Broccoli head from Spain priced 20p in supermarket.

[Reynard]

BTW depending on the accuracy of your thermometer (worth testing in water at a rolling boil ...) and also on the amount of heat held by the bowl or jug or whatever you use, you might need to stop heating, or continue heating, for a half or one or two degrees more or less than the 85 degC quoted. No more, and keep a note of it so you will know where best to 'stop' next time.

I have a sugar thermometer, left over from when I used to make my own sweets. That'll do.

 

[mudsticks]

Ta very much

Could use that method to make one jar at a time - to scratch the itch, like...

My mum used to swear by microwave lemon curd, and I can totally see how it's a more efficient use of energy, and probs time too.

But for me gently stirring the bowl of yellow gloop as it thickens is part of the magic.

I will make quite a lot, and then everyone gobbles it up dolloped onto freshly made drop scones .

So storage is rarely an issue

Having an 'oversupply' of fresh free range eggs is a bit of a luxury I know.

You can buy boxes of straight from the farm unsprayed oranges and lemons too.

I've not done that yet, but people I know who have, say they're really good

 

[Reynard]

Part of the problem is it's just me who eats it. And umm...

It's one of the reasons I don't bake so much either.



Lemon curd ice cream is totally lush, btw...

 

[mudsticks]

Part of the problem is it's just me who eats it. And umm...

It's one of the reasons I don't bake so much either.



Lemon curd ice cream is totally lush, btw...

I don't suppose you'd be short of takers, if you instigated a lemon curd eating club 🙂

Yes lemon curd ice-cream is very good

 

[Pat "5mph"]

You can buy boxes of straight from the farm unsprayed oranges and lemons too.

Do citrus fruit trees grow in England?
I didn't know that.
A quick Google tells me they need to be grown in pots, so you can move them to a frost free place in winter.
Would a farmer be bothered?
Would the fruit be very expensive, is this the reason why we don't see English citrus fruits in supermarkets?

 

[KnittyNorah]

Do citrus fruit trees grow in England?
I didn't know that.
A quick Google tells me they need to be grown in pots, so you can move them to a frost free place in winter.
Would a farmer be bothered?
Would the fruit be very expensive, is this the reason why we don't see English citrus fruits in supermarkets?

No they come from Spain (and maybe Portugal).

 

[Pat "5mph"]

No they come from Spain (and maybe Portugal).

I meant the ones @mudsticks says you can get from the farm unwaxed, to make your curd, along with the free range eggs

 

[Reynard]

I did have an orange tree in a pot that the parental unit grew from a pip. (Mum is VERY green fingered. I am not.)

All I ever got off it was greenfly and thorns.

 

[KnittyNorah]

I meant the ones @mudsticks says you can get from the farm unwaxed, to make your curd, along with the free range eggs

Yes those are the ones. There are a few suppliers who advertise. The farms are in Spain and different ones sell different fruits and different weights of cases. I don't know whether they ship them or post them or whatm but the supply lines are fast and efficient, it's just the final few miles here in the UK that will be expensive and time-consuming - an opportunity ripe for the plucking by an eco-friendly delivery service!

 

[Pat "5mph"]

I did have an orange tree in a pot that the parental unit grew from a pip. (Mum is VERY green fingered. I am not.)

All I ever got off it was greenfly and thorns.

The potted citrus trees garden centres sell here say on the label that the fruit is not edible, not that I'm daft enough to buy one
I think citrus fruit trees need to be innested (wrong spelling, maybe even wrong word lol) with another already producing tree.
Citrus fruits grown from a seed of a citrus fruit in are not edible afaik, I think cherries maybe like that?
Like all apples come from the crab apple before the tree is injected with an edible apple tree?

 

[KnittyNorah]

I did have an orange tree in a pot that the parental unit grew from a pip. (Mum is VERY green fingered. I am not.)

All I ever got off it was greenfly and thorns.

