I am glad you started a thread on what to do with fruit. We have 42 fruit trees, but end up either giving away fruit to neighbors…or eating fruit off the trees. I am not a fan of jams (drinks would be more to my taste). So far, what we don’t eat off the tree, ends up rotted on the ground. So more recipes would be great. For example, our 6 fig trees have given us about twenty figs with another 40-50 still the size of bottle-tops. We plan on eating them immediately, but I dream of a day when we do something ‘inventive’ with them. In May, my wife spent 3 days up a ladder with her friends picking and eating cherries. This week, we invited the neighborhood kids over to pick peaches. SO…any threads about recipes would be great
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Making jams/preserves with much less sugar than normal was one of my main motivations to plant a backyard orchard. The trees are still maturing, but my raspberry bushes and red currant bush produced enough (after eating most of the raspberries fresh and feeding the neighbor kids) to make a small batch, just shy of one jar worth.
75% red currant 25% raspberry, roughly. I used 1 tablespoon of honey per cup of fruit and it was about perfect to my taste, though I imagine that ratio will vary depending on the fruit.
I think the currants had enough pectin as it’s a pretty convincing jam texture despite just winging it with simple ingredients and short cook time.
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my family makes fig butter- it goes in the fridge I’m pretty sure. they mash the figs, add a little lemon juice or apple juice to get it watery, then cook it in a wide pot slow slow until it gets very, very thick. my grandmother used to make it thick enough to roll up in wax paper then slice it to put on hard bread!
my aunt makes it thick into a jar like apple butter.
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Canning some whole figs is the only thing we had time to do. The Mrs. just went back to work. Which is sad since the owner of the land at our local post office asked if we wanted to pick the wild fox and bullis grapes there. 150 gallons worth easily and fantastically perfect sugary pow taste.
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You mentioned sorghum syrup in your cherry jam, do you make it?
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yes i grow a patch or two of sorghum ever year for the syrup.
plum butter and then my friend’s grape vines came in. went over and picked and together we did two kinds of jelly, 3 kinds of juice concentrate, and jam. loads and loads we were there for 8 hours working.
we did dilly beans too along side, with my beans since i had a lot.
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Wow!! Do you sell these?
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no, i keep enough for us for the year and give the rest to coworkers and clients and friends! i make a lot of half pints to just give away
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An update (9/7/25): Subsequently, I took care to keep the amount of Pomona’s no sugar pectin at or slightly below (75-100%) their recipe. As a result, I’ve had good success making numerous “no sugar” jams from blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries and red raspberries. These jams include lemon juice for added acidity. Often, I’ve added a small amount of non-sugar sweetener (Splenda). But this sweetening targets taste rather than the blind obligation to pair standard pectin with piles of sugar.
As a result, I can enjoy daily snacks of toast with jam or PB&J without worrying about the adverse health impact of excess calories or refined sugar. Likewise, I can feed the jam to my grandchildren knowing that basically I’m giving them a healthy fruit concentrate.
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ALDI has the Sour Cherry fruit spread along with the Fig spreads in the seasonal end cap locally. Jar says Product of Germany on the Sour Cherry. Very chunky and loaded with cherries. $4 is a very fair price for it for me until my trees start producing.
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@resonanteye I am growing Coral Sorghum to do syrup this next year. I plan on doubling down on the amount because I haven’t got much juice in the past.
How much do you plant and hope to get juice-wise?
How much juice do you wind up with, approximately?
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I want to try Korjaj Sorghum next year. Some for grain and some to press the canes. Though Korjaj is shorter; it has a lighter juice and syrup.
Also want to try make Apple Cider syrup making as well eventually.
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i plant 20 plants round about and get a pint or more of thick syrup. I’m doing it by hand so the yield isn’t as much. i get about a quart of the grain as well
i have to harvest all before Sunday, it’s frost that night and it will make the sorghum go bad
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Sorghum yields are highly variable. Top 76-6 gives nice plump white kernels. But maybe 2-3 pints. But a ton of syrup. But there are a lot of syrup tilted sorghum varieties available here now. I prefer the dual purpose white and amber sorghums.
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i like to get both grain and syrup. i only plant a small patch so i don’t expect a lot of either but it’s enough for my partner to cook in his morning hot cereal mix with the grains and enough to make syrup to last me until next fall. I’m the only one likes the syrup.
they look nice in the back of the garden too i think. like a big exclamation point!
i just posted about them as i pulled most of them today. we finished the remaining grain that i didn’t replant, last month, and the syrup too. like in early Sept that stuff was gone. i would love to get a dual variety that is ready earlier in playing chicken with the frost every year with it
i like the grain to get colored up. i don’t plant the white much. this variety is a bunch mixed together mostly as it’s seed i replantrd from last year. i had i think red, mennonite, and a few varieties from sandhill that i tried out
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@resonanteye Sounds like if I plant what I was thinking for next year, then I should have enough material for both grain and syrup. I haven’t put any grain in my breakfast and I really need to remember to!
How do you process the stalks for the syrup? I have seen a couple different ways.
I have had for years a, Greenstar(?), juicer I tried last year- and it worked well. I just did not have enough stalks.
I have harvested all my sorghum this year except for two shorties that were shaded and unripe. You reminded me I need to pick them before it rains more!
I can send you some ‘Coral’ sorghum, if you like. Most of mine was ready two weeks, maybe a month ago.
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If you want a fast maturing, more grain edible sorghum; look at waxy sorghum’s. They also cook faster and are great for flour. Some like them for grain alcohol.
Top 76-6 is a southern collaborative grain that has very strong stalks that rarely lodges in our heavy rains. So it has a good following as it is fairly disease resistant. Especially to a lot of fusariam and rot issues. Aphids love it. But they do not bother it badly.
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Love sorghum. I am from the south so we used to have sorghum all the time when we would visit relatives. Great looking jars you put up.
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Thanks for the info. I will check the Aldi’s in my area. They have some Germany made items they have in the fall. Things they normally don’t carry throughout the year.
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