Spring into Fruit Trees!

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I love spring! First of all, the weather is so nice and warm- all of nature is bursting with new growth and energy and you can't help but join in by rolling up your sleeves to dig in the dirt. My vegetable plants go in the ground early, but the first signs of spring are in the fruit department. This always gets me excited, because every flower equals one fruit that I will get to harvest and eat later! 

Fruit is so expensive to buy, but so good for you! We go through a lot of fruit at our house. One of the best investments in our yard has been putting in fruit trees. They easily pay back your investment after just a couple of harvests but will keep producing for years and years. Currently in our yard we have 5 blueberry bushes, Crabapple, Fuji apple, Baldwin pear, Hood pear, grapevine, blackberry vines, Meyer lemon, satsuma, grapefruit, kumquat, and pomegranate. I know it sounds like a lot, but we enjoy them so much that we just ordered 3 more dwarf trees! Here are a few of my favorite sights in spring...



Our Balwin pear bloomed for the first time this year, which means we will get our very first harvest of pears in late summer/ early fall. Some little pears are already forming!

The mulberry was our first fruit tree. Here are some little berries on our mulberry tree. Mulberries don't technically bloom- they have little curly hairs on them for pollination purposes. I don't mind as long as the tree is covered!

Blackberries everywhere! So many little flowers with bees buzzing all around to pollinate each one. I have let the vines take over the entire back fence and we will probably get about 8 lb. of berries this year. I can already taste the summer berry smoothies :)



Satsumas (a kind of citrus) will have a heavy production year followed by a light one. This is our heavy year, and the tree is absolutely loaded with blooms.

I just love the little purple flowers on the lemon tree. So dainty and cute! And they smell like honeysuckle :)

Blueberry bushes don't have very showy blooms, but look like little white bells. Our bushes are still young, but put out a good amount of berries.

These pink Fuji apple blossoms make me smile. This is another tree that we will get our first fruit from this year. So exciting!

What is blooming in your garden right now? Anything promising some delicious treats later? I just love that I'll already be enjoying fresh fruit while my vegetables plants are just getting rolling. Hello, spring! It's been a while...

How to Preserve Citrus Slices

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We had a bumper crop of satsuma oranges this year. Even after eating all that we could, giving some away to anyone who would take it, and making 24 jars of

satsuma jelly

, we still had more! I thought it would be nice to preserve some whole slice to use in salads or to just eat later in the year when we don't have any fresh citrus left. It turns out to be a really simple process! We used satsumas, but this can also be done with clementines or mandarins.

What you need:

- Sterilized canning jars and lids

- Sugar

- Water

- Citrus slices

Pick your citrus and peel it, separating it into segments. Depending on how much you are canning, this process may take a while. I am pretty fanatic about getting off all of the little white pieces which turn bitter when canned. If you have a lot to make and are as particular about that as I am, you may want to put on a movie and get comfy for this part. 

Once that is done, the rest of the process goes really quick. Cold pack the citrus segments into the sterilized jars. Really cram them in there! Then make a syrup by boiling a ratio of 2.5 cups of water to 1 cup of sugar. (You can play with this ratio if you want to make the syrup more or less sweet to your taste.) 

Pour the liquid in the jars over the fruit until full. Screw on the lids tightly. Finally, put the jars in a boiling water bath for 30 minuets. For the water bath, put the jars into a pot of boiling water that covers the tops of the jars by at least 1 inch.

And now you are done! You have some delicious citrus segments to use throughout the year, even when your fresh fruit isn't in season! I can;t wait to use this in a salad over the summer with some dried cranberries and pecans on top!

Satsuma Jelly Recipe

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One of the wonderful things about growing your own fruit is having fresh fruit in-season for free. The problem comes when you have WAY more than you can eat or give away! Of course this is a good problem to have, but for those who don't want great fruit to go to waste, it is time to get canning!

This recipe would probably work with many different kinds of citrus fruits such as clementines or mandarins, but we used a Louisiana favorite- satsumas! Satsumas are the jewel of the humid south. They are easy to peel, usually seedless, very sweet and produce like crazy! We ate two or three a day for months and then had to figure out what to do with the rest before the first hard freeze.

What you need:

- 3 1/2 cups Satsuma juice

- 5 cups sugar

- 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

- 1 package Sure-Jell

- canning jars and lids

Makes 6 half pint jars.

 

Pick a LOT of satsumas and peel them, then juice them. We used a juicer to do this and ended up with a lot of waste, so if you are making just one batch instead of four like us, I would juice them by hand the old-fashioned way.

Once you have all of your juice and other ingredients ready mix the satsuma juice, lemon juice, and box of Sure-Jell in a sauce pot with tall sides. Stir continuously until you have a rolling boil for one minute (rolling boil while still stirring, that is). Then add the sugar, still stirring, and bring to a boil once again for one minute. 

Ladle into sterilized jars, put on the lids and boil in a water bath for 10 minutes. Once you take the jars out of the water bath, let them sit for 24 hours to cool and jell properly. It was a pretty simple process, and the result was a beautiful, sweet, and slightly tangy jelly that I can't wait to spread on a steaming hot biscuit!

I was so pleased with the results and it came out perfectly jelled! I hope your batch comes out just as tasty!