Category Archives: From our guest contributor

International Report AKA a rose abroad

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks very much to Debby H for sending us some pictures from the south of France where she is staying at the moment where it’s been up to 34 degrees C since she arrived.

The first is of a lovely rose plant (above) and she said “This would be nothing special in the UK, but this plant rarely flowers after April or early May here. However, they had such a wet spring it seems that the rose is much happier this year.”

The picture above is of a strelitzia, the bird of Paradise plant which is looking well healthy, Debby has one in London that she started from seed about 6 years ago. It is a wonderful plant and we read that germination of the seed can be anything from 4-8 weeks to 6 months!
“The next is my prickly pear which seems to have gone bonkers growing along the ground instead of upwards as it should do.” We do love this picture, cacti are brilliant.
The above we think is a phormium tenax aka New Zealand flax.
And the picture above is of an oleander. Her own plant is still not in flower yet and we do hope it’s not long before it looks like the above.
Wonderful pictures as always Debby and do keep updating us. Have a good break out there! Ta for the “A rose abroad” headline as well.

A mullein in Cincinnati

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for sending us a picture of the mullein plant in his garden. Justin mentioned “I let the plants grow when they pop up, even though some consider them a weed. People smoke the leaves for lung issues and make an oil from the flowers for ear infections. Its a medicinal weed, that in its second year, goes up past the knees!”

And thanks to Justin for forwarding a great tune named after said plant from MF Doom. Cheers Justin!

More from north London

Posted on by
Reply
Thanks to Debby H for sending us an update today. Above are the Marconi Red peppers and the dwarf sunflowers (below). “These are the plants from the house in the next street to ours” and the plants looks healthy. The peppers have a few flowers on one of them as well.
Below are the peonies in her garden (below) which have great looking flowers! We’re only at the start of the growing season and the garden can only get better. Cheers Debby, thanks for sending the updates!
The weather looks like a bit of rain later this week by the way so they’ll be another growth spurt out of our plants in our gardens we reckon.

More from north London

Posted on by
Reply

A big thanks to Debby H who sent us some pictures of how things are getting on gardening wise in north London. First are the cosmos (above) which are looking healthy. Those inner toilet tubes seem to be working well as plant pots by the way.

And above are the tomato seedlings which are sown in an interesting way as we usually sow one to a pot, but this method seems great. The tomatoes as well as the cosmos are ready to be repotted, and Debby has given us a great idea for further sowings.

Above is the azalea in her garden is looking great. As she wrote “I just found that the azalea is a type of rhododendron.” We didn’t know that.

And Debby has just got back from a break in Suffolk. “By the coast near to Dunwich the whole area was covered in the most amazing yellow flowering gorse bushes” “It went on for miles. I have never seen it looking quite so spectacular.” Brilliant stuff Debby, cheers for the update and we look forward to more pictures this year.

When it’s spring again, I’ll bring again, Tulips from Warwick-shire

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to Mike & Julia for these great pictures (it’s Mike taking the photographs this time) from a Tulip Festival in Warwick the weekend just gone. We know there’s many festivals dedicated to the Tulipa genus in places like Holland (even though their origins are native to central Asia, as they thrive in extreme hot summers and harsh, cold winters) but we’ve never thought they’d be one in Warwick. By the looks of these varieties, looks like it was a good day. Cheers for the photos Mike!

And we knew there was a variety called John Peel, we’d never thought they’d be one called Rasta Parrot, but there is!

Add some compost, it works!

Posted on by
2
Pic – Compost in a compost heap.
If you remember, we started some seeds off in some peat-free compost a while ago, they hung around for a couple of weeks and just withered away. Alan got in touch with us here at the time and mentioned he had the same problem so started mixing garden compost in with the peat-free stuff.
We’ve just heard from Alan again on how his seeds are going this year and it looks like the mixing of a small amount of home-made garden compost is working well. “Last year I had pretty poor germination despite soaking seeds and providing warmth as usual. This year the outcome so far has been night and day different” Here’s the rundown on how it’s going (bold is this year’s results).

“I wanted at least one aubergine plant – last year got none from my first
batch of seeds. Planted 3 seeds, 3 plants. Chillis – wanted one plant. 3 seeds, 3 plants (both pics above).

Cucumbers (above) – couldn’t get anything from seed last year so had to buy a plant
from the local nursery (it died, so bought another). Planted 5 seeds hoping
for 1 plant – 5 plants. Have one or two to give away to my daughter.

Tomatoes (above) – never normally a problem and again very good results, near 100%
germination.

Onions (above) very good results with near 100% germination (Weeds note: That is brilliant Alan, we’ve never done onions from seed before we don’t think or they’ve never been successful if we have).

Sweet peas – very poor last year with maybe 10% germination. This year about 50% germination. All are growing well and I water once a week. They’ll go into the polytunnel soon. The sweet peas (above) are only a small sample of what I have grown. The pots had 3 – 4 seeds each pot so one plant each is not too bad.

