When left to ripen the plums are plump, juicy and sweet. Only a few of our plums ever seem to get spoilt by creepy crawlies but the other day. after biting into a plum I encountered a small plum-coloured caterpillar waving back at me.
I can always tell when we are going to get a good crop. It is all to do with the blossom that appears in April. If the blossom has chance to hang about for a few days in settled, dry and sunny weather then pollinating insects have a chance to do their magical job. But if the first appearance of the blossom is followed by rain, cold and wind then very little pollination will happen.
One summer there were only three or four plums on the tree but this year I would estimate we have already picked two hundred and fifty plums and there's still more to come.
We have given little bags of plums to our neighbours and on Sunday Shirley made a plum crumble for dessert after our Sunday dinner. Today she took over the kitchen in order to make several jars of plum chutney. The air was filled with the rather acrid aroma of bubbling red wine vinegar and spices, including mustard seeds, green chilli pepper, ginger and paprika.
So that's all I have to say tonight on the fascinating subject of plums but before writing this blogpost I trawled back in time to find this picture of the upper part of our garden in April 2014 when the tree was still very little - just on the other side of the vegetable plot:-
Sounds like a bumper crop of deliciousness!
ReplyDeleteNicely summed up.
DeleteThose plums are very pretty. I wish I liked them! I would, however, eat all the crumble off that dessert. :)
ReplyDeleteYou don't like plums Margaret? Ever considered hypnotherapy?
DeleteLOL-on my dislike list: plums, cherries, melons and pears. On my like list: pretty much every other fruit especially berries and our wonderful Washington Cosmic Crisp apples.
DeleteThis is a post I can completely relate to! I would give a lot to taste your wife's plum chutney.
ReplyDeleteShirley is very good at making jars of jam or marmalade or chutney. I suspect that US Customs would not be too happy if I tried to send you a small jar.
DeleteHow about you get busy and make some plum jam. I'll give you my address offline to send me a jar.
ReplyDeleteWhat a plum fascinating post!
ReplyDeleteGood that you can grow some of your own fruit. We couldn't grow plums here..
ReplyDeleteWait, I need to ask you an important question: was the whole worm waving at you, or only half?
ReplyDeleteThat's an amazing number of plums and I bet the chutney will be delicious. I love the smell of anything cooking with vinegar or mustard in it. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
I love plums but I don't ever just bite into one, I always, always split them open before eating - too often, they are inhabited.
ReplyDeletePlum cake with crumble and chopped almonds on top is a favourite, but Shirley's chutney sounds great, too. And how wonderful to have a plum directly off the tree, still warm from the sun!
They look absolutely delicious! I'm not a great fan of plums, but seeing those I'd be tempted to try one.
ReplyDeleteYou could make plum crumbles and freeze them, well, your wife could, then you'd have desserts all winter. The tree is doing very well this season! Your vegetable plot looks to be the size of my entire small garden. I have five plum trees along the edge closest to the house, they were there when I moved in and are now tall enough the possums can crawl across from the roof and piddle into my garden. Sometimes I walk out there and it is all I can smell while I hose it off the leaves of my pot plants.
ReplyDeleteA good crop of plums to enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI can whip up a fruit crumble or crisp with relative ease but my knees knock at the idea of bottling preserves. I need to watch it being done from beginning to end. I want to be like Shirley, with a line of freshly bottled and labeled preserves in front of me and my whole house smelling of spices. Sigh...
ReplyDeleteVictoria plums are just the best. My neighbour has a tree and has often passed on a bowlful to me
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago we got so many that two of the main branches broke. We pruned the tree and after not having many at all last year, this year there are loads, as so many other people are finding. But we also thinned them out this year for the first time, which was time-consuming, but we are now plum-consuming much larger fruit. Yours look fairly small.
ReplyDeleteI planted a Victoria plum tree when we first moved here. We had excellent crops every year. The only downside was our cat used to wait for the red admirals to land on the fallen plums and pounce!
ReplyDeleteOn a completely unrelated topic, do you comment on the BBC news site? I saw a comment from Neil Theasby.
Wow, that's a lot of plums! And I was happy to get four golf-ball sized ones from our tree. (Which, granted, I didn't know was a plum when I planted it.)
ReplyDelete