So, it is jam making time. I have made 60 1/2 pints of jam so far. Raspberry fire, raspberry, inferno peach raspberry and remade the strawberry that didn't set up in May. Jam ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden ) The left jar is the reset strawberry and the right one is the raspberry fire. jam ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden )
Yikes that is a lot of Jam. Looks good enough to eat. I am still eating jam I made over two years ago. Love it, but not a big eater of it. The hot pepper sounds interesting in the recipe. I have a mandarin orange dressing that I put hot sauce in. Yummy-like you said.
Tooty, I don't eat much of it. I am able to sell it at farmers markets here. So, what I can't sell fresh I make into jam and sell later. This past Saturday we planted another row of raspberries. 1/2 was a berry that was mismarked, I wish I knew what it was and a few other shoots from another "trial" and the rest we dug from kevin's aunts house and transplanted here. It is called Autumn Bliss. I have no idea what kind of berry it is, but we needed just enough to finish the row. So, more work next year and more berries, too.
Ian loves my home made raspberry jam and he also enjoys any meal with peppers in it (the hotter the better.) I wonder what his reaction would be if I made your Raspberry fire or inferno? Maybe I should try a jar of each and see what happens.
Eileen...do it. It is my favorite jam. I posted the recipe in the recipe section last year maybe. I haven't eaten the inferno peach raspberry yet, but I like all three. The Inferno is actually the "inferno hot banana" I order from totally tomatoes. It is a little hotter than a hot banana. Today I made another 3 dozen jars of jam. Mostly plain raspberry. http://www.gardenstew.com/about23440.html Eileen, I have two different recipes or this and the other one is 1/3 the quantity of the one on here. Use either size, but us a wide shallow pan for either one.
Boy oh boy Carolyn I'm a tad bit jealous. Over 4 yrs ago we ordered some really nice raspberry plants. 25 of one variety and 25 of a variety that had a patten on it. That surprised me. But our soil prep was not the best. We had plowed a row for the berries in an old hay field behind our house. We should have covered it for a few months to kill all the quack. Or put round up on it and then waited a yr. to plant. Anyway the following year we had some great berries. I was able to sell them at our local little farmers market, freeze some and make jam. One was a smaller rounder red berry and the other one was a very large dark red-purple which was triangle shaped. It was our favorite and that was the one that had the patten on it. We'll the following year the weather was so bad with storms and the berries thorns ripped up the fruit as the wind whipped the stalks around. I made jam. The next year the quack and thistles decided to take over the patch. I hated picking berried and avoiding thistle barbs as well. Then a virus hit the berries. The leaves turned orange, curled up, and even got on the berries. To say the least I was becoming more and more disappointed and was loosing the battle. The next year the berries didn't produce hardly anything and we had winds that caused the fruit to become torn up from the thorns once again. We do have a few plants struggling through. I hate loosing them altogether. So I have a small area I am planning on moving a few of the surviving berry plants to. It's the one berry variety that has the patten on it I do not want to loose. Sorry for being so long winded. I had grandiose plans on having a U-pick fall berry variety business. So glad yours are doing so well. Better planning I'm sure.
Tooty, We tie our canes to wires. We thin them to 4 canes per clump one foot apart. We mow down anything that gets out of the row. Once the Spring crop is done we cut out all the spent canes, untie or unclip the dead canes from the wires and as soon as the new canes get tall enough we tie or clip them to the wires once again. That method will certainly help keep the wind from destroying the berries. ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden ) This row is about 6' tall. I have to stretch to pick some of them. ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden ) I used the tomato clips for greenhouse tomatoes this year. Much quicker than cutting and tying the canes. ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden ) Ready to pick again, almost. mismarked variety ( photo / image / picture from carolyn's Garden ) This variety became a new row on Saturdaay. I cut all the canes back, sacrificing the berries, and transplanted them into a new row.
