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:
We’ve been suprised a few times by the results of this year’s Thompson & Morgan seed trials, by the red/pink/purple nasturtiums (below) and what we think may be beefsteak tomatoes but we haven’t been half as surprised as when this sunflower (above) appeared the other day. How good is that? We’re not sure if it’s supposed to be a mini-sunflower or a full-sized one as our plant is quite short, but it could be where we planted it, but what a flower!
And the tomatoes are doing well! We gave them a good watering all week and also a good lot of comfrey liquid this morning. Fingers crossed for some nice beefsteak ones (if they’re not, no bother but it would be nice to have a tomato as big as your hand!)
The spaghetti squash is now romping away (below) but it looks like the slugs are getting to the fruits before they set, damn! We do love this seed trial!
The tuber was bought a good few moons ago from Shannon’s and some years lifted out of the ground for winter and some years just left in. It was taken out last autumn and put in a different location but the move doesn’t seem to have done it any harm!
Big shout to DJ Frederick and all involved in this month’s Free Radio Skybird that will be beaming out over the shortwaves at 7pm UTC tomorrow Sunday 4th August on 6070 khz in the 49 Metre band. Tune in here at 8pm UK time and listen to the programme with the added bonus of the sound of radio waves bouncing off the ionosphere. If you rather listen to a clear audio version we’ve included a link to the recording of what’s going to be broadcast tomorrow which is posted up on DJ Frederick’s soundcloud for a limited period.
The hour of eclectic programming includes Weed’s very own One Deck Pete with “Soul on shortwave” at 23.53 in, Steve with Mini Indie Radio and the first episode of Justin Patrick Moore of Sothismedias’ Radiophonic Laboratory (featuring tunes by Meat Beat Manifesto, Fred Judd G2BCX and more) at 46.17.
Tune in to Radio Free Skybird via the ionosphere or the internet and as DJ Frederick says “Keep your radio free, keep your mind free and keep your spirit free.”
#freeradioskybird #shortwavesnotdead
https://soundcloud.com/djfrederick/free-radio-skybird-4-august-2019#t=0:00
Weeds up to me knees 