Oh my lord! The Thompson and Morgan seed trial tomatoes are as large as a medium sized eating apple in some cases and they are getting riper by the day. We’ve done the beef/beefsteak variety possibly only once before but with the results on the three plants we’ve got we’ll certainly be doing some more. It was just a case of regular watering and a comfrey feed once a week if we remembered, nowt else. And look at the results!
Here’s the studio recording of this month’s Free Radio Skybird which will be transmitted on shortwave via www.channel292.de this Sunday 1st September at 1900 utc (8pm UK time). If you want to hear it via the ionosphere get those shortwave radios tuned in to 6070 khz or use the online software defined radio via channel 292 here.
https://soundcloud.com/djfrederick/free-radio-skybird-1-september-2019
The hour long broadcast features Justin Patrick Moore’s Radiophonic Laboratory at 6.57 and Steve with Mini-indie radio at 44.34. Our very own One Deck Pete presents the Skybird Mailbag at 22.00 and also The Soothing sounds of shortwave mix at 34.09. The mix features tracks by About: Forest, Sonmi451, Adam Maalouf and Advait. Big thanks to DJ Frederick for having us on board!
Here’s a quick visual update on the Thompson & Morgan seed trials. The tomatoes are looking more like beefsteak ones every day and look at the size of them!
The sunflowers are also doing well too! We love the surprises we’ve had with the trials and it shouldn’t be too long now before we’re informed about the actuals names/varieties of the plants. We’re still waiting on the spaghetti squash to ripen and we’ve a couple of lettuces on the way too. We love the trails we do!
Watering the garden at the ungodly hour of 8.15 this morning we were treated to the sight of the excellent Danish Dwarf Poppy purchased from ebay earlier this year. This poppy was sown in the usual Weeds way of sowing flowers that is, thrown randomly anywhere in the garden and duly forgotten about. Months later they usually come back to suprise us! We love poppies here at Weeds!
DJ Frederick’s Free Radio Skybird returns to the shortwaves on Sunday September 1st 2019 via http://www.channel292.de/ on 6070 kHz at 1900 UTC (8pm UK time).
With a mixture of features and music, the hour transmission will include One Deck Pete’s “Soothing sound of shortwave”, Steve with Mini indie radio and Justin Patrick Moore from Sothismedias with another episode of the Radiophonic Laboratory.
Last month we had listeners in New Zealand, Northern Canada and Italy (QSL and soundclip here) to name but a few places. Come on, what’s better than listening to a radio broadcast with audio that has fading, co-channel interference and sounds like it had a journey via the ionosphere rather than something that’s been streamed in crisp dolby stereo? Who said shortwave radio is dead? #freeradioskybird #shortwavesnotdead #madtone
We don’t usually give it large regarding what we’ve done in the garden but with Sunday’s great weather (granted it was on and off but when it was “on” it was great) we made a bit of progress with a lot of outstanding jobs and we’re well chuffed!
The bed on the right-hand side had gone out of control, the comfrey was choking everything (including the dahlias, red hot poker and even the rosemary) and the path was fast disappearing. On the pic above after the hard graft you can now see a couple of the sunflowers, one being nearly 7ft high! We’re suckers for those adverts in E-bay that say “Giant skyscraper Sunflowers that will reach 20 ft at least, as grown in Jack and the Beanstalk” and that sort of thing.
Even the anarchy that is the veg bed at the bottom of the garden was tidied up (a bit). This is it post hoeing and de-weeded. There’s broad beans, dwarf french beans, runner beans, beetroot and even a courgette.
We’ve even had a harvest, the above is some spuds we got from Shannon’s earlier this year. We’ve been chomping at the bit to dig them up and this is the first time a bit of patience has paid off (they are a decent size for once). The cherry tomatoes we got from them too from seed are starting to ripen too and the plants are just not stopping so a bit of nipping out of the top had to be done. It’s good this gardening lark (when it goes well!)
Cheers to Justin Patrick Moore for giving us the heads up a few months ago that Hainbach was looking for samples to use on a forthcoming album. We at Weeds are very happy to report that Hainbach utilised a 12 second sample from Madtone to make a lovely track called Decaying Tides on his new release Old Suns. Cheers again Justin & a big thanks to Mr Hainbach. #shortwavesnotdead #hainbach #madtone
Here’s a lovely piece of ambience from about : forest off their Bandcamp release The Land of Three Moons on Dewtone Recordings out of Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s called Calling Light and if all goes well will find itself on a forthcoming mix for Free Radio Skybird. A track to drift off to and dream about a return of some good gardening weather!
A big thanks to our long-time friend Mark Platts for sending us some pics of his novel gardening idea. He painted up some found-in-the-street old wheelbarrow’s and filled one with an alpine display and in his own words “the other is empty and just standing by watching at the moment”. That’s a great idea Mark, so we’re going to keep them peeled for those thrown out wheelbarrows down these parts!
Cheers for the other pics of the garden Mark. We’re loving your raised bed veg patch and greenhouse (that look like there’s peppers and tomatoes in there).
And we love the rhubarb rescued from some wasteland that’s gone a bit mad in the raised bed! Brilliant Mark, keep them pics coming! 
We know it’s only been a few days since the last pics of the Thompson & Morgan seed trials have been posted, but look what’s happened in that short time. The tomatoes have moved on a bit and all of the plants are doing well. We keep them regularly watered and feed comfrey liquid to them on a weekly basis and those fruits are now starting to swell!
And yes we’ve had problems with cheeky daytime slugs and the spaghetti squash (see post here) but for some reason they’ve missed this one!
And as for the sunflower, there’s more buds forming! It’s a value for money plant if you’re going to be buying some when they are released next year. Our specimens may be a bit on the small side but we’re not complaining! More power to the (vertically challenged) sunflower!
And thanks to whosampled:
Weeds up to me knees 