Category Archives: Gardening connects us all

From pirate ships on the North Sea to the French countryside

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A massive thank you to Spike from Morschen43, who is located near Le Puy-en-Velay in Southern France. He sent over some snaps of his house and garden yesterday, and a nice slice of the world it is.

You might remember Spike from his track “MV Ross Revenge (For Ever!)”, a tune we love and featured in a couple of our shortwave mixes. As well as making music, he loves a bit of horticulture too!

As well as growing flowers he grows vegetables as well, and we’re loving the veg patch below. For those who know us, you know we have a soft spot for a good runner bean cane! The long row of canes and that classic wigwam structure to the left are right up our street. We’re already looking forward to seeing how the vegetable garden progresses as the seasons change (more photographs later this year please Spike!)

Spike spent yesterday giving his roses some attention. As he said, “Roses need concentration and attention for cutting.” He’s right there! When we worked for the council, many years ago, there was no love for the craft. No one cared about achieving that classic “rosebowl” effect or making sure the cut was just above an outward-facing bud. They’d just hack them all down to a uniform two feet! It’s good to hear that there are people who still care.

To go along with the photos, Spike picked out a track from his Bandcamp, a duet titled “J’Aime Les Brunes Sans Filtres”

 

Cheers for the photographs of your great house and garden, Spike! Keep those pictures coming as the garden grows as we’ll be well interested in how you get on in that great vegetable patch.

Have you ever seen a rubber plant pogo?

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A big thanks to The Rhythm Doctor and Gerry Hectic who both told us this week about Brian d’Souza (AKA Auntie Flo) who makes music with plants. He says on his website: “I entered the world of biosonification which allowed me to listen to nature’s internal rhythms – analysing electrical biodata and converting it into sound information that in turn can be subtly manipulated and heard as a type of generative music. I created bioelectrical music for vertical farms, mycelium pavilions, mushroom dens and even Vinnie Jones’ vegetable patch!”

The above is a live ambient set on the My Analog Journal channel where he hooks a modular synth to the plants and combines the sounds harvested with some ambient tunes. We don’t know that much about his stuff but will research more on this artist as he sounds well up our street!

More on his Plants Can Dance project here. Thanks again to RD and Gerry Hectic for this.

There’s a rat in me (kitchen) garden what am I gonna do?

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Blimmin ‘eck! You never know what is going on in your garden at night do you? Thanks to Debby H for this screenshot of a local rat climbing up one of her trees. Crazy goings on indeed.

Years ago one lunchtime, we saw a rat sniffing around some bin bags in Holborn as office workers were walking by and eating their Pret sarnies. The rat had not a care in the world and couldn’t care less about being seen. We’re not that keen on rats funnily enough but this ain’t a bad “rat” related tune.

 

Wednesday night dub

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A nice track from the Partial Records Bandcamp from King Tubby called Rising Dub, the dub of The World Has Just Begun (The Children Rise) by Earl Sixteen and The Heptones.

 

This is Kyiv calling, this Kyiv calling

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∑∑´´Big thanks to our good friend in Kyiv, Wlad (US7IGN) for getting in touch this week. He last post was in November and if you remember, there was a potato shaped like a love heart and photographs of his good friend Sergiy UT3UFD‘s collection of seedlings that were started from seeds of whatever he eats here.

Sergiy’s advocado is coming along well (above) since last time and as Wlad jokingly said “His banana even had a baby!” (below).

Wonderful stuff, when you think they are having as he told us, “regular problems with heating, water (out for up to 3 days), and electricity, but we survive even at -20C at night.” Wow, that is some going -20C!

The best thing we think, is how he experimented with the seeds from a pitaya he bought and they’ve started to come really well, growing their first set of “true” leaves (main picture at the top and below).

And if you remember, this is how he heats his plants, with this ingenious set up:

Great to hear from you as ever Wlad, thanks for the pictures of Sergiy’s growing experiments, as they are fantastic!

By the way Wlad has finished his third book, which is available here. Here’s a mention of it on SWLing Post here.

First sowings of the year

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We know we mentioned a couple of posts ago that you don’t want to be too keen on sowing seeds at this time of year, but we’ve started a couple off, seeing as both seeds need a few weeks to germinate.

This morning, we put 3 pots each of Reals Seeds Prairie Fire Mini Bush Chilli Pepper and Lemon Drop Hot Citrus Pepper in a heated seed tray. This year we’re using some B&Q bought Rocket Gro seed/cutting compost as the cheap supermarket shop-bought peat-free we bought a while ago just weren’t that good and we lost a load of seedings to the dreaded damping off.

On looking at the packets, the Prairie Fire takes 2-3 weeks to germinate and the Lemon Drop 3-4, now that’s a long wait. We will be training patience in this exercise and will keep you in the loop if we see any movement at all.

The Thursday Tune (bus related of course)

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As usual, looking for some tunes for a forthcoming shortwave mix we found a nice tune.  It’s a great bit of Polish Rap from Litlost from the Olszak / Bitykradne – Night Bus EP called Promienie słońca Brooklynu. Really good stuff indeed.

A passport to beer and nuts

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We’ve just listened to this weeks Great Lives on Radio 4 with John Cooper Clarke about one Johnny Green (once hippy, driver, writer and the road manager of The Clash and Tour De France fan). It’s a great 27 minutes with contributions from his kids, Topper Headon and Chris Salewicz. It’s nice to hear old JCC’s distinctive voice again. To listen to the show click here.

On the subject of Johnny Green, here’s something about him on blackmarketclash.co.uk (here) about The Clash’s Bury St Edmunds gig in 1978 (where we were also in attendance). We love the line at the end which makes us smile “I considered the Camden Town rockabilly as my friend and a passport to beer and nuts”. We all love a passport to beer and nuts.