How to make Mulled Pears

Excerpt from 'Plot to Pot' by Madeleine Cardozo

To Bottle or not to bottle...
It is all very well enjoying the fruits of the garden during the summer months, but of course you can enjoy them in the winter as well by storing them, this is a great last minute pudding, all you have to do is to take out of the cupboard and serve it either warm or cold.  Mulled pears are delicious with vanilla ice cream, cream or crème fraîche.

Preparation: 20 minutes | Cooling time: 40 minutes | Serves: 8

Ingredients:

4lbs (1.8kg) firm pears

1 orange

1 lemon

2 cinnamon sticks

12 cloves

5cm (2") piece of fresh root ginger

11 oz (300g) granulated sugar

1 bottle of fruity red wine

- top this up with water if necessary

Directions:
v Preparation:

 Ø  Peel the pears, but keep their stalks.

 Ø  Peel the rinds of the lemon and orange using a potato peeler.

v To Bottle:       

 Ø  Stuff as many pears as you can into your storage bottles.

 Ø  Divide the spices and rinds between the bottles.

 Ø  Put the sugar and wine into a pan and heat up on a low heat until all the sugar has been dissolved.  Then boil for 5 minutes.

 Ø  Pour the wine syrup completely covering the pears.

 Ø  Secure the lids.

 Ø  Put into the oven and cook for about 30 minutes at 100˚C/200˚F/gas mark 3

 Ø  Take the jars out, watch out because they are extremely hot.

 Ø  When they are cool check that the seal on the jars has worked.  You can do this by gently trying to open the jar, if it is not possible they are sealed.

v Not to Bottle:

 Ø  Put all the pears into a pan, add the spices sugar and wine.

 Ø  Put a lid on.

 Ø  Simmer the pears for approximately 20 minutes.

 Ø  When the pears are cooked, you can either serve them hot or let them cool.

'Plot to Pot' is out now - available online and in garden centres and bookshops (check with our stockists first).

Click to find out more

5 Easy Ways to protect your plants from frost

Post by Robbie
Although you can never completely eradicate the threat of frost damage to the plants in your garden, you can at least use these helpful tips as a guide to prepare for the worst:

1. Group plants together Choose a location at the top of the garden facing north, west or south. Plants in containers may be grouped together so that You can easily create a microclimate for your plants which allow them to provide shelter for each other and make it easier for you to cover and water them in one go.



2. Cover plants in Fleece Make sure you cover plants in fleece or hessian/jute.  This will protect them from frost and allow light and moisture to filter through.  If you want to make it even easier, you can use fleece jackets such as the one in the picture, which just pull over the top and fasten at the bottom.  Note:  Pots (especially terracotta ones) can suffer from frost damage so make sure you cover these in the same way.


3.  Move tender plants to the greenhouse or indoors if you have the space.  You can also overwinter (gardening jargon for plant hibernation) by covering them with a cold frame, plant house or a polythene grower system cover.


4.  Use mother nature!  It sounds crazy, but in fact snow can help to insulate your plants, especially from cold drying winds.  Make sure you still clear snow from tree branches and conservatory/greenhouse roofs, though, as snow can become heavy and cause damage. Use mulch (old leaves, home made compost) and straw to provide natural cover for tree roots, especially evergreens in pots and with roots above the surface of the soil.


5. Keep plants watered In the winter plants lose moisture in the cold, dry air so make sure you water them if they need it and this will improve their natural defense against the harsh effects of winter weather.  Too much water (rainwater included) is  a bad thing though - you don't want the ground around the roots to freeze.

We are well known for being experts in plant protection - so why not drop us a line or comment in the box below if you have any questions, would like more details or even if you have your own tried and tested tips for protecting your plants from cold weather.

What to do with your pumpkin seeds

Post by Madeleine Cardozo

I am really hoping that you didn’t just throw away all those wonderful pumpkins seeds.

I keep about 50 of them, placed in a saucer to dry out on the windowsill ready for sowing in April next year.

With the rest you can bake them and eat them as a nutritious snack:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1. Separate the seeds from the flesh of the pumpkin but don’t wash. 
2. Place them onto a baking tray
3. Pour a little olive oil over them and then sprinkle with salt 
4. Mix them about. 
5.  Put them into the oven (375°F, gas mark 5, 190°C) for about 20 minutes until they are golden brown.  You can keep them for months but they will tend to lose their flavour after 6 weeks.

Haxfact!: Pumpkin seeds are a super food full of iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium and are also a source of protein and omega 3.


Storing Apples
If you want to store apples, you need to store them directly from the tree. The apples need to be handled very carefully, each one wrapped in newspaper and then place in a dark cool place such as a shed, cellar or garage. They need to go somewhere where they will not be disturbed until you need them. Alternatively you can peel, core and slice them, then put them in the freezer ready for that wonderful French apple tart that you are dying to make.

Other things to do in the garden this week:
If you would like onions for the summer you had better get your skates on and plant out the sets now.
You can still sow winter lettuces under cloches, when these have come up plant them out in the greenhouse or under poly tunnels, my rocket is doing amazingly well.

The next post will be about protecting your garden from frost and winter weather - subscribe to the blog to be notified as soon as it has been posted!

Madeleine's Corner: Get the Cloches Out!

Post by Madeleine Cardozo

As a result of rapidly cooling temperatures, the amount of growth in the garden has slowed down enormously. This has meant that I have been a little lazy recently. So I forced myself to go outside and see what needed to be done. There was so much.

