June Update: Fruit

In the yard we have a few fruit trees, vines, and bushes. I'm finding that not much fruit set, most likely because of a hard frost we had while the trees were in bloom in mid May.

We have a sour cherry tree on the side of the house. It only has a few green cherries on it this year. The sellers of the house left us a jar of jelly made from it last year so they must have had more fruit.

In the front of the house another tree, which I thought was ornamental. A few weeks ago I was weeding underneath and found a cherry on the ground. I looked up and have found a few other sweet cherries on the tree. I hope we can pick the handful of them when the ripen before the birds get to them.
We also have three apple trees. Apparently they were just planted last year. There are only about 5 apples on all three trees.
This spring I planted everbearing raspberries. They are just beginning to get their first blossoms. I probably should pluck them off and let the plants establish.
We found some blackberries in a pot at the back of the house. They are developing nicely. We've also seen a few places in the woods nearby where we should be able to pick blackberries.
For my birthday at the beginning of this month, I received 25 Honeoye strawberry plants. We won't let them fruit this year, but hope they will get well established.
There is one lone blueberry bush. It cross-pollinated with some in the field behind our house so we have a handful of green berries waiting to ripen.
On the front picket fence is a green grape vine. It is starting to set fruit. I'm not sure what we'll do with green grapes. Can you make green grape jelly?
This year's fruit will be measured in handfuls, but I hope it will be signs of bounty to come.

Fruit Trees in Bloom

The sour cherry tree began blooming on May 1st.
Two Cortland apple trees started blooming on May 3rd.
I'm looking forward to the fruit they'll produce.

Quince & Apple Canning

I've been a bit behind on reporting on activities here on the blog. At the end of last month we harvested quince from the bush and made quince jelly. Someone commented elsewhere asking how big the bush it. I would say it's about 5 feet in diameter. There is a picture of the whole bush at the end of this post from last year.

We picked 8 lbs of quince on the 21st and made it into juice in two ways. For every 3 1/2 lbs we added 7 cups of water. We had to fill two large stock pots with the quartered fruits and water. One pot full was strained through jelly bags overnight in the traditional way, yielding 8 cups.We put the other batch through the food mill to remove the seeds and skins but preserve more of the pulp. We got 9 cups from this batch.

For every cup of juice, we added one cup of sugar and then cooked each batch for about an hour with 2-4 tbsp of lemon juice added. The strained juice batch yielded 9 half-pint jars.
The milled juice yielded 10 half pint jars. Both batches had a little more left on the side which we put in the fridge for a taste test. The milled jelly is not quite as refined of a flavor as the strained juice. As far as color goes, it is similar but is not quite as clear, and has a hint more of orange. It has been so rainy lately we haven't gotten a good side-by-side of the two jars. Below is a jar of the strained jelly that wouldn't fit in the canner so went straight to the fridge.
We're very pleased with how much quince jelly we made this year since we thought it was the best we made last year, but had to use and share it sparingly. This year there is plenty to go around.

Our other canning endeavor was apple-quince butter. We went apple picking the last weekend in September and had a coupon for some money off a half-bushel of pick your own. So we picked a half-bushel. We were careful to first pick two varieties of cooking apples and then two varieties of eating apples so we would be able to separate them when we got home. My husband wanted to make apple butter, and we decided to throw some quinces in too.
We used 2 lbs 10 oz of quince and 3 lbs of apples (a mix of Cortland & Mac). We quartered them and added 7 cups water. We brought it to a boil and cooked until soft. Then we put the pulp through a food mill. Here's my husband using it.
We decided to cook it in the crock pot. We had 14 cups of pulp and added 4 cups of white sugar and 1 1/2 cusp of brown sugar. We started it on high with the lid ajar for a few hours and then turned it on low when we went to bed. The next morning it still needed more time so we left it on while we went to church. We forgot and came back later in the afternoon to it being done, but some of it starting to crisp around the edges of the crock pot. It had reduced by half and darkened significantly in color. We processed it in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes and yielded 8 half-pint jars. I still need to photograph it to show how dark it got.