What Do You Do When the Plum Tree Goes Mad? Home Made Prunes.
- Karen Bradley-Edwards
- Aug 25
- 3 min read
“Naturally, the day I decided my plum tree deserved its own photoshoot, the heavens opened.” ☔🍑 🤣
There comes a point in every successful harvest when pride turns to mild panic.
It usually happens when you've filled the fruit bowl, given some away, found another container and then looked back at the tree to discover it is still hanging there absolutely loaded.
That is where I am with my plum tree.
I love growing things and there is something incredibly satisfying about walking into the garden and picking food that has grown just a few steps from the kitchen. There is also something slightly alarming about realising that several kilos of fruit appear to have decided to ripen at exactly the same time.
There are only so many plums one woman can eat.
And I hate waste.
So this year's question became: What on earth am I going to do with all these plums?
Apparently, I've Been Growing Prunes | How I’m Making Homemade Prunes
Prunes are dried plums.
That's it.
I'd been looking at a tree full of plums while buying prunes from a shop.
Sometimes the obvious takes a while to catch up with me.
So this year, some of my garden harvest is becoming homemade prunes.
I'm washing the plums, cutting them in half and removing the stones before placing them cut-side upwards to dry slowly at a low temperature. They need plenty of time for the moisture to disappear until they become dark, wrinkled and chewy.
They don't need added sugar. As the water disappears, the natural sweetness and flavour of the fruit becomes more concentrated.
And eventually my mountain of fresh plums should become a considerably smaller mountain of homemade prunes.
And Then I Discovered Something Else
This little exercise in avoiding food waste became even more interesting when I started looking at the nutritional side of prunes.
Most of us probably associate prunes with one particular benefit to our digestive system. Let's just say they have a reputation, and leave that subject there!
But prunes also contain nutrients associated with bone health, including vitamin K and potassium, as well as plant compounds called polyphenols.
Researchers have also been studying whether eating prunes regularly could have a beneficial effect on bone health, particularly in postmenopausal women. Some studies have reported promising results relating to bone loss and bone mineral density.
As someone living with severe osteoporosis, anything connected with bone health naturally catches my attention.
That doesn't mean prunes can treat osteoporosis or replace medication, exercise, a balanced diet or medical advice. They can't. But I find it fascinating that something growing naturally in my own garden contains nutrients that form part of a bone-friendly diet.
My plum tree has apparently been contributing to Pen Paws Pitstops research without even being asked.
The Freezer Is Getting Some Too
I'm not drying the entire crop.
Some plums are simply being washed, halved and stoned before going into freezer bags.
They can then come out later for stewed fruit, crumbles, pies or whatever else takes my fancy when summer has disappeared and I've forgotten what sunshine looks like.
Freezing some and drying others also means I can deal with the harvest without spending the next fortnight permanently stationed beside an oven.
A Little Less Waste
There is something I really like about preserving food from the garden.
Perhaps it's knowing exactly where it came from. Perhaps it's the satisfaction of not wasting something I've spent months watching grow.
Or perhaps it's simply the thought that, sometime in the middle of winter, I'll be able to pull a bag of my own plums from the freezer and remember standing in the garden wondering what on earth I was going to do with them all.
For now, however, there are still plums on the tree.
Lots of them.
I may need more freezer bags.
Karen xx
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