WNTR in dub

This weekend just gone saw the broadcast of WNTR by Imaginary Stations on Shortwave Gold. As they said on SWLing Post: “Winter vibes abound as per with the show, and the temperature outside may only a few degrees, but we will be transmitting as much winter warmth as we can!” Enjoy the warm vibes of WNTR.

At 43.19 in is One Deck Pete presents a festive dubwise mix.
Here’s the tracklistings:
Kohei Yoshii – Cold Ice Dub
Forgotten employee – The backroom tapes – A Merry KMART Christmas (excerpt)
Mal – Powder Snow dub
Michael Powell – Christmas Dub

In a blink of an eye

It was bitterly cold here this morning at around the minus 2°C mark. We had a couple of bags of bark mulch delivered from B&Q, which the delivery blokes left by the back gate. From there, we dragged them down the garden, sliced the bags open with a pair of scissors, and topped up the garden path with a flinging of a rake to level it all out.

We were only out there for ten minutes at the most but we still came in chilled to the bone. Little and often but perhaps a little less often in this type of weather. Anyone else “braved” the weather today?

It pays not to be too keen

This week we read a facebook post from Real Seeds about why it’s best not to rush into starting seeds off too early, even though some chillies do benefit from an early start. The main point was that you usually end up with leggy plants far too soon, with nowhere to put them. As they said: “Resist, unless you have ample heated space and use grow lights.”

We have been in this position a few times before. We start the year being very keen and then in March end up with leggy tomato plants sitting on the windowsill (above). Seeing that the frost down here can be as late as mid April that ain’t much cop. To get a bit of an idea of when your last frost could be, stick your postcode into lastfrostdate.co.uk here. This is what we got:

We are going to resist for the time being, and have ordered some seed compost and in a couple of weeks time will get the heated seed tray out and start off some chillies, but until then we will do little and often in the garden if the weather allows. We got two big bags of multi purpose compost today and filled a couple of raised beds just before the sun went down. Total time in the garden, ten minutes. It’s a start!

It may be some while before we can get back out there again as there’s a cold spell coming. To cheer ourselves up we can always open up the seed tin and read the back of seed packets. Here’s a few nice packs we got for Christmas (below). Better (weather) will come!