Author Archives: julian

Best Medlar Jelly Recipe (for home grown or shop bought medlars)

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Homemade medlar jelly recipe

The best medlar jelly in the world


Well made medlar jelly is a true delight. It is beautiful to look at – amber with pink highlights and very glossy. And medlar jelly is joyous to taste; some say it is like sweet cider infused with cinnamon and a touch of allspice. Whatever your adjectives it is utterly delicious, wondrously fragrant and gives a lift to game and cold meats like no other jelly. Add a spoonful to your gravy and you will never be without it again. You can buy medlar jelly in the shops, especially in season, but it is easy to make.  So much so that everyone should have a medlar tree – small, well behaved, tolerant of most soil types and producing the best fruit jelly made. Who could ask for more?

This recipe for medlar jelly is a family heirlook and never fails. The quantities shown make about 6 big jam jars full (but have a couple extra ready in case you get a bit more).

Ingredients

3 Small, sharp apples or 20-25 crab apples

2.5 kg bletted medlars(see below)

600g firm medlars

4 lemons

3 litres water

1.2 Kg granulated sugar

Optionally, you can add about 20 cloves at the beginning which are removed when you strain. They make the jelly a bit more Christmassy.

Instructions

The bletted medlars should be dark and soft before your start. Clean them by removing any stalks and leaves and chopping them in half. Remove any really obvious rotten bits.

Cut the lemons and apples into quarters (just halve crab apples if you are using those instead). Then put all the fruit into a maslin or large saucepan such as you would use for jam making.

Pour all the water over the fruit and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat and cover with a lid. Leave to simmer gently for about an hour.

Don’t boil hard, and keep covered so the water doesn’t evaporate.

every 10-15 minutes squash the fruit with a wooden spoon. Don’t over squash or stir the whole time as your jelly will end up cloudy (the taste is unaffected though).

Pour the whole mess into a jelly bag hung over a large bowl. Bathroom taps are great for the job although we have a hook on a beam in the garage. Just let the juice drip into the bowl. For the clearest jelly, do not squeeze at all. If you leave the bag there for 12 hours, almost all the juice will have run through by itself anywhy. You can put the contents of the bag on the compost heap.

Measure the juice, which should be clear and a wondeful amber/rose colour, into a suitably sized clean saucepan and boil hard for 6-7 minutes. Then add an equal amount of sugar (which shouldbe about 6 cups or 1.2kg). Bring back to the boil and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved. Boil hard for another 2-3 minutes and test on the back of a spoon for setting. When it has just begun to set (medlar jelly is best with a soft as opposed to hard consistency) pour or ladle into sterilised, warm jars and seal. Leave to cool.

If you were a bit nervous about your jelly being too hard, and find that is still has not set the next morning, you can put it back into a pan and boil for 4-5 minutes then return to the jars. When cool, medlar jelly should be smooth and soft and have a lovely gleam to it.

Bletting Medlars

Bletting really means to overripen. It just sounds better. Shop sold medlars are generally unripe and really hard. To be useful they need to be bletted and much softer. So remove their leaves and put the medlars on plates. you do not have to be fussy about them touching, but at the same time do not heap them up. Put them in a cool but frost free place away from vermin and leave them until they turn deep brown and are soft. Really soft – they should be almost squashy. Depending on how hard they were when you started this can take from 1 week to 4 weeks.

If you grow medlars yourslef (and it is a really easy tree to grow) then bletting is simple.  Leave them on the tree until they are ready. You can pick by hand, or if you have a mature tree are going to use them immediately, knocking them off the tree with a pole on to a sheet spread below is quicker

They are then ready to cook. Medlars lose their pectin as they ripen and pectin is essential to make your jelly set. So you either need some hard medlars or you can replace them with sharp apples, or crab apples (Golden Hornet makes golden jelly while Evereste makes pink jelly. You choose.

Buy British

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This probably entirely inappropriate and anti-Eu and politically incorrect and so on, but the thought struck me that if we all deliberately went out of our way to buy British produce, products and, yes, plants we would keep more people in this country in employment and maybe go some way to protecting the “fragile recovery”.