'S like growing apple trees from an apple pip ... you don't know what you'll get! Some of them make nice foliage plants tho. Better to get a tree from a pro grower if you want to harvest fruit from it. I had a kumquat tree for several years which was quite prolific and there are some varieties of lemon which are semi-hardy. A couple of years ago I got to know a Moroccan bloke who was retired and who'd been working over here in horticulture on the Fylde since the 1960s; he grew olive trees, citrus and all sorts of other mediterranean things in his garden AND got crops from them - but only by treating each plant as a little individual; as he said, he enjoyed doing it as a retirement hobby but it would never be a practical proposition so far north.

 

[KnittyNorah]

The potted citrus trees garden centres sell here say on the label that the fruit is not edible, not that I'm daft enough to buy one
I think citrus fruit trees need to be innested (wrong spelling, maybe even wrong word lol) with another already producing tree.
Citrus fruits grown from a seed of a citrus fruit in are not edible afaik, I think cherries maybe like that?
Like all apples come from the crab apple before the tree is injected with an edible apple tree?

You are thinking of grafting wrt apples and pears. The variety eg Cox Orange Pippin is grafted onto a rootstock which controls the vigour of the tree - so if you want eg fast growing trees that will stay small , you graft them onto one sort of rootstock, and if you want something fast growing and big, you graft it onto another, and if you want it medium size you use a different one again ... The rootstocks are specially bred and grown apple plants which are grown specifically for size, vigour, and so on, and provide the 'foundation' on which the 'variety' of apple can grow. This also applies to pears, plums, cherries etc. This is how you can buy a tree which will grow eating apples on one part of it and cooking apples on the other part of it. Someone has grafted a branch of eg Coxes Orange Pippin on one side of it and eg Bramley on the other side of it, so the different branches grow different fruits.

I presume something similar happens with citrus.

It's not so much that the fruits from a seed-grown tree are 'inedible' it's that you don't know WHAT they will be like, they might be sour or bitter or oddly shaped or never ripen, or something. Breeders of new varieties of eg apple trees, roses etc etc will grow hundreds or thousands of seeds for years and years to find one which might possibly be developed into a new 'breed'; most of them are useless.

 

[Reynard]

You can buy fruit trees with two or three different varieties grafted onto a rootstock. The downside with some of them is that they don't always choose varieties that can pollinate each other, resulting in either no or very poor crops.

I have one of those - Jonagold and Golden Delicious. The latter is the parent of the former, and they can't pollinate each other. Fortunately I have other apple varieties, but in a small garden, I can imagine people being a bit bemused at the lack of fruit.

 

[mudsticks]

I meant the ones @mudsticks says you can get from the farm unwaxed, to make your curd, along with the free range eggs

Yes sorry i meant you can buy direct from growers, and co ops in southern Europe.

You would need big heated greenhouses and permanently planted trees to produce any quantity of citrus here, even in the balmy south.

It would cost a fortune.

Yes those are the ones. There are a few suppliers who advertise. The farms are in Spain and different ones sell different fruits and different weights of cases. I don't know whether they ship them or post them or whatm but the supply lines are fast and efficient, it's just the final few miles here in the UK that will be expensive and time-consuming - an opportunity ripe for the plucking by an eco-friendly delivery service!

I'm not sure if they're doing it with citrus yet but there have been some companies, shipping by sail things like olive oil..

The idea being very low carbon delivery.

Nice idea, and makes a point about food miles etc, but will probs be a while, and diesel prices will have to rise a lot before it becomes a commonplace.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Yes sorry i meant you can buy direct from growers, and co ops in southern Europe.

You would need big heated greenhouses and permanently planted trees to produce any quantity of citrus here, even in the balmy south.

It would cost a fortune.

I'm not sure if they're doing it with citrus yet but there have been some companies, shipping by sail things like olive oil..

The idea being very low carbon delivery.

Nice idea, and makes a point about food miles etc, but will probs be a while, and diesel prices will have to rise a lot before it becomes a commonplace.

It makes sense for less-perishable items to be delivered by what might be seen, by some, as a 'less reliable' form of transport.