Bottom end veg and garden fetes

Posted on June 29, 2014 by onedeckpete

I’ve just spent an hour between showers weeding the veg bed at the end of the garden, it’s ideal for lettuces, spinach etc as it doesn’t get full sun all day so they tend not to “bolt” (go to seed quickly). Apart from the lettuce and spinach, there’s a couple of cabbages, climbing french beans, one purple sprouting broccoli, early spuds (that are nearly ready to dig up) beetroot and a pink tree stump (don’t ask!) Also in shot, a couple of dalek compost bins procured off the council, a wheelbarrow which was left out on a local street with a note saying “take me” on it, the wormery (the white bucket) and the comfrey liquid fermenting in a bucket with a council garden waste bag on top filtering out the toxic gasses.

Peter Tosh – Johnny B Goode

At the same time down the road the local church fete was in progress. I knew it was on because earlier I popped to the shops and saw local firefighters decked out in face paint (imagine them turning out like that to a shout!) showing kids around their appliance and a bouncy castle was in full swing. While I was tending to the veg patch a RnB band started up with the amps cranked up really high (much to the disgust of the neighbours). They banged out “Route 66,” “Johnny B Goode” and a cover of The Subways “Be my Rock n Roll Queen” with lots of added shouts, iggy pop-isms and yelps which made me laugh while I pulled out weeds and filled in the gaps with more sowings. Mid-set the lead singer read out the results to the Tombola (“The star prize of £200 goes to…”) and then into a another rocking version of “Johnny B Goode”. Brilliant! What do you reckon the vicar thinks to all this rock n roll behaviour? “Jolly good” I hope is her reply.

The best dressed chicken in town

Posted on June 28, 2014 by onedeckpete

Notis & Iba Mahr – Diamond Sox Movie

One for a Saturday evening, the excellent promo movie for Notis & Iba Mahr’s new single Diamond Sox which even has a little bit of gardening interest in it (leaves being raked up, a never ending task come the autumn when I worked for the council!)

It’s a tune celebrating old time fashion wear featuring the great Max Romeo in a cameo role. Big shout to David Rodigan for tipping us off about this one on his show the other week. Some lovely suede boot (a nice pair of Clarks by the way) cleaning techniques on show here (in an old school toothbrush style, brushing over a boiling kettle with a hard wire brush works wonders too!)

Max Romeo – Sipple Out Deh – Upsetter

I’ve got the side bed blues…

Posted on June 28, 2014 by onedeckpete

Augustus Pablo – Thunder Clap/ Ken Boothe – Ain’t No Sunshine

In the video above there’s a scene from a pub called The Enterprise which I’m convinced was the one in Camberwell where in the 1980’s I had my first “sunday afternoon stop back” to a soundtrack of old reggae, classic soul and clinking beer glasses plus a free plate of chicken, rice and peas from the generous landlord Louis when everyone else was going home to their sunday roast. In the good old days London pubs used to close at 2.30 then reopen at 7, bonkers!

Talking of which, the weather’s also been bonkers today, while I’m writing this, it’s tipping it down with added thunder and lightning. Yet at just gone 9 this morning the sun was blazing, so a bit of early “tipping about” was in order so I tidied up the beds down the left hand side of the garden. This can you believe was once where a couple of greenhouses stood before one of the previous owners smashed them up. Criminal isn’t it? I’d love a greenhouse (with heating, hi-fi and disco lighting of course!)The beds nearest the house contain peas, one solitary cabbage, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, beetroot and carrots. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the beds, (I mean just one solitary cabbage!) some rows go north to south and some go east to west. The raised bed to the side of them (made from a couple of scaffolding boards found in a skip) contain runner beans and raspberries (I was given a bag of roots with shoots that a friend of mine was going to chuck out when he was thinning out his raspberry patch on his allotment.) The bed furthest away has a dwarf plum tree, three tomato plants, a couple of courgettes, a pumpkin which is now starting to wander, some borage for the bees to the side and a couple of houseplants that are having a “summer break” in the terrarium/fishbowl thing in the middle. Pick and mix jazz-gardening or what? Talking of tomatoes, I heard a great tip on last week’s episode of The Dirt, don’t forget to give your tomato flowers a light shake to help the pollen on it’s way. Good eh?

Boards Of Canada – Saturday Sun – Warp

When the echo chamber dishes the dirt

Posted on June 26, 2014 by onedeckpete

Big shout to our good friends Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss for the rebroadcast of “In The Garden Of Dub” part 1 of a mix for all dub gardeners, on this week’s Echo Chamber on KFAI. Before the mix is a rerub of my appearance on The Dirt the other week. Cheers for airing that!

Also on the show there’s some great new music from Phil Harmony, Nate Wize, Alpha Steppa, and more… Download it here.

Download the updated “In The Garden Of Dub Part 1 & Part 2” (dedicated to the late Peter Sellers aka Chauncey Gardner) here:

The best veg is yet to come (vertically)

Posted on June 25, 2014 by onedeckpete

Bessie Banks – Don’t You Worry Baby The Best Is Yet To Come

What a tune! Heard on this week’s episode of “the gardening show like no other” The Dirt on Radio Fab International (22nd June on listen again.) Some great stuff on there this week as per including Mark Ridsdill Smith of the excellent Vertical Veg who picked this track and who is big into growing food in containers.

