It’s sweltering and it’s not even 12 noon yet! We’ve got KFAI on and tuned into the Echo Chamber and listening to the last few tunes of the programme played by DJ Baby Swiss AKA CAPNCOZY (who co-hosts with the one and only Dr Strangedub) and this one by Kliment & Tuatara called Super Moon was just played. Perfect for weather like this!
Thanks to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for the sending us a photo update of his back garden. That’s what’s brilliant around this time of year, the garden seems to grow overnight and at a fair rate too. We all should really appreciate this time as autumn will be here before we know it. Above are the “Tiger Lilies gone wild” and below is entitled “When the Compost Takes on a Life of it’s Own” and we all know about that when we get those potato peelings and old onions sprouting! Is that a cucumber/courgette growing and are there a few mushrooms in there too?
And below a nice patch of borage that the bees love and the leaves are a good addition to comfrey if you’re making a liquid feed.
He also sent us a nice tune to accompany the pics from Anna Nacher & Marek Styczyński off the LP entitled Throbbing Plants (the title sounding very Genesis Breyer P-Orridge meets Percy Thrower.)
Thank you for the pics Justin. Please send your garden pics, no matter how small your garden is, even if it’s just a couple of pots on a windowsill, send them in! The address is onedeckpete (at) gmail.com we’d love to see your garden!
I bought a mushroom growing kit back in April and gave it a go. I thought, after a few weeks, it didn’t work or I messed it up, so threw it on the compost (below). Now there are a few small oyster mushrooms growing in the compost. Not a bad spot for them really! Some things take longer to sprout than others.
We moved the houseplants out and back inside three different times this past spring (below). Except the really big heavy ones I have to use a two-wheeler to get out, because really I’m only going to move those in the spring and the fall. I guess we really should have until the real last frost because they took a beating with repeated cold snaps, thunderstorms and then hot days. That’s Cincinnati weather for you. Wait a few minutes and it will change.
On the other hand some seed we planted a few years back finally sprang up. We’ve been attempting to get a wildflower patch going around the birdfeeders, because it gets pretty messy around there anyway. Last year a bunch of sunflowers came up from the seed the birds left behind. We also had some borage and other stuff in there. But this year the foxglove seeds we put down -well, at least one- finally came up and made an appearance (above).
DJ Frederick’s Free Radio Skybird returns to the shortwaves on Sunday August 4th 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 “Soul on shortwave” and Justin Patrick Moore from Sothismedias with the first episode of the Radiophonic Laboratory. Pencil it in on your WH Smith wallplanner! #freeradioskybird
So spring has finally arrived! It’s now time to scrape the mould off those gardening gloves and that inch of dust from your kneeling pad. When you’re next out in the garden dangle a speaker out of the back window and play some tunes as we all know music and plants go well together.
The first recommendation is for all who love a certain brassica from Helsinki-based composer Jukio Kallio featuring some tinkling on the old Joanna. This’ll get those broad bean seeds a germinating!
The next is a lovely piece called Garden Dub for the tripped out gardener in us all from Pale Rider, a solo project featuring one half of the Nashville/New York dub duo Phase Selector Sound. Lovely stuff! Leave the top window open in the greenhouse so the treble can escape and float around the neighbourhood.
Cheers for Justin Moore for starting us off again on the search for gardening related music with his recommendation for Mort Garsen‘s Cosmic LP “Mother Earth’s Plantasia” last week here. Also a big thanks to the good Dr Strangedub from The Echo Chamber on KFAI for his mix a few years ago below and Pete Haigh from the monthly Funkology radio show (on “On The Wire” on BBC Radio Lancashire) for his gardening-related chart here. We’re now looking for more. Know any deep house classics that mention “potting on”? Or some dubstep that mentions dephiniums? Or just some fine tunes you like to like to prune the roses to? Send us your nominations please. Remember music and gardening do mix!
We weren’t feeling too hot over the xmas and new year period as another damn cold/flu struck, but as the garden was looking a bit on the neglected side an hour or so had to be designated to a bit of outdoor tidying up. This one was for the bed next to the garage that earlier this year contained tomatoes, sweet peas and dahlias amongst other things (past posts about said plants in all their glory are in the links).
We dug up all the dahlia tubers carefully (some of them are the size of big spuds!) which are now drying out under the stairs even though last year we took a chance and left them in and they did wonderful this summer (post here). More on lifting the tubers here.
We even replanted a silver birch (one we found a couple of years ago in a Tesco’s bag with a note that said “Take me” on it outside a house locally see post here) that was originally by the pond but hopefully it will do better at the end of the bed. We’ll be probably moving it again as it’s so near the old garage wall but let’s see.
And as protection from forthcoming cold weather we stuck one of the plastic mini-cloches from another find, which followed the same pattern as before; left outside a house with a note with “Take me” on it (post here) over the Foxtail Lily that’s started to sprout a bit prematurely.
So wrap up warm, happy gardening and keep em peeled as Shaw Taylor used to say.
Little and often is an apt saying when it comes to gardening. The job for today was to tidy up the bed at the bottom of the garden that had gone a bit haywire (above). There was a fair bit of weeding to do and pulling up of dead Nasturtiums that were left to their own devices followed by a good old forking over. It looks like a proper vegetable bed now (below) rather than a bombsite!
In the process we found a couple of spuds that were missed when we initially harvested them in the autumn and also found a few dried out pods of some heirloom French climbing beans we bought at the Roots and Shoots Potato Day earlier this year. That’s one less packet of seeds we’ll have to purchase then!
Talking of Potato Days and Roots and Shoots here’s the next event in a few weeks time and one well worth going to!
London Potato Fair/Roots & Shoots Potato Day
9th and 10th February 2019 11.00am-2.30pm
Roots & Shoots
Walnut Tree Walk
Lambeth, SE11 6DN
http://www.roots&shoots.org
FREE ADMISSION
More details on this and more such like events (all across the UK) at this site here.
And here’s a festive treat from The Groove Thief from KGNU Community Radio’s “Dub Palace” show. The mix includes some heavyweight bass from RSD, Prophet, Johnny Clarke and our very own Madtone with “Compost your mind”.
A happy and prosperous 2019 to one and all from us at Weeds!
Two things to get stuck into. Firstly a big thanks to Mark at the Thompson & Morgan blog for including one of our tips in the interesting “Seed and seedling tips…” post here that’s worth having a look at. There’s lots of other posts on the blog that’ll hopefully float your gardening boat too.
Also the above has been listened to twice today, “Greetings music lover” the story of one of our favourite shows “On The Wire” on BBC Radio Lancashire and Steve Barker who keeps it all together. It’s a lovely documentary about a very interesting radio show. Big up On The Wire!
Here’s a lovely tune called Janet 50 from Smith & Mudd, with the top frenchman I:Cube on the mix. If this 7 minutes of joy don’t welcome the sun back into the garden, god knows what will! One to stick on (in the headphones of course) when getting the hose out at 7am to give those plants their morning soak.
And if you enjoy “tipping around” with a hoe later on in the day here’s a tune of the calmer variety from Everton Blender called Sing for Jah with a great dub to boot.
It’s good this gardening lark especially at this time of the year and it can only get better!
Weeds up to me knees 