[casa rakkaleff] it's hard to not make a supid pun from 'damson plums'

[leff]

But apparently it's easy to make jam from them. And that's a good thing because, as I just learned today, the overflowing plum tree in the back yard is a damson. These things are grown specifically for jam, so canning them up shouldn't be too hard.

big bowl of plums

We've been watching this tree progress since we moved in (less than 3 months, btw). We knew it was a plum tree, but we didn't know what kind. Naturally, having a supermarket level relationship with plums in the past, we assumed that they'd eventually get sweet enough to eat, even if they stayed small.

We were wrong. Damson plums are so tart that they're basically inedible raw, but that's good for canning, which requires a certain amount of acid for success. Usually you'd add lemon juice or pectin to canned sweet things (or vinegar to savory; hello pickles). Damsons have it built right in.

Looking through some old gardening book from the library today, I happened across a picture of one of these little guys. It didn't go into detail, but luckily it had a caption. Armed with the name, the research was easy. I'm glad I found it; we've watched half our crop fall on the ground already. We'd have let it all go to the compost heap if I hadn't just happened on that image.

Of course, we don't have our canning gear together. So today after I realized what they where, and that they were as ready as they were going to get, I made a mad dash to amazon for supplies. 100 bucks and free 2 day shipping later and we'll have put by 12 pints of plum jam by Thursday. I think we will mostly be limited by the number of jars that we've bought.

We might make some damson gin too.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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Posted By leff to casa rakkaleff at 8/30/2009 06:47:00 PM