side down, on top.

Preheat the oven to 180C/170C fan*/gas mark 4.

To make the cake, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition (add a couple of spoonfuls of flour if it starts to curdle). Sift together the flour and baking powder and stir in the almonds. Add the vanilla, then the dry ingredients, alternating with the milk.

Spoon this over the apricots and bake for 50 minutes. When the cake is cooked, a skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean. Run a knife between the cake and the tin and invert on to a plate. If some apricots have stuck to the tin, replace them on the cake.

Gently heat the honey. Using a pastry brush, glaze the top of the cake. The honey will run down the sides to give a lush, home-made look. Leave to cool. The cake is lovely with crème fraîche or a mixture of sweetened Greek yogurt and double cream.

It was delicious! I didn't use the honey as I forgot!

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/garde...85f351c0c2

I've bought these offers several times - if you want gladioli, lilies and dahlias, they're a bargain. Quality was good but I bought far more than I needed and gave away most of the gladioli. Half my dahlias are still growing in a cardboard box.

Size is everything when identifying the plum family, they all start off green and go a near purple black colour. It’s the first to develop a derrière, ie the v groove cup associated with a British plum. The bullace is a little larger than the sloes and smaller than a damson. It’s still round like a sloe whereas a damson is more oval. For size it’s between the top section of your middle finger and thumb, 1.5-2.5cm. Grows on bushy often thorny stems and makes a pleasant slightly sweeter alternative to sloe gin. It can also be made into jams and added to other fruit in a jam. You want pretty much equal quantities of sugar and fruit to make a jam.

I like to freeze mine for a few days minimum to improve the sweetness, this also softens the fruit giving you more juice. You can freeze for longer with little deterioration. The fruit contains a stone so will make a better seived jelly, and a really tasty leather.

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So often mistaken for Japanese knotweed by the uninitiated until it flowers, the Himalayan Balsam has very amusing exploding seed heads. Which is a pretty cool method for spreading  anything. The seeds taste like young hazel or cob nuts, slightly grainy in texture due to their size but a fun country walk snack. 

I photographed some yesterday for identification. I need to do a little research but, I think they could be ground into a flour once dried. Once the seeds go black they become hard and more than a little unpleasant to chew on.

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This is not a thread to discuss Government actions, WHO statements or the rainbow of scientific’evidence’ associated with COVID. 

This is about my experience of face masks. 

Please powers that be delete if you think this unsuitable. 

OK. 

OH has early onset dementia and serious lung and heart problems. 

Had to walk to the chemist in the next village yesterday as he’s not so good to get the meds his Community Respiratory Nurse said he needed. 
Went into chemist in my hospital quality mask to see a young lady in front waiting to be served. Chemist lady said she should be wearing a mask to which the young lady replied ‘ ill never wear one as it will ruin my makeup’. 

Managed to get a bus home and me and an elderly gent were the only 2 on the bus except for the driver. 

I’m wearing a mask to help protect both myself and OH whilst the driver isn’t and the elderly gent was but it was beneath his nose. 

In shop, PO and garage this morning and the lady that runs it said it was nice to see me wearing my mask properly as a teenager had been in with his attached sideways. 

In my PERSONAL opinion I don’t want anybody to risk either my OH or myself.

I've been musing again.

We all grown so many different types of toms,  for all sorts of different reasons - eating, snacking, salads, sauces, etc.

What's your favourite, for what purpose, and why.  Or put another way, which toms do you grow every year, come what may, and which ones would you never grow ever again.

Two of of my regulars are sungold and sweet aperatif, as I like a sweet tomato to snack on.
Shirley is a salad size I like.  
Black Russian is a beefsteak I seem to grow year on year.
Whilst I grow many other varieties it's probably because I just happen to have the seeds rather than a preference for their taste.
One I won't be growing again is Glacier, I found it tasteless.

I have a few oriental lilies (Beverley Dream, Snow Queen and unamed insipid orange thing!) in pots that probably ought to be repotted - is it best to do it as soon as flowering has finished, wait for dormancy or just when the first shoots appear in the spring?

Thanks as ever

So my parsley this year is terrible, I've had about 5 sprigs from three rows, and it reminded me of the saying Parsley grows where the missus is the master, to put it another way where the missus is the master parsley grows the faster.

There are loads of superstitions around vegetable, herbs and wild bounty and I thought this might be a good spot to collate them. 

So, Parsley is a funny one, as there's another saying that parsley goes to the devil 9 times and very often forgets to come back, meaning that it is a devil to germinate.

Plus you should never give away parsley for fear of bad luck, or transplant it for that mind. (I'm guilty of that one, which is probably why mine isn't growing.!)

I also like the blackberry saying don't pick after all hallows eve as the devil will have infested the berries. Which to be fair is pretty accurate, that late in the season they are normally full of grubs.

What superstitions do you remember, or have been told? I'm sure more will come to my mind shortly.

Had some very nice baby plum toms from the supermarket so decided to save some seed to see what happens.  Too late for this year but will test the germination and try them next season as an experiment.  Anyone heard of Angelle?  I searched on web but not a lot of info, it seems to be a commercial variety.

That's it really☺