Mark mentioned some great tips like using those black plastic buckets that get chucked outside Florist’s as containers to grow in, he advocates wormeries (big up the brandling worm!) and says on his website, “there is no reason why most of our fresh salads, herbs, fruit and vegetables cannot be grown on our streets, window sills, balconies and back yards.” Too right! Have a look at his website as it’s great stuff. Who needs a blimmin’ garden!

Dub like shower

Posted on June 23, 2014 by onedeckpete

Sizzla – Rain Showers (Bronx Dogs Dub Mix)

A nice super-fast Sizzla remix from many moons ago by Bronx Dogs (personally, I play the dub at 33 and pitch it up) but still a tune! Lovely speeded up tubby “squawky” high pass filterisms in the mix too. Sounds fast the first time you hear it, but after a few plays it makes sense!The tune does sum up tonight well though, I’d just finished watering the garden and low and behold the heavens opened! Here’s a pic mid-shower (above.) Not too much colour in the back at the moment just shades of green but it won’t be long until that starts changing. Notice the fence has now been completely painted, that didn’t take too long to finish did it? Only 2 years!

I’ve also stuck in an old photo (below) of what the garden was like when we moved in six years ago. Talk about nervous breakdown material, bonkers was not the word!

Below: An old sink, the plastic greenhouse back in business after the £10 replacement cover (Ta Penny Golightly for sparking the idea!), a sunflower, tomato and a dahlia in some reused ready mix cement tubs and just in shot, one of those blue mushroom trays. Give it up for the (multi-purpose) plastic mushroom tray!

Sizzla – Rain Showers (Bronx Dogs Vocal Mix)

Olla, olla, olla. Oi, oi oi!

Posted on June 22, 2014 by onedeckpete

A shout to Mihaly at Dig This Nursery for telling me about this mad watering device. An Olla used in the garden is a terracotta vessel buried in the ground for keeping plants well irrigated without wasting water. More info on the humble Olla here. Pics taken from the Oyana website who produce them.

They’ve got some Ollas in the window boxes on The Hobgoblin next door to the nursery with some well healthy looking plants in them and Mihaly told me that they haven’t been watered for a couple of weeks. No idea how much they cost but it’s an ingenious idea. Invented by the chinese many moons ago I was told!

Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) – Tamla Motown

****Update****

I’ve just had an email from Guillermo from Oyana:
“The Ollas I am producing now will all have glazed tops. The reason for this is because they lose even less water as the water doesn’t evaporate through the neck. Also, they won’t have any stains of fungi or mould growing which may happen if not glazed.”

“Dig this Nursery prices of glazed top ollas are: £9 for small and £15 for the big one and It will be London’s first stockist.”

Brilliant stuff! Thanks for getting in touch!

Shabba on a pushbike, OK*

Posted on June 21, 2014 by onedeckpete

*Sung to Crass’ “Banned from the Roxy”

A big shout to our old friend Ben M for getting in touch with a pic of some nice bike rack-style recycling using one of those plastic mushroom trays mentioned in the “Left out for the binmen, OK” post last month. The bike is carrying some healthy plants on their way to his well tidy allotment in Leyton (below). I wish my garden was as weed free as that! Clever use of a plastic tray, ta Ben. Please send us your pics showing your usage of a mushroom plastic tray to onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com

Shabba Ranks – Big Time – Greatest Creation rhythm

A tomato called shabba

Posted on June 20, 2014 by onedeckpete

I found out the other day there was a tomato with the great name of Reggae Roma (aka the humble italian plum tomato that you get in tins in the supermarket.) I mean with a name like that, we had to grow one here! There was only one place that would know about getting them and that’s Dig This Nursery in New Cross (a garden centre, an organic food shop with a second-hand record shop in the back, what more do you want!) It’s my nearest tomato specialist and has over 90 odd varieties of tomatoes! Yes, 90+ varieties!

Tonight I popped in after work and a big thanks goes to Mihaly for sorting us out with a couple of roma plants. He’s one person who knows a thing or two about tomatoes if anyone does and knows a bit about growing them (some info here.)

The plants will be put in the ground first thing in the morning, in a hole filled with with a couple of ripped up comfrey leaves and then well watered to give the roots a healthy start.

We love the name here (it’s supposedly because the hanging fruits look like dreadlocks, huh?), what next, a cabbage named “trap”, a strain of dub-step carrots and a variety of onions that are “balearic”? Get on one matey!

DJ Algoriddim – Leaving Rome Version Excursion

(Early) spud we like

Posted on June 19, 2014 by onedeckpete

Here’s the first harvest of the spuds I planted “well early” under that terrarium thing I found in the street last year. As far as I can remember, these were “Swift” and the seed potatoes were from Shannons, chitted in an old egg box, planted under protection and tonight served with some Salmon. It’s good this gardening lark innit? Don’t worry that tinge of green (green spuds are not good!) on the little one in the left hand corner was cut off before eating!

Early B – History of Jamaica – Moa Anbessa

Weeds up to me knees

Madtone, gardening and life

Monthly Archives: June 2014