In terms of the process I don’t think I’ve done anything very different this year so I do suspect that the better moisture retention in the compost has helped germination by keeping the seeds moist while producing critical early roots. So as far as I am concerned I will stick to my mix – next up are my peas. Broad beans did well and they are in the ground now.”

Brilliant Alan, that is so good to hear.  Your seedlings are looking great and we reckon that tip of adding the home-made compost works. We noticed the same here compared to last year as well. We only added a smallish amount but it makes a difference. Cheers again Alan and do send us more pictures on how they do in the garden!

Not waterloo Sunset

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for the latest picture from there of a lovely sunset from the other evening, it don’t half look glorious. We even love the way the sun is shining off the barbed wire.

And cheers to Rich also for a pic from last night of ELO Musk’s rocket taking what is called a fuel dump. As it reported on the BBC website “… told the BBC that as he was taking out his bins in Suffolk he saw a “huge catherine wheel which appeared to have its own atmosphere around it”. We’re taking out our bins at Weeds HQ in a minute and hope we don’t see anything like that in the sky here in SE23. Cheers again Rich!

Surprise Spuds!

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to Debby H for sending us a message: “We found a small cardboard box in one of our cupboards recently. It had strange shoots coming out of the ends. Upon opening it we saw two small potatoes that had sprouted. We had forgotten that we stored them away last autumn to be used as seed potatoes. We planted them in a flower pot and now they are growing quite well.” Brilliant stuff and hope they give a good harvest.

Talking of potatoes, one of the things with growing spuds in the soil outside is leaving a few small ones in there even if you think you have pulled every one up. Then come the year after, you get  “volunteers” sprouting up. We wonder could these volunteers be moved and would they give you a good harvest. Your thoughts please.

And back to Debby H’s garden here’s the daffodils and primroses that are doing well. Cheers Debby!

Garden updates are always welcomed here. Send any pics to one deck pete (at symbol) geemail dot com.

It’s all starting!

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to Mike and Julia from near Coventry for a picture of their new basil grown hydroponically and we must say the basil is looking far better than ours that we’ve started to grow on our kitchen windowsill.

Also thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of the first flowers in her garden. “Our snowdrops had their flowers eaten by something, which was disappointing. We have been more successful with the dwarf daffodils (tete-a-tetes?), which are now beginning to flower.”

“We have had primroses/primulas for quite a while. They are the conventional yellow colour but there are also a few red/purple ones. Lovely to have some colour in the garden.” Debby’s right

We here at Weeds hope everything is starting to pop up now in your gardens, if you’re not in those parts of the world that are covered in snow at the moment.

Feeling hot, hot, hot. In January?

Posted on by
Reply

Big thanks to Paul Greenstein once resident of East Dulwich now of Melbourne, Australia for sending us a couple of photographs of his gardening related exploits. Above is his garden at the moment (That sunshine makes us weep here as the weather is on the cold side in SE23 at the moment) and here’s some accompanying words from Paul:

“Garden looks a bit wild from this angle. There’s an Oregano bush that’s taken over one of the veg boxes. Apricot tree in the foreground. We had a good crop of Apricots this year after the tree was almost destroyed by the local possum. Apricot mead is on the cards. We’ve learned that you have to net the tree once it’s pollinated or the possum wins. Just out of sight is a Bramley tree that’s currently netted – this time it’s the parrots that eat all the fruit. Australian wildlife; either it’s trying to kill you or it wants to eat your fruit and veggies.

The weather is a bit crazy at the moment, we are getting 2-3 day runs of high 30’s (Celsius), then high 20s, with thunderstorms. On really hot days, we are banned from lighting fires (which makes a lot of sense). Still, this is nothing, we live in Melbourne, which is considered ‘temperate’ – i.e, it can get really cold here. Other parts of Australia like Tropical North Queensland, it’s shorts and a vest all year round…”

If you remember Paul also keeps bees in his garden and as he told us in his post last year here he had some Mead fermenting (above) and “each mix includes around 1.5k of honey. World’s oldest alcoholic drink apparently..”

We only made it once here and it tasted like battery acid so we didn’t even bother again.

“Mead Bottled! The cherry is made with Morello cherries, the rhubarb grows in the garden. The cherry is around 15%ABV, the rhubarb around 11%.” Looks absolutely wonderful, unlike the stuff we produced. Cheers for the report and the pictures Paul, they’re appreciated.

Talking of Mead we found this the other day advertising Penge’s first ever Wassail. We hadn’t a clue what it was, but the mention of “Bring something to make lots of noise – saucepans and wooden spoons are perfect” made us very interested.

Thanks to @rbrt1k on twitter who sent us a link to the wikipedia entry for the word/event. “Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Christmastide and Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.“

Big shout to the Penge Wassailing event and we hope all goes well and you make a right old racket so we all can get a good harvest this year of apples. And potatoes, and carrots and onions etc. Big up with the wassailing!