Myrtles, Medlars and Melon Pears

As usual, autumn brings fruits, but some of them are a little out of the ordinary.  And you know us – we like to blend the ordinary with the extraordinary and try a few experiments . . .

Several years ago, when visiting the Eden Project in Cornwall, we picked up a little plant called Myrtus ugni, otherwise known as a fruiting myrtle or sometimes called 'the Chilean Guava'.  I can't remember exactly what the 'blurb' said about it, but it sounded interesting and we thought we would give it a go.

Since then, we have propagated several cuttings and now have a number of bushes growing along the boundary of our back garden.  Every year, we seem to get a slightly bigger harvest of the berries, which have a distinctive and aromatic scent and flavour.  And yes, it is a little like the flavour of guava – they are related.  Apparently, Queen Victoria was given some of them when visiting Cornwall one year and from then on requested that a basket of the little fruits be sent to her every year.  In previous years, we have made small quantities of cordial and jam from these and – needless to say – they have disappeared very quickly to the fortunate customers who called at just the right time.

This year, we have already picked many more than in previous years, and we haven't finished yet, so hopefully that will mean a few more bottles of cordial and jars of jam.  We will put them on our price lists when they are ready – keep an eye open for Myrtle Berry Jam and Cordial!

Last year, we found two more unusual fruits, one we planned for and one that was a surprise.  In early October, we were given some quinces by a friend in the village and he also offered us some other smaller fruits: "Don't know what these are" he said.  They were Medlars, a strange-looking fruit a little like a small apple to look at, but very 'open-ended', which gave rise to many rude names for them in the Middle Ages!  They are completely inedible when freshly ripe, but once they have begun to 'blet' (get soft and almost rotten), they have a delicious taste and can be made into jelly, jam or 'cheese'.  We made a little jam and jelly last year and, once again, those jars seemed to fly off the shelf!  This year, we have been allowed to pick as many as we like from the tree belonging to a generous Lapford resident, so there should be many more jars – and we may try making some Medlar Cordial as well!

The unusual fruit which we did plan for is called a Melon Pear or Pepino Melon.  They come from South America and 'Pepino' means 'cucumber' in Spanish, but these are not related to cucumbers, melons or pears!  Members of the family which includes tomatoes, peppers and chillies, they do taste quite like melons, with fresh and slightly sweet flesh.  We are watching them ripen to their characteristic colours – light golden-yellow with purple stripes – and we expect to have a few to offer in the coming weeks.  I think they will be popular here, as they already are in some fashionable circles!  All being well, we hope to grow a few more in the polytunnel in 2025.

First 2024 Batch of Cucumber Relish !

This Sweet & Sour Cucumber Relish has got to be our most popular jar!  Several times this summer we have been asked "Have you got some of your lovely Cucumber Relish?"  It seems that its fame has spread.  

No credit to us for the recipe; we found it in a book years ago, when we were trying out lots of different cucumber varieties and found ourselves with a glut!  We made some relish and liked it, so made some more and found that other folk liked it too.  Now we need to grow LOTS of cucumbers every year to try to keep up with the demand for the relish – as well as selling the really tasty little cucumbers themselves!

After a good start (see our previous post), our cucumbers seemed to go on strike.  Quite a lot of flowers, a few embryo cukes, but then many of them dropped off and only very few became proper cucumbers.  It seems that the pollinating insects were probably on strike, so they had not been visiting our polytunnel very much.

But now, in the last few weeks, there has been a steady buzz of bees in the tunnel, as they have definitely discovered the cucumbers now – and the cucamelons, which are also in good production.  Hopefully lots more cucumbers (and relish) now on the way.

In theory – and according to the recipe – you should leave this relish for 'at least a month' to mature in the jar.  But we know quite a few people (ourselves included) who are not very likely to want to wait that long!

Cucumbers and Tomatoes on the Way !

 We started picking the very first of our lovely little 'Tamra' cucumbers just a few days ago, and have been looking at our tomato plants every day to see when the first one would begin to ripen . . .

Well, today Dave spotted the first signs of ripening on one of the plants, and here it is, our first tomato of 2024 !

Once again, it is the variety 'Stupice' (apparently pronounced 'Stoopeachkay') and, as the Real Seeds website says, "This fantastic 1954 variety from Eastern Europe is the earliest of all our vine tomatoes."  Every year that we have grown it, it has been the first to ripen, so we go on growing it . . .

. . . along with 26 other varieties, a total of 63 plants!  Red ones, yellow ones, orange ones and pink ones.  Different shapes, too – big 'oxhearts' – deeply ribbed ones – small translucent yellow ones – long 'plum' tomatoes, small pear-shaped ones and some really gigantic (and sometimes quite ugly) ones, as well as your more 'normal' round ones, large and small.  Here they all are:
  https://www.blackberrylane.co.uk/PDFs/Tomatoes2024.pdf

And we grow them all because they taste as tomatoes should taste* – really delicious, with that wonderful fresh tangy flavour.  We can hardly wait until we are back to eating our own home-grown tomatoes again, very soon.

And you can join us!  They will be on the pricelist on our website soon.

* John Denver wrote a song about them!  Here's a YouTube link to him singing it . . .