Read that the stems are a) inedible, b) make wine bitter, and c) are midly poisonous, depending on where you read, I stripped the flowers off as most recipes suggested. It took hours! But, in the end, I turned this:
into 2 of these:
I ended up with 8 pints of flowers!
4 pints went on around 5 gallons of wine (bucket wasn't big enough for any more), just over a pint has gone on 'champagne', to be bottled later this evening for drinking in a couple of weeks time, and the rest I thought about making jam with.
The only recipes I could find were elderflower and something, mainly gooseberries. Now my recently bought gooseberry bush is coming along fantastically, but it doesn't have any fruit, so I decided to just go with the flow and use the elderflowers on their own with some apple and lemon juice for pectin. I'm obviously not a natural jam maker, or knowledgeable enough about the technical bits. I've got pouring sauce for ice-cream now! Didn't help that I'd forgotten to add sugar, but while that helped a bit, it didn't reach any kind of setting point. Have put it in jars anyway, and will see what happens when it's colled down a bit.
Note to self: When the gooseberries come in, freeze some for the elderflowers next year!
Still, at least I now know where there are loads of elder trees ready for the berries in the autumn. Am quite looking forward to elderberry this, that and the other - wine, jam, cordial, crumble, cakes.......
The garden has been a bit waterlogged the last couple of days, so I thought I'd have a quick look to see what was going on. The slugs have certainly been having a feast!!! A runner bean (quite a big plant) is leaf-less, a broad bean (another quite big plant) has gone. The re-growing rhubarb has gone gaain, as has as squash, the 3 marrows, a courgette and a couple of pumpkins; 2 cabbages, all but 2 turnips (from a 2' row), and the tops from the black eye beans I sprouted and grew on. The chick peas are doing ok though, and I'm surprised I still have half a dozen carrots.
Hopefully, if the rain holds off a bit longer, I can mend the repairs on the greenhouse. Things were growing quite well in there before the wind broke the plastic tubes I'd used to join the metal legs. Have now bought some canes to put down the middles, so hopefully that will hold them together. I liked going out and pottering around the greenhouse. One day we might have enough room to get a proper glass one to replace the freecycled plastic broken one.
Have got a step closer to the chicken run - got some wire today for the run. Ok, still haven't had a chance to do anything with the fence panels we got, but I will get there - darned rain. Came back from mum's with a bee house though, so we're doing something for the animal accommodation. Mum didn't think she had the right sort of garden for a bee house.
Am worried we have backward tadpoles though, after seeing hers. They came from the same batch but many of hers have back legs already. I can't see anything on any of the few I can find in our pond. Not that I can see many though, as they tend to hide down in the depths of the bottom. It's all slowly coming along though. Need another few days of good weather........
