GATHER YE ROSEHIPS

I’m late with my hedgerow harvesting this year, but there are still Sloes on the Blackthorn bushes in the hedges and plenty of Hawberries on the Hawthorn.  The berries on the Hawthorn look so juicy, but they’re full of fat seeds surrounded by itchy fibres (used by children to stuff down one another’s backs as itching powder).  Last year I endeavoured to make some jelly from them, but it was very tedious.  After much mashing and boiling and straining I managed to squeeze a couple of jars of Hawberry jelly out of around 3 kilos of berries.  It was a beautiful colour and went very nicely with cheese - but not nicely enough to send me rushing out  with a basket again this year.

We have field mushrooms at the moment (actually they’re just coming to an end too).  They are completely edible, but eating wild mushrooms isn’t something I’d recommend unless you know what you’re picking.  Some poisonous fungi look very much like edible ones, in fact there is a toadstool that looks just like a field mushroom that’s fairly toxic, so I’m always a little nervous even when I pick the innocent ones in our field.  This year we haven’t actually eaten any at all because Sam and the dog have trampled all over them, so we won’t have the worry.

SOUP IN A BASKET

It’s the season of soups and comfort eating - a good time to stock up on carbohydrates, ready for the cold days ahead.  Celery makes a wonderful soup and stock ingredient.  The celery I grew earlier in the year was much more successful than I thought it would be.  I haven’t grown it here before, as my soil is light and dry and it prefers moist, rich soil.  Traditionally celery is grown in a trench to help blanch the stems, but I grew a self-blanching variety, called ‘Celebrity’, and I guess it’s getting a bit of that in my patch, as despite the dry start to the summer (yes, I watered it) it did very well.  Celery’s not frost hardy though, so needs harvesting early.