This content is syndicated via RSS from the blog: Classic Gardening
It’s always neat to turn your ending into a beginning. Today felt like spring, and was the first chance this year to begin to feel like a gardener again. So I got things moving. Cut the grass for the first time. Dug over the vegetable patch. Examined the Bramleys in the shed that have over-wintered and kept us in crumble through the dark days.
I took out the boxes and unwrapped each fruit, pleased to find two or three dozen apples that hadn’t turned black, and – right at the back of the shed - uncovered a box marked USE FIRST. It held the fruit with worm and bruises that, back in September, needed eating. It’s rather past that now.
So, turning an ending into a beginning, we had a final crumble and the rest of the apples I put through the juicer and added to a batch of cider. I realise, looking at the shelves in the supermarket, that my worry over trying to make cider with any old variety of apple was misplaced. Single varietals seem to be all the rage – Cox if you want sweet, so why not Bramley cider for something dryly amusing?
Speaking of which, I must mention the
Welsh Cider Company They are the chaps with the unfeasibly large apples that you see at the top of this posting. A bit less fertiliser fellas.
I polished off the last 40 pints I made by Christmas. I thought it was excellent, fortified as it was with a percentage of juice from my own apples. I’d like to give you a second opinion but I cant, having swallowed the lot myself. Actually, I did give my mother-in-law a couple of glasses, she being a cider buff, and got two second opinions. The first was “Do you drink this?” The second was “Umm, very nice.” So, make of that what you will. She’s mercurial, like her daughter.
Anyway, the new spring brew is now foaming and bubbling promisingly in the kitchen. The celery, sprouts, broccoli, spring onions, radishes, rocket and catnep [ yes, there’s a new cat] seeds are all tucked in and a frost is predicted. There’s nowt so spring-like as a hasty retreat to winter.
Read More at Classic Gardening...
02-25-2008, 09:00 PM
It’s always neat to turn your ending into a beginning. Today felt like spring, and was the first chance this year to begin to feel like a gardener again. So I got things moving. Cut the grass for the first time. Dug over the vegetable patch. Examined the Bramleys in the shed that have over-wintered and kept us in crumble through the dark days. 
