If you’re one of those lucky people who has managed to grow a substantial amount of fruit over the summer, one of the best ways that you can preserve your fruit for a long period of time is to make your own jam. The activity of making your own jam can be quite a fun experience, and there is always something special about knowing that you’re the one who contributed everything towards the end result; this will be your jam, using the fruit that you’ve grown yourself.

Jamming can be quite a difficult process, so if you’ve got a limited harvest and want to make sure it’s a success, it may be a good idea to do a test run with store bought fruit first.

To make Jam:

• You’ll need berries, pectin and sugar. Pectin is the thickening agent in the jam making which is necessary to make jam.
• Crush the berries.
• Measure the amount of sugar you’ll need.
• mix the pectin and fruit together and boil.
• During the boiling process, add the sugar and keep boiling until the jam starts to get thick and sticky.

Choosing when to dig up your garlic can be difficult for the uninformed, because the answer isn’t really clear cut. It varies based upon when they were planted, and what part you want to harvest.

One of the things which most garlic growers do is to take off the flowers buds before they start to flower. This will make the energy which would have left the bulb of the garlic plant to grow the flowers stay in the bulb, and the flower buds are also very tasty too.

Besides making sure that you garlic has had a good environment to grow, you also need to know when the best time to pick your garlic is. If you’ve planted your garlic in the spring, you’ll want to dig them up during early autumn, and if you’ve planted during autumn, then you’ll want to harvest early summer. This will provide you with large and tasty garlic bulbs.