A big shout to our good friend Phil Harmony in Berlin who produces the excellent dub night radio show. Last year we featured his great balcony garden in our “dub gardeners of the world unite” feature here.
This winter Phil brought in his Jolokia Chocolate Chilli plant and here’s a couple of pics of the state of play at the moment. I always thought Chillies were annuals but it was only last year when I was in Shannon’s Garden Centre and they showed us a couple of plants they kept indoors over the winter that I found out they’re short-lived perennials given the right conditions. Over the winter months the plant goes into hibernation mode and can look like it’s a goner but come the spring once the weather improves, the plant will begin to sprout new growth. There’s some great information about overwintering Chilli plants on the Dartmoor Chilli Farm website here and it mentions there that they’ve had good success overwintering the Jolokia variety.
Thanks to Phil for picking an excellent tune to accompany the pictures from Kabaka Pyramid ft. Protoje called Warrior. Tune!
Nice one Phil, do send us some more pics once the plant gets going.
A big thanks to Lewisham Gardens and Golightly Gardens for organising the great seed swap in Deptford yesterday. I got nearly everything from my wants list and there were loads of great seeds available. These events are always good for meeting fellow gardeners, getting growing advice and for picking up those odd varieties of seeds.
I got sunflowers, sweet peas, hollyhocks, poppies, foxgloves and gaillardia in the flower line. I wasn’t looking for too much veg as I’m happily sorted for those after getting a bargain of mixed veg seeds on ebay the other month.
I did get a couple of varieties of basil (bush and sweet genovese), french beans and a beefsteak tomato called Marmande which looked like it could be an extra from that silly 70’s film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.I was on my way out when I met a lovely chap who was looking for the seed swap who worked for Lewisham council. He told me later after a long shift at the council all he wants to do is spend the rest of his day up his allotment. Great stuff! Back in the seedswap he shared a wide variety of seeds (and I don’t even think he wanted anything in return as far as I can remember) and I got a tomato called Black Krim from Russia!
When I finally left I visited the new and improved Dig This Nursery in Clifton Rise, New Cross after being ribbed by Mihaly (who was doing a talk at the seed swap about growing veg in small spaces) for not being up to speed about knowing that their shop has moved. Sometimes I find it hard enough to keep up with what’s going in me own small world let alone outside it! They’ve even opened a new shop in Rye Lane in the parish of Peckham too.
In the New Cross shop is a second hand record section where I flicked through some old reggae singles (£3 each) where they had a copy of the late great Nicky Thomas tune Love of the Common People (to hear the original jamaican version without the strings click here). On the B side of that well-known single is the tune below which I was reminded about by The Rhythm Doctor when he span it at one of our events at Limewharf last year.
And thanks to the excellent Dancecrasher website (from The Tighten Up Crew) here’s the vocal version of the above from Slim Smith. Well I never knew that!
A big shout to our good friend Phil Harmony in Berlin who produces the excellent dub night radio show. Last year we featured his great balcony garden in our “dub gardeners of the world unite” feature here.
There’s some great information about overwintering Chilli plants on the Dartmoor Chilli Farm website here and it mentions there that they’ve had good success overwintering the Jolokia variety.
Weeds up to me knees 