I have found a lovely recipe for fruit syrup. The original is made from raspberries but it says the same recipe can be made using currants. That was encouraging because I needed to pick my red currants. I have got two bushes in the fruit cage and they are rather easy to pick. The result was an amazing three kilos so as soon as I came home I started the process.

It takes quite a while – first the fruit has to be crushed, water and lemon juice added to it and has to stay for 48 hours like that. After this time I’ve got to let it drip without squeezing it, add sugar to it and the job is done, I’ll bottle it in my Kilner jars, ready for later. I did pick some raspberries as well but these will be for our breakfast, we put them on our porridge.

As I have my apple trees as miniatures I can comfortably reach every branch so I continued thinning out my Bramleys and Russets. The aim is to have less apples but bigger ones. It should work, I did it a few years ago. This year the trees were laden with fruit so I had to do it again. Of course I’m not going to throw these little apples away, I have cooked them and sieved them, they made a delicious apple puree.

I added another six Kilner jars to my previous two. The collection of bottled goodies for the winter is growing fast.

The rest of the morning was used to tidy up another greenhouse, the tomato plants were getting too tall so I cut the tops and also took off some of the bottom leaves and now the fruit can ripen much better.

When I wanted to tie up my climbing courgettes and squashes I found that one of them was actually a cucumber and had one lovely cucumber just waiting to be picked.

The rest were squashes and climbing courgettes and I hope that they’ll grow better tied up.

I harvested a few courgettes and they’ll make a  very tasty meal tomorrow evening.