Category Archives: Dub Gardening

Dave didn’t get in the way

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Good to hear from Mike & Julia, just outside the parish of Coventry for getting in touch again. Mike mentioned that they had a bit of trouble from Storm Dave up there the other day too, “It’s a bit feisty up here.”

He went on to say “We’ve been busy getting a new patch of the garden ready today. Here’s the before and after shots. Still some work to do but you get the general gist. Slabs and bark and a veg trug and some old metal storage tins with flowers added.”

Great for sending the pics over as the patch looks great! We look forward to seeing how the garden grows up there and do send us more pics as the year develops. Here’s a good post with some nice pics from their garden last year here.

Dave visited Bristol too

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We also had a report from Kit, G5KIT from Bristol who was telling us that “Storm Dave is definitely making his presence felt, and it’s just been too windy to do anything other than see how much ground the cleavers have claimed in their battle for the parsley patch (below). Instead, we’ve been entertained by watching the magpies and crows battling for tactical supremacy in the trees across the road (above)”. Funny enough you say that Kit, as yesterday morning there was some magpies and crow business going on in the trees at the back of us. Are the birds fighting back in the aftermath of Dave?

Cheers to Kit for sending us a Moon mix inspired by the Artemis rocket trip presently orbiting that moon of ours. #TheMoonConnectsUsAll

Astronomy Domine – Pink Floyd
Space Truckin’ – Deep Purple
2000 Light Years from Home – The Rolling Stones
There’s a Moon in the Sky – The B52’s
Supersonic Rocket Ship – The Kinks

And for the Bank Holiday Gardening Monday here’s a couple of moon related tunes.

 

It only takes a minute

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Reading the latest article on SWLing Post here about BBC interval signals, it reminded us of the wonderfully simple and direct “B–B–C” in the tonic scale used on shortwave for the BBC World Service and other transmissions to Africa.

We’ve always loved it and recently used it in a one-minute slightly odd piece from Madtone called “It Is AI, but we created it” for the 60 Sec Radio 2026 contest here, where “anything is possible as long as it’s 60 seconds long.”

The piece is below and features the said BBC interval signal alongside an excerpt of an strange ham radio conversation on 2 metres about AI generated music. We’re not that keen on AI generated music here funnily enough.

The contest is still open, so if you have 60 seconds radio collage, send it to the website here.

Before Dave came

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Yesterday was a lovely day. We started on the garden early, around 7:30am, when it was still grey and a little cold but as the hours passed, the weather gradually improved. After lunch, the grass was cut and looked great in the sunshine. The top right-hand corner of the lawn is the “wild area,” a tribute to a cat who passed away last year and loved to sleep there among the longer grass. Now the cat has gone, a fox has been kipping there on and off.

The side bed towards the bottom of the garden was cleared, and in place of the weeds, wildflower seeds were sown. It’s still cold, so whether they’ll thrive remains to be seen as it’s a bit of frost pocket down there. We were also told by a neighbour a few doors down that an underground stream runs through the gardens around that area. Whether that is true or not we’re not sure, but the soil is a bit on the boggy side around there.

Talking of seeds, one of our favourites plants has to be Night Scented Stock (above). While they may not be the most visually striking of plants, their fragrance more than makes up for it, especially on warm summer evenings when placed by an open back door.

Something we picked up last year as a single plant from Herne Hill Market was Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’. It’s now doing well and starting to spread nicely at the bottom of the garden by the pond. It gets semi-shade there, along with a daily watering (without overdoing it), and it seems to love the spot. We’ve since added a couple more plants from eBay. They’re still quite small, but we’re sure it won’t be long before they begin to spread too.

Happy Easter weekend (gardening) everyone!

Continuing the Dave theme:

Northern beaches and birds

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Many thanks to Rich in the Lake District for sharing a couple of photos he took from his recent break in South West Scotland, where he visited Gatehouse of Fleet, Portpatrick, and the South Ayrshire coast. As he put it, “Spectacular, but cold.”

Above is a great picture of Ross Bay, while below is an ace shot of a red kite in flight, showing its distinctive long, deeply forked tail (we have just read about the tail so didn’t have a clue about it before). More information about the red kite here.

On a wildlife tip…

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While we were sitting on the garden decking around 5:45pm this evening, enjoying the sunset, a fox strolled in as bold as brass up by the pond and joined us to watch the view. Behind is last year’s Christmas tree and in front to the right, a Dalek of the small variety.

Spring mix alert, spring mix alert

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Cheers to our good mate WillJeff (LWSTD FM) for letting us know about a mix he has just put up on his mixcloud. It is in the music for walking series (well that’s what we’ve just called it) and it’s called Walking in the spring 2026. Wonderful stuff as ever with a nice hint of Cafe Del Mar. Eclectic as every and as Gemini just told us, “it’s vibey”. Well worth a listen!

Blue Eyed Soul – Ain’t No Weight
Vangelis – Let It Happen
Bibio – A Couple Swim
Dauwd – Theory of Colours
Luiz Bonfá – Don Quixote
Skinshape, The Horus All Stars – God Of The Sun
Flea – Thinkin Bout You
Molly Drake – I Remember

(Is there) a change on its way?

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This afternoon we walked briskly down to the compost heap (to deposit a few teabags) as it was a bit on the parky side. Earlier we didn’t take off the protective plastic covering the raised beds as we have been doing for the past few mornings as we don’t think the just germinated seedlings would have appreciated it. We even had a hail storm at 3pm!

Looking at www.lastfrostdate.co.uk we are still not out of the danger zone yet so there won’t be anything tender going in the garden for a few weeks yet!

 

A report from France

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A big thanks to Spike from Morschen43 for sharing more photos of his garden in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. As you can see, looking at the pictures (aboove and below), a hell of a lot work has been done over the last couple of weeks and there’s a nice new fence up as well. Sterling work Spike!

If you can remember what the garden was like (below) before the pickaxe, fork and shovel were applied and when it was full of couch grass and dandelions (here), all we can say is “Wow!”

And there’s been a massive bit of pruning on his Granny Smith’s apple tree (below)). Spike was gifted the tree by his grandmother for his 13th birthday and it’s now 35 years old. Here are the before and after pictures of the big cut. It does look a bit severe, but it did need it and we are sure it will grow back fine.

We found out the gardening runs in the family as Spike’s father was a market gardener and swore by gardening using the moon. It’s been a long time since we used the Biodynamic method and Maria Thun‘s Book here but perhaps we will revisit it and give it a try. What have we got to lose?

Cheers for the great pictures of your garden again Spike and keep them coming!

And thanks a million to Spike for playing Jasmine & Madtone’s “Open up your heart” at 50.08 minutes in on his Vampire Freaks radio show here (N°365) here.