20210721 Blackberries
Five years ago we planted a blackberry in one corner of the garden. We planted it in lots of fresh potting soil, as not to poison ourselves (see 2021-06-04). It is a blackberry without thorns and it produced blackberries from the second year on and it has grown so much every year that we are now fighting a fight for survival of the garden each year. We like blackberries, but if we do nothing the whole garden would turn into blackberry heaven within a year. So, every year we cut it back to around 1 by 2 meters in the corner, but every year it grows so fast that at the end of summer half of the garden is covered by blackberries. The good thing is of course that every year we have lots of blackberries. We have so much of them that we can harvest a kilo of blackberries each day for more than a month. And each year we produce about fifty pots of blackberry jam, we baked lots of blackberry pies and we give away fresh blackberries to all of our neighbours. In April we start saving pots for our blackberry jam production and in the shed we now have a shelf reserved for all these pots of jam. Friends start asking about our blackberry jam in July. Last year a friend of ours drove more than an hour to see us and after we had tea he confessed that his youngest daughter had asked him to see us, because she is our number one fan of our blackberry jam and she was wondering if we already had soem new produce. So we promised him she's getting two pots this year. Making the jam has now become a routine during summer. We have plenty of jelly sugar on stock and we usually go out into the garden after dinner to pluck the harvest of the day and then we get to work. It is satisfying to make your own jam and we always have a present when we visit friends and family.