Mowing needed to be done around the vegetable patch, weeding around the lettuces and rocket. It's important to harvest as much as you can and either freeze the vegetables or store them.
Throw a little soil over the tops of the carrots to stop them going rubbery or green and I am happy to report that there are fewer caterpillars gnawing at my purple sprouting broccoli than last week.

Courgettes, squash and pumpkins need to be on placed onto something solid like a tile or paving, they do not want to linger on the damp soil for too long as they will rot. This is a way of hardening the skins and they could last for a few months if you let them ‘dry’ in the sun.

I really want to grow tulips and spring flowering bulbs, but I always seem to lose them and not look after them in my flower beds so I thought why not plant them in a space in the vegetable patch, they would have flowered by May which is when you begin to plant out your summer vegetables, so perhaps I can do both.

So I cleared a patch, fed it with old manure, spent a few bob on matching coloured tulips and now I will wait and see what happens.

Use cloches and small poly tunnels to keep your rocket and lettuce warm and growing. Spinach is hardy so you can leave that to the elements.

Lastly, collect your seeds! I wonder round the garden every now and then with a couple of envelopes, in them I put seeds from flowers and vegetables. Or if I cut up a courgette, tomato, bean or melon, I put them on a saucer and let them dry on the window sill and then put them into an envelope for next Spring. It saves you lots of money so why not.

Any questions related to this post, as ever, let us know in the comments box below and we'll answer as soon as we can.

Sowing Salads for Winter

Blog post by Robbie

The weather is currently so mild here in Wiltshire that I have already taken full advantage by sowing some 'Lamb's Lettuce' or Corn Salad.

Sowing
The back of the packet will say to sow seeds at fortnightly intervals from late summer to late autumn (so not beyond November) in a sunny position and well drained soil.

Because it's warm at the moment I've sown mine directly into a (25cm high, 45cm diameter) patio planter with special drainage holes.  The packet says I should sow in drills 12mm (½in) deep and 15cm (6in) apart every two weeks.  I like being different so I am largely ignoring this advice in favour of creating a spiral effect by sowing from the middle outwards, a new ring every fortnight.

Thinning out 
This is garden-jargon and it refers to the process of removing weaker seedlings to make room for stronger ones.  Basically, when the seedlings spring up you will notice that they might be quite crowded.  Especially if you're a crazy sowing maverick like I am and put too many in one spot!
You can't transplant them (plant them elsewhere), as we are outside of the growing season and they really won't like being disturbed.  Don't fret though - there are likely to be over 500 seeds in your packet so plenty to go round!

Winter cropping
The lettuce should make it through the winter outside if it's in a sheltered sunny position.  However, I'm taking no chances and will be protecting my crop from frost using a cloche or fleece blanket. I must also make sure they are kept moist - but if they are too wet the crops will likely freeze if left standing in a pool of water.

Why don't you try sowing your own winter salad? I managed to find this one online, but is sure to be sold by any one of our stockists.

Good luck and please comment below if you are also sowing winter salads or have a question to ask...

Madeleine's Corner: Harvesting vegetables & making leaf mould

Post by Madeleine Cardozo

This week we have all had a new lease of life in the garden, the plants are growing like mad as this extra bit of warmth has given them another chance. If you were worried about your tomatoes never ripening or your squash not getting large enough, your worries are over!

So back to the nitty gritty of harvesting to keep your crops coming, like courgettes, raspberries, rocket and beans. Clear any unwanted weeds from the bases of your vegetables and while it is still dry mow the grass.
Water anything you have in the greenhouse regularly as this weather is drying everything fast.

Leaves are starting to fall and it is a good time of year to make leaf mould. To do this rake up the damp leaves and put it into aerated bags, you can use a bin liner having stabbed lots of holes into it or you can buy fairly cheaply jute ones that look much nicer and rot down completely. In a years’ time from now this will have decomposed to a wonderful compost that is incredibly good for your vegetables.

There is a 'comedy gardener' called Rabbie, who shows you how to use the sacks in YouTube video if you like that sort of thing.


As you harvest more and more you will obtain space in your patch, I recommend forking it over, some people like the no dig method, but not me, it doesn't seem thorough enough. Do this little by little, 20 minutes at a time, as you do not want to spend the next few weeks nurturing a bad back. Add any well rotted compost/manure to it as you go along.

Plant: garlic, onions, sweet peas, broad beans, lettuce, rocket and radishes.

Any questions, please put them in the comments box below!

Madeline's Corner: Havesting Potatoes, Pickled Pears and something brutal about Tomatoes!

Well I don’t know about you but for me it has been a blustery week and I have been forcing myself to go out and get fresh air and to keep up the garden in a minimalistic way. I do feel that as soon as it is nice you should spend hours in the garden and when it is horrid only do the bare minimum.

So I have been harvesting potatoes, putting them into jute storage bags and then hanging them in the dry part of the garden shed. You can do the same with your beetroot, carrots etc, but only if they are suffering in the ground. If they are still growing, I would leave them in the ground for as long as possible, until the first frosts.

I have also been harvesting pears and bottling them, apples and freezing them in slices or bottling them, raspberries and freezing them. I am collecting enough raspberries to make jam, but it will take me about a week.

Get rid of any unwanted pea and bean plants, some of my beans turned to rubber - as they do when they become old – so I have got rid of them onto the compost heap. In this space I have planted out more rocket.

Now many of you will be worried about your tomatoes ripening. I cut off all the flowers and ½ of the leaves, I have been brutal, but I believe that all the energy now created will head towards the fruit and help to ripen them. If this doesn’t work them I find that green tomato chutney makes an excellent Christmas present.