And the more we do that, the more jobs are created , the more people can pay tax and not draw benefit and maybe, if we all did it we could reduce our deficit without too many painful cuts.

A tenner a week repointed from buying something from overseas (China with its horrific human rights record seems a legitimate target) to something from the UK would increase spending on British produce by – I think – £25 billion a year.  Short of what is necessary, but pretty painless.

We have started as a business; all the pots we buy now come from UK manufacturers as do all the spirals, tree guards and tree ties we sell. Our replacement tractor will be British made. We are doing the same at home as well.

Just a thought, but pass it on if you like it.

Get the ground ready now for when you buy lavender plants in May

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If you are planning on buying lavender plants this year here are a few tips which might help you grow them just that little bit better.

1.  Don’t buy your lavender until towards the end of May.  Lavender is a funny old thing – the angustifolia varieties such as Hidcote and Munstead are as tough as old boots once they are established. They ought to be by now as they have been grown in the UK since the Romans were here.  However they take a minute or two to establish and they are decidedly fussy while settling in. Risk number one, especially this year given the weather we have been having, is frost.  The first half of May often seen freezing weather and, while it should not kill the plants it will nip their flower buds.  So plant in the second half of May at the earliest.

2. The soil is warmer and drier by the end of May as well.  Lavender can grow in soil that more resembles dust than anything else and despite its small size its roots can go down several feet to find moisture. So miss out on April showers as you won’t get any May flowers anyway and your plants can drown in the process.

3. If you have not done so already, prepare the ground where they will be planted.  This is all about drainage – lavender does not need feeding now.  Incorporate sand,  grit or anything else that will open up the soil and make it drain more easily. If you are on heavy soil, recognise that conditions are not ideal for lavender and that they never will be.  Open the soil as much as possible, and make a ridge about 15cms (6″) high and twice as wide. When planting time comes plant your lavender into the top of the ridge which will remain well drained in all weathers.  Once they have established, the lavender will cover the ridge and you will never see it.

4.  Buy good sized plants in a sensible pot. It is a false economy to buy seemingly cheap plants, usually in P9 or P11 pots (there are 9 or 11 cm square pots.  Go for buy 2 year old lavender plants in 1.5 litre pots.  They will have much bigger root systems and will carry far more flower in their first year.  In our experience they also establish better.

5. Blue is the colour.  The hardy lavender is Lavandula angustifolia.  It is the ONLY truly hardy lavender. And the hardiest angustifolias are Hidcote and Munstead.  Both are blue and I strongly advise you to stick with one of these. Nothing is quite as depressing as a lavender hedge with great gaps in it caused by plant loss due to frost or wet. French lavenders and (almost) all of the integrifolia and stoechas varieties would have hated the conditions of this winter and will have been decimated. Buy British….

6.  Oh yes, and order early as most reputable growers tend to sell out fairly quickly.

If you think we are reputable, these are our lavender plants for sale

Hawthorn Hedging – Tip No 4

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We are having a nice warm autumn with just a few cold nights. If you are thinking about planting a hawthorn hedge this winter, now is a really good time to strike a blow for the good guys and go after a few weeds. Perennial weeds like bindweed, docks, thistles, dandelions, ground elder and the rest behave just like any other deciduous plant as they head towards winter and dormancy (which is the plant equivalent of hibernation). They build up their food reserves to see them through the winter and to fuel the surge for growth that happens in Spring.

A well planted hawthorn  hedge can take care of itself, once it is established and it will shade out almost all weeds.  But newly planted hawthorn is a completely different matter – the combination of a weed infestation and a dry spring can decimate Britain’s most durable native hedging plant. So now really is the time to get out your systemic weedkiller (any one containing glyphosate is fine) and, following the instructions, water or spray it on the area where you intend to plant your hedge.  We would always recommend using a watering can with a fine rose as you can control exactly where the weedkiller goes.  It will be taken by your weeds,  from the surface of their leaves, deep into their root systems as sap fall and leaves die. And it will kill them. This is probably the best time of year to go after deep rooted perennial weeds.

Do it in haste or repent at leisure.