Horace Andy & The Sunshot Band – Get Wise/Wiser Dub – Sunshot 7″
A super piece of mid-1970’s reggae by Horace “Sleepy” Andy (produced by the great Phil Pratt) heard on this week’s “Echo Beach” radio show from The Turntable Terrorist. A brilliant sparse dub too featuring some simple piano playing which puts us in mind of Gregory’s Love Is Overdue. This is to be rereleased as part of an LP very soon on Pressure Sounds. Lovely!
Here’s a good book I found in the library on friday called “The Budget Gardening Year” by Stefan Buczacki from the BBC TV Series of the same name from 1993. And to add to it Stefan looks like a (thin) ringer for “Whispering” Bob Harris from The Old Grey (Coat) Whistle Test on the cover too.
It’s well worth getting out of the library for the money saving tips but there’s a few that sound like they could have been taken straight out of Viz, or am I missing the point?
Here’s my favourite daft ones:
Also a big thanks go out to Penny from Golightly Gardens who mentioned on her website about replacement plastic covers for those mini greenhouses you get from garden centres. Mine went for a burton last year when our cat jumped off the roof breaking it’s fall and splitting the plastic in the process and has been sat coverless since then. Last week I got a replacement off ebay for a tenner and it’s now housing tomato seedlings and trays of freshly sowed runner beans and courgettes, and they’ll be more going in as the days go on!
A lovely tune from last century, one to blast out while in the garden on your hands and knees fixing 1970’s crazy paving (who came up with that silly idea?) This was discovered on the excellent Damian Lazarus/Acid Pauli Mix posted up the other week.
Here’s the first of a new feature to appear in weeds, a tribute to the very popular D.I.Y. support of climbing plant/runner beans.
This month’s is an impressive example sent to us by Vic Godard of the great Subway Sect of the one in his dad’s garden. It’s a 16 plus bamboo cane affair with a nice green plastic tie system at the top (and is that hay in the middle?) We love where it’s positioned in the garden with all the spare pots, climbing ivy at the back and the bucket with wood in it. Great stuff!
Vic’s dad Harry grows everything from seed; vegetables, annuals and even palms, how great is that? Also a couple of his Chysanthemums have been shown at the Chelsea show which is no mean feat. My own father was a keen “mum” grower too and I’m sure he used to stick paper bags over the flowers if frost was threatened. We send a big thanks to Vic and his dad and best of luck with Vic’s “30 odd years” compilation!
We welcome all your pictures of your bean supports (or any type of climbing plant) from the trellis type to the more unusual. I’m more of a conventional bamboo cane man myself but do please send your pics to the usual onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com
Today I rediscovered an old episode of Damian Lazarus’ Lazpod (number 16 below) from a couple of years ago but it’s still a listen and a half featuring a great two hour mix from Acid Pauli (Thanks to Marc B. for introducing me to Lazpod.) It’s a chilled and varied two hours and one for the horizontal kaftan wearing greenhouse floor posse, alternatively stick it on while checking through your seed tin!
Talking of Acid Pauli and Damian Lazarus here is a bonkers back-to-back recorded the day after the supposed end of the world last year. Very mad in an untechno stylee.
Thanks to Andy at City University for loaning us this great book from the 1940’s called “Adam the Gardener” who was a regular feature in the Sunday Express way back then (love his get up, especially the felt-hat!) There’s some great gardening tips included in here, some dubious chemicals are used, it’s a bit old fashioned in the sexual equality stakes, but a book worth getting and a reprint can be obtained on ebay for about a fiver so that isn’t bad for the amount of great info enclosed.
The best thing in the book is the very funny forward from Nathaniel Gubbins (a journalist who used to “speak for the British man-in-the-street better than the British man-in-the-street could speak for himself.”)
Loads of great quotes including “You never catch him idling in the tool shed, drinking your tea rations and eating your butter ration” and “even when xmas day falls on a Sunday, adam is still there, pottering about and making himself useful instead of making a beast of himself on christmas cheers, like some gardeners I know,” brilliant! Did Nathaniel used to work at the council I wonder?
I’d love to say a big thank you to Lewisham Gardens and Golightly Gardens for their excellent seed swap in Hither Green last night. I had an idea that it would be a good one when I popped into the great Dig It Nursery in New Cross beforehand as I was a bit early, and the owner Mihaly very kindly donated a carrier bags worth of his happy seed range (how good is that?)
It was a nice friendly atmosphere in the Station Hotel, there were a couple of big tables worth of boxes of various envelopes, seed packets, “dealer” bags, plastic bags and folded paper containing all sorts of weird and wonderful seed.
I’m now suffering from the “why didn’t I take some of those” or “had a pack of those” syndrome. It was great to meet up with like-minded people who also enjoy rummaging through boxes of seeds and writing on and taping up paper bags. I also met Theresa of Kitchen Buddy (who told us about a foraging walk on May 25th which sounds interesting see ourhithergreen.com) who I done a good swap of mangetout for a pack of cinnamon basil seed who I found out is a good friend of our old musical collaborator Hayereyah, talk about a small world! Viva la seed swap!
That yellow thing in the sky came out again today so had ten minutes poking about the garden. It was a bit nippy but I still sowed some lettuce in the cold frame (It’s early I know but it was “leaf” day after 7am in the biodynamic calendar so what have you got to lose, a few seeds?) and knocked off some weeds with the hoe. The big question is, will it soon be spring or have we still got the rest of the real winter to come? Who knows with this global warming lark.
The forced rhubarb is starting to get on it’s way. All you do is stick a bucket (or a bucket filled with straw) over the top to keep it dark and warm, to fool the plant it’s spring and there you go (I used the bucket the christmas tree was in.) In a few weeks it’ll be crumble and custard time I reckon.
And the overwintered garlic is looking good in their OCD uniform rows (below.) There’s overwintered onions in as well and I can’t help pulling up the immature ones and using as spring onions as they weren’t expensive at all to buy as seed onions so I got a big old bag’s worth.
Late last year I had a couple of cabbage looking plants that I had forgotten what they were, until some mates of mine said “it could be purple sprouting broccoli as that takes ages to mature” and they were right. Shouldn’t be too long before it’s ready to pick, but it’s taken a while though. I must remember to pick them before they fully flower or that’s it!
Weeds up to me knees 