Work in progress - Garden Update

It’s been a busy few weeks and we're starting to get the garden ready for spring planting; M made some raised beds a week or so ago from some (found) timbers - i.e. we raided the neighbours skip and rescued some old shelves and bits of wood - which he made into two raised beds, and he also wove a beautiful support frame - for tomatoes and beans - from some bamboo we had left over from last year. 

Before

After

I have quite an ambitious list of vegetables to seed this year, but we’re really excited about getting some staples from this year’s crop. We plan on growing potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, tomatoes as well as courgette, beetroot, lettuce, sweet peppers, strawberries, raspberries, peas and beans. I’ve started mapping out my seedling planting plan, and so far, I've seeded onions – in seed trays on the windowsill in the kitchen –sweet orange peppers, lettuce and I planted garlic cloves - from organic (already sprouted, handy!) garlic from our local greengrocer - and I have a couple of potatoes “chitting” on the windowsill in the kitchen, all looking good so far!

Small glasshouse, which has now been dismantled to add more space, alongside new raised bed - old Cheyenne bush pumpkin patch

Basic garden plan - still working out where everything is going to go!

garlic, lettuce and onions

Dual purpose (up-cycled) shelf - great for hanging saucepans and very handy for stating off sweet orange pepper seeds

Up-cycled/rescued shelves - remade into a raised box for strawberries/herbs

Unfortunately, as the kitty has been making good use of the garden beds over the winter, we will have to dig out the top layer of soil, replace it with topsoil, dig in some well rotted manure and compost and then immediately cover the beds with netting to stop her digging it up again *sigh

It’s been such a mild winter so far (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed it!) but I can’t wait for Spring to get sprung, I’m ready for some seedlings and blossoms now!

Oven Dried Yellow Cherry Tomatoes

 This is the first time I tried oven drying tomatoes and it was so easy!

You will need

Tomatoes – I used yellow cherry tomatoes

Sea salt

Thyme – either fresh and finely chopped or dried

Preheat oven to 100 C

Slice cherry tomatoes in half and arrange on a wire rack on a baking tray skin side down.

Sprinkle each half tomato with salt and leave a few minutes so the salt starts to draw out some of the moisture.

Add a small sprinkle of thyme to each tomato half

Pop into the oven and leave for about 3-4 hours

The cherry tomatoes had shrunk down to almost large current size when I took them from the oven and had such a tangy tomato taste.

I put half of the tomatoes into a small plastic container and froze them and I let the other half cool and mixed them into a jar with very (very) finely chopped garlic and a good glug of olive oil. 

They will keep in the fridge in oil for about 4 days, but should not be stored like that any longer. The best way to store your dried tomatoes is to freeze them, otherwise you could risk botulinum toxin developing!

I had had some of the dried tomatoes in olive oil and garlic with a bagel smothered in cream cheese and smoked salmon, but unfortunately don’t have a photo as I ate it too quickly...