There’s more on the way!

A big thanks to our good gardening mate Gerry Hectic for sending us pictures of the story so far in his garden. Loving the runner beans in the pot with a trolley from Aldi at the bottom so it can be moved around to catch the maximum of sunlight. Our other good friend Phil Harmony in Berlin used to also use that idea on his balcony for his veg growing. As The Merton Parkas used to sing “You need wheels”.

The peas and tomatoes look great too! Just water them daily and add a weekly feed, all will hopefully be grand! More pics of your progress in a few weeks please Gerry!

It’s the little things in life

We took a walk in the garden this morning to check on everything especially stuff that was undercover in old jam jars and home made cloches as it’s been quite cold the last couple of nights. By the way if you ever need a last frost estimator you can check here but it’s only a guide. We do it the old fashioned way and check the weather forecast.

On the inspection we saw that the Egyptian Walking Onions were bursting into life and it looks like there’s a start of some topsets forming (above).

And these (above) are the first of the Mashua that has come up too which we got from the seed swap a few weeks ago. These Nasturtium type plants have edible tubers if you get the right conditions which we’ll doubt we’ll have in SE23 but who knows, stranger things have happened.

Wade in the water

We hope you had a good Easter and all is well in the garden now that the good weather is upon us. We’d still advise to take it easy putting tender plants outdoors as you never know what the weather will be like and it’s still only April. We’ve been hardening off the veg plants (pic below) by sticking them outdoors for most of the day to get them used to what it’s like out there in the real world.

The pond (top pic) has really woken up now with some frolicking frogs, the odd newt and goldfish sharing the space. The Lewisham pet shop bought water lily is starting to sprout and we welcome a new addition to the pond, some bare rooted stuck Watermint procured off ebay in an old chimney pot which was elsewhere and now submerged in its rightful place (above).

And we’ve gone right off the idea of the Dalek type compost bin as the old fashioned wood version is doing well and giving off some warmth from the grass clippings after a good old weekly mix using a garden fork.

And while we were writing this post we’ve been listening to the latest This is a music show as recorded by @DazDude4000. It’s a lot better quality this week. Enjoy the Bank Holiday!

Where have all the flowers gone?

Tomorrow evening Wednesday 9th March 2022 at 5pm UK time there will be a transmission to Europe of The Scented Garden (a nod to gardeners and gardening music lovers everywhere) on 3955 kHz. If you haven’t a shortwave radio at 5pm tomorrow tune in here. After the broadcast the audio will be posted up here.

At the start of the programme is a 15 minute mix from Weeds’ own One Deck Pete called “A tribute to council gardeners everywhere” featuring tracks by Dudley Perkins,
Hugh Masekela, Beyond The Wizzard’s Sleeve and Dennis Brown. Expect some gardening related tunes, pruning advice and more. Onwards and upwards!

From our worldwide correspondents

Big shout to our good friend Stevyn Iron Feather Journal in Hokkaido, Japan who’s just given us a glimpse of what his garden is like today. It’s covered in snow and he’s caught what may have been a flying whistling kettle in the snap, very apt what with the transmission of WSTL this weekend. Thanks Stevyn. For more on the excellent fanzine he produces, have a look here. Also have a butchers at his Pink Floyd’s Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast remix project here which has some interesting music on it.

Also cheers to another of our gardening/music friends Gerry Hectic for this musical recommendation of this great Jazz Gardening classic from Kamasi Washington. We’d be lost without the garden path wouldn’t we?

And talking of musical gardening selections here’s one from yesteryear from our good friend Dr Strangedub of the excellent show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. More on the show here.

And whilst we’re on the subject of dub gardening here’s one from Lopez Walker with Jah Jah New Garden followed by Garden in Dub. (If it was “Gardening dub” it would be even better!) #dubgardenersoftheworldunite #gardening #gardeningsnotdead

(Good) Tune for a Tuesday

Cheers to Your Host from This is a music show for playing the version of Show us the way from Hell & Fire on last week’s show, and what a tune! And one that made us think of the wonderful Joya Landis and John Holt duet from years ago.

And talking of the excellent This is a music show here’s said episode of the show for your listening pleasure!

You know how it is…

After the last post we were doing a little bit of research that took us to the Trilogy Tapes blog which is a great read so have a butchers at it here. That led us to the post about their all-time sly and robbie fave Baltimore which we’d forgotten how good it is! RIP Robbie Shakespeare.

Out there on a Wednesday night

It’s looks like the cold weather is about to hit SE23 tonight, minus 4 or what? We suggest whacking the heating up and chilling out with the mix below recommended to us by our good friend Marc B.

It’s a very tripped out hour from Biscuit (Good Morning Tapes) for the Twin Womb radio show on Noods Radio (Bristol) from December last year. God knows what you’d call it but once you immerse yourself into it it’s serious stuff. One for the headphones crew!

More on Good Morning Tapes here and on Noods Radio (who have a plethora of great shows) here.

Reggae and radio, what a combination

Merry Christmas to all of our friends near and far and we wish you all a great festive season and a grand new year. We hope you have a great growing season next year, that all your veg and flowers do swimmingly well and your compost heap rots down well and gives you some great organic matter.

We were going to stick up the Mikey Dread “Dread at the Controls” live on JBC Radio recording from December 1978 as usual but just found some completely different show recordings with some excellent footage too. They’re a new one to us and there’s a few of them as well.

Have a great day today, keep safe and away from the endless Dad’s Army reruns and remember this is the only day you can officially have a glass of Bailey’s and some Cadbury’s Roses before lunchtime without people thinking you’re odd.

And finally we found it

We’ve been hearing this record for many months as a “sign on” tune for Sugar B‘s show on 4tuneFM and aways wanted to know what it was called. And lo and behold we heard it this morning on Vintage Obscure Radio one of our favourite shows at the moment. It’s Willie Lindo with Midnight. Tune in for more suprises here.