Bessie Banks – Don’t You Worry Baby The Best Is Yet To Come
What a tune! Heard on this week’s episode of “the gardening show like no other” The Dirt on Radio Fab International (22nd June on listen again.) Some great stuff on there this week as per including Mark Ridsdill Smith of the excellent Vertical Veg who picked this track and who is big into growing food in containers.
Mark mentioned some great tips like using those black plastic buckets that get chucked outside Florist’s as containers to grow in, he advocates wormeries (big up the brandling worm!) and says on his website, “there is no reason why most of our fresh salads, herbs, fruit and vegetables cannot be grown on our streets, window sills, balconies and back yards.” Too right! Have a look at his website as it’s great stuff. Who needs a blimmin’ garden!
A nice super-fast Sizzla remix from many moons ago by Bronx Dogs (personally, I play the dub at 33 and pitch it up) but still a tune! Lovely speeded up tubby “squawky” high pass filterisms in the mix too. Sounds fast the first time you hear it, but after a few plays it makes sense!The tune does sum up tonight well though, I’d just finished watering the garden and low and behold the heavens opened! Here’s a pic mid-shower (above.) Not too much colour in the back at the moment just shades of green but it won’t be long until that starts changing. Notice the fence has now been completely painted, that didn’t take too long to finish did it? Only 2 years!
I’ve also stuck in an old photo (below) of what the garden was like when we moved in six years ago. Talk about nervous breakdown material, bonkers was not the word!
Below: An old sink, the plastic greenhouse back in business after the £10 replacement cover (Ta Penny Golightly for sparking the idea!), a sunflower, tomato and a dahlia in some reused ready mix cement tubs and just in shot, one of those blue mushroom trays. Give it up for the (multi-purpose) plastic mushroom tray!
A shout to Mihaly at Dig This Nursery for telling me about this mad watering device. An Olla used in the garden is a terracotta vessel buried in the ground for keeping plants well irrigated without wasting water. More info on the humble Olla here. Pics taken from the Oyana website who produce them.
They’ve got some Ollas in the window boxes on The Hobgoblin next door to the nursery with some well healthy looking plants in them and Mihaly told me that they haven’t been watered for a couple of weeks. No idea how much they cost but it’s an ingenious idea. Invented by the chinese many moons ago I was told!
Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) – Tamla Motown
****Update****
I’ve just had an email from Guillermo from Oyana:
“The Ollas I am producing now will all have glazed tops. The reason for this is because they lose even less water as the water doesn’t evaporate through the neck. Also, they won’t have any stains of fungi or mould growing which may happen if not glazed.”
“Dig this Nursery prices of glazed top ollas are: £9 for small and £15 for the big one and It will be London’s first stockist.”
A big shout to our old friend Ben M for getting in touch with a pic of some nice bike rack-style recycling using one of those plastic mushroom trays mentioned in the “Left out for the binmen, OK” post last month. The bike is carrying some healthy plants on their way to his well tidy allotment in Leyton (below). I wish my garden was as weed free as that! Clever use of a plastic tray, ta Ben. Please send us your pics showing your usage of a mushroom plastic tray to onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com
Shabba Ranks – Big Time – Greatest Creation rhythm
I found out the other day there was a tomato with the great name of Reggae Roma (aka the humble italian plum tomato that you get in tins in the supermarket.) I mean with a name like that, we had to grow one here! There was only one place that would know about getting them and that’s Dig This Nursery in New Cross (a garden centre, an organic food shop with a second-hand record shop in the back, what more do you want!) It’s my nearest tomato specialist and has over 90 odd varieties of tomatoes! Yes, 90+ varieties!
Tonight I popped in after work and a big thanks goes to Mihaly for sorting us out with a couple of roma plants. He’s one person who knows a thing or two about tomatoes if anyone does and knows a bit about growing them (some info here.)
The plants will be put in the ground first thing in the morning, in a hole filled with with a couple of ripped up comfrey leaves and then well watered to give the roots a healthy start.
We love the name here (it’s supposedly because the hanging fruits look like dreadlocks, huh?), what next, a cabbage named “trap”, a strain of dub-step carrots and a variety of onions that are “balearic”? Get on one matey!
Here’s the first harvest of the spuds I planted “well early” under that terrarium thing I found in the street last year. As far as I can remember, these were “Swift” and the seed potatoes were from Shannons, chitted in an old egg box, planted under protection and tonight served with some Salmon. It’s good this gardening lark innit? Don’t worry that tinge of green (green spuds are not good!) on the little one in the left hand corner was cut off before eating!
Major Lazer (ft. Amber of the Dirty Projectors) – Get Free
A lovely old tune played to death by the Rt Hon David Rodigan. A bit of the chilled to the gills tunage rather than the usual “mad as” Major Lazer gear but bonkers in it’s own way! Dedicated to the International Space Station that was supposed to be visible in London tonight for the last time until a few weeks time. Did I see it? No.
Cheers to A Robbins for letting us know of this multi-media installation in SE16 plus a free event on Saturday in Southwark Park. It says in the blurb about even having a facsimile of a living room set up for a Blues Dance, at the end of the 1950s. Great stuff!
More about the event here and whereabouts of the location here.
Cheers to Simon, Paul and Ricky at The Dirt at Radio Fab International for having us on their “gardening show like no other” tonight and for playing Madtone’s “Compost your mind” at the start of the programme. Check out The Dirt on play again here (Go to The Dirt 15th June 2014) Madtones Compost Your Mind is at 1.36 mins, the interview is at 26 mins and the brilliant Idiot Gardener going off on one (in a very funny episode) at 43 mins. Listen in and have a laugh!
Johnny Clarke – Roots Natty Congo b/w A Roots Version (Attack)
Big up Joey Jay (brother of Norman) for playing this track on his Kiss FM Roots Reggae Show many moons ago, another production from the great Bunny “Striker” Lee. If “I am the gorgon” is showing at a cinema near you, do go as you won’t be disappointed (and you will laugh many times while watching it!)
Earlier today I watched a brilliant film about the great Bunny “Striker” Lee, “I am the Gorgan” at the BFI by Diggory Kenrick, I won’t say too much as it’ll give the game away but it’s possibly one of the best reggae history films I’ve seen. Some good clips, great animation and spot on with the facts!
Later on in the short Q&A session upstairs at the BFI, DJ Tony Williams who used to present the reggae show on BBC Radio London confirmed that it was a great representation of reggae history of the 1960’s/70’s. It even featured a gardening related piece, a Lime tree in Bunny Lee’s yard which grew like billy-ho once his mum named it “Bunny” after her son. Perhaps we should all start naming our plants and then watch them grow!
A couple of times in the film it featured a clip of Daddy U-Roy live on King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi from early 1975. The quality is something to be desired but it’s quality all the same. Downloadable here.
Before the Bunny Lee feature there were a couple of films from Molly Dineen, one a short, a tribute to Sugar Lincoln Minott and the next, an excellent film from 1981 called Sound Business featuring Lloydie Coxone (who produced “caught you in a lie” and of the Coxsone sound system) and the Young Lion Sound from South London. It was a corker and a historical document of those times. It featured a dance in Brixton Town Hall where if it happened today, jobsworth council health and safety officials (with clipboards) would have closed it down within seconds. A piece of UK reggae history!
Weeds up to me knees 