Monthly Archives: April 2024

From our north London correspondent

Posted on by
2

A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of how her garden is getting on now that we are on the cusp of spring. The bluebells (above) look great and the strawberrries (below) are now starting to flower.

We don’t use nets on our strawberries here as we only have a few plants dotted about but it is a great thing to keep the birds and other fruit eating pests off them. Apart from a little big of slug damage to a dahlia in her garden, things are looking are looking good. Great to hear that the peonies in the garden are doing well too. We’ve got one that was overshadowed by a shrub nearby so we gave the offending shrub a good haircut and because of having more light getting to it, the peony is doing much better now.

There’s some good stuff happening indoors as well which is very interesting. The cosmos seedlings we featured here a fortnight ago are coming on a treat!

If you remember, Debby just used the whole dead heads from last year’s plant that were just scattered and covered with compost and the seeds weren’t initially separated. They are looking great! Saving your own plant’s seeds are a great way of gardening on an economical tip.

Also Debby told us “The rudbeckia has germinated although it is still tiny” and “the 12 tomatoes are gradually growing very slowly”. Our tomatoes are the same and have even thought to start another batch off as they are so slow. Usually at this time of year we have a few very leggy tomato plants ready to go out but then again we didn’t start them just after Christmas as we usually are tempted to do.

Thanks for the pictures Debby and we look forward to seeing how things progres

Weather-wise, not a bad weekend

Posted on by
Reply

The weather forecast was correct for the weekend, it was nice on Saturday and today wasn’t as hot but still not too bad. Our flymo has been on the blink of late, so until we when we get around to giving it a look and/or until we get a new one we’re going for a Suedehead look lawn-wise for the time being.

We’re still not taking any risks putting those tender plants out, the spuds are coming up and we’ve got sweet peas in the cold frame but weather-wise you never know what’s around the corner and give it a couple of weeks we should be out of the possible frost zone, fingers crossed.

Our friends in Kyiv

Posted on by
4

A big thanks as always to our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some more excellent pictures. The first is his Dill seedlings (above) that look like they’re doing very well.

Wlad also wrote of the other plants he started off as well “The garlic also remained small for a long time, but then simply dried out” and his potato plant is growing but seems to have stood still for a while (pics above).

It’s funny as we’re having problems on some of the seedlings on our windowsill too, we’ve got some chilli and tomato seedlings and they are not doing much else after growing their seed leaves and one set of a normal leaf. There looks like there’s some sort of greenfly about but they don’t seem to be bothering any of the other sunflower seedlings or sweet peas. Any ideas?

As for his Wlad’s good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD) his banana is doing very well! It looks well healthy and so does his date palm (above). Great stuff!

We always think of Sergiy’s plant when we pass the banana plant that is in a front garden in SE23. We have no idea if bananas are supposed to survive the british weather but this one seems to! Cheers again to Wlad and Sergiy for the pics and we look forward to seeing more.

A fine Friday morning tune (even though the weather isn’t)

Posted on by
2

It’s supposedly going to be a sunny weekend so we may be going out in the garden and even sticking those indoor sowed vegetable plants out to harden them off so they get used to the weather they’ll be eventually facing outside. Take them out when it starts to warm up in the morning and bring them in when it starts getting cold.

To cheer us up we’re listening to a wonderful tune called Promised Land from The Nairobi Sisters (Terrie Nairobi and Judy Mowatt). It’s a different slice of reggae and it’s the version which is the tune (the one on the Gayfeet pressing is in our opinion a slighty better mix to the Flames release as there’s more of the killer hand drums). We only found out recently the tunes has been sampled by a few people including A Tribe Called Quest for “Whateva Will Be”. A tune for a Friday!

The Flames release is now available again thanks to the excellent Death Is Not The End bandcamp that has a wealth of great stuff to search through.

We’ll throw in the scratches for free

Posted on by
1

We love a seven inch single here at Weeds and were going through some old mixes and found this one called One Deck Pete presents The Skybird Singles Club. It’s from a shortwave broadcast of Radio Skybird from August 2023 and thought it would be good to post it up here. We hope there’s a couple you haven’t heard before. Here’s the tracklistings:

Rotary Connection – Like a rolling stone
Weekend – The view from her room
Earl Curry – One whole year baby
Felice Taylor – I feel love comin’ on
Toby Nelson – You don’t need me

Spring has spung?

Posted on by
1

We’re supposed going to be seeing highs of 19°C today in SE23 with a bit of a high wind and drizzle, madness! Looking around the garden this morning (to the beautiful audio background of swearing scaffolders working on the estate behind the bottom of our garden), it looks like sprung may have really sprung this time. Those seed spuds we put under the bin bags the other week (above) are starting to sprout (we had to lift the plastic to find the sprouts at first and give them some guidance) and there’s progress in the ones under the window frame even from a couple of days ago (below).

And meanwhile in Portland, Maine …

Thanks to our good radio/music friend Justin Patrick Moore for passing on a photo from his cousin Joseph taken in Portland on Thursday. Crazy weather indeed!

And here’s another in our series of Maunsell Seafort influenced music, a tune from Magic Panda out of Norfolk.

Watch your eyes

Posted on by
5

Sadly we in Europe won’t be able to see the forthcoming eclipse next Monday but here’s the next best thing, KSOL – The Eclipse Edition from The Imaginary Stations crew. It’s a show that will bring you an eclipse experience without looking up skywards.

Treat yourself to some path of totality classics from DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore over the hour and at 16.04 minutes in is a 15 minute mix from One Deck Pete with “Can you seen Baily’s Beads?”.
Tracklistings:
A Man called Adam – Moon
Cosmos – Summer in space (Mark’s Harmonic 33 mix)
Cedric Im Brooks – Blackness of Darkness
Cornell Campbell – Stars
Do remember to wear eye protection when you listen to this show!

Here’s the great trailer for KSOL:

And a treat from the great DJ Algoriddim on the Stars rhythm:

Seed Spuds and Maunsell Sea Forts

Posted on by
Reply

This device above may not the most sophisticated of gardening devices but that old window frame found on a skip many moons ago perched on some bricks is working well as a cold frame.

A few weeks ago we thought we’d chance it with a couple of seed spuds under it and today noticed that they are starting to show through. We put a liitle bit of soil around them (a mini version of earthing up so to speak) just in case a frost decides to show itself. Hopefully in a few weeks we should be in a frost free zone and we’ll take the protection off for good, but until then…

Soundtrack to this post: Big shout to Thomas from the excellent Explorations in Dub for sending us this track out of Poland called Streams of bubbling dub from Muflon Dub Soundsystem and a nice chilled bit of dub it is.

 

And through the Explorations in Dub blog here we found this great Maunsell Tower dub related track from Banco de Gaia called My Little Country (Rob Bong’s Roughs Tower Dub). Big shout to all the Sealand crew! We do love a seafort here and we are a bit partial to dub too so it’s a winning combination. Cheers again Thomas.

Spring must be here!

Posted on by
4

Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.

Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.

We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
So cheers Mike and Julia for sending in the pictures of your great garden and do let us know how things are going later this season!