Category Archives: Guest Gardeners

This is the year of the cosmos

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With the pictures Debby H kindly sent of her garden in the last post, she also sent us some pics of how her cosmos seeds were doing. “I planted some cosmos seeds on Thursday afternoon. By this morning (Sunday), they had germinated!” (pic above). How good is that?

Then on Monday she sent us pictures of how quick the seedlings have grown (taken about 25 hours later after the original photographs). As she said “I find the growth since yesterday to be quite amazing” and we agree!

She also sent some useful information about the seedlings that we didn’t know “…cosmos plants have long roots, even when they are small, so egg-boxes didn’t work well last year. This time, I have tried to use the cardboard insides of toilet rolls. I put these in a plastic trug planter thingy to keep them upright and stable.”

Now that is a great tip Debby and good luck with the seedlings. We sowed some yesterday (Tuesday) and hoping we get some quick germination results too. Thanks again.

 

STOP PRESS: A picture from today (Wednesday). They are looking great Debby and ta for the update!

Wow it’s 23 degrees in March (not in the UK sadly!)

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Thanks to Debby H who is away in Tenerife at the moment where it’s a lovely 23 degrees. She sent us some pictures of the garden of where she’s staying at and it looks fantastic. We love this view above.

The bird of paradise/crane flower (strelitza) there looks well established (above) and we did a plant search on the plant below using Plantnet and it came up with agave. If we’re wrong on that, please do let us know but it’s great to see all these brilliant plants on their home turf so to speak and in their full glory. Cheers again Debby!

A tale about a railway cutting

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(Picture from Dan S off Foursquare from 2024)

It was great weather today and this morning on the way back from the dentist we helped prune the wonderful collection of geraniums at Honor Oak Park train station.

Well, we were given a pair of secateurs from behind the ticket desk and cut five bits off the massive geraniums so we could use them as cuttings. We stuck 3 in a large pot indoors and put a couple in the cloche outside after dipping the end in some cutting powder. We’ve never taken cuttings on the outdoor variety before but they’re supposed to root easy. Perhaps in the summer it may be a better time to do it but let’s see what happens. More on taking Geranium cuttings from Gardeners World here.

Did you know there was a punk band from Saitama, Japan called Geranium? This is 17 minutes of them on full pelt mode but the first tune is one of their catchier ones (from the good old days of 2007).

And below here’s more of an ambient Geranium themed tune by The Ambient Zone called Red Geranium. A track featuring Chris Coco and Nick Cornu on chilled out guitar. From the good old ambient days of 2021.

It’s all starting!

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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.

Big shout to Thompson & Morgan

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Thanks to all at Thompson & Morgan blog for including a tip of ours in their new article “Money saving garden tips: cost-effective seed sowing” here. It’s a great article and a great blog to check out.

By the way we hope that anyone who has sowed early like us is having some success and the seeds are starting to germinate. Looks like the chili seeds we had that said “Sow by end of 2023” haven’t, but that’s a risk you got to take with out of date seeds. Good luck with what you stick in your seed trays!

 

Limited copies come with an extra “via the ionosphere” mix

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A big thanks to DJ Frederick and Imaginary Stations for broadcasting Downbeat on Shortwave last weekend via the transmitters of  Shortwave Gold. The show featured two 15 minute mixes in a downtempo style back to back from Jesse Yuen (Australia) and One Deck Pete (London, SE23).

We’ve posted up two recordings of the show. The first is the stereo studio recording and below that, the off-air recording via the shortwaves recorded in glorious mono. Fading and extra noises thanks to the ionosphere/groundwave.

Big shout to Jesse Yuen for getting involved and into the spirit of this shortwave radio project of ours.

Even council gardeners love a bit of ambient

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Here’s a long and lovely track from Irrelevant called Touches. This is the Ambient Council Worker Mix from Gordon Strange. Excellent stuff, glad to see that council employees get a namecheck! Are there any tunes specifically about council gardeners you reckon?

Oh to be by the sea!

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A few days ago we heard from our good friend from Japan, Stevyn from the great Iron Feather Journal fanzine who is away on holiday at the moment. He said “Hokkaido is minus 10 and there’s tons of snow so we took a mini vacation and flew south to Okinawa (pic above) and now relaxing by the sea side”. He sent us this picture below from his holidays of part of a jungle with a genuine viper warning! That’s brilliant Stevyn. We hope you had a great Christmas and that you’re having a great holiday, cheers for the pics.

Indoor plants in north London

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Thanks to Debby H for keeping us updated about her house plants and sending us a couple of pictures. She wrotes “Since we brought in the canna lily, the leaves have grown hugely. It’s now as tall as our orange tree. And at night, the leaves all point up to the ceiling, almost like a religious ceremony! It’s never done that before. It usually goes into a big sulk, and the leaves start turning brown. Not this year!” That’s great to hear.
Also “The orchid flowers have continued to open, which is attractive when there’s not many other flowering plants around.” Great stuff Debby, good to hear from you!

Autumnal Japan

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Thanks to Rob C again for a few more pictures from his trip. As he writes, “Japan is obviously famous for its cherry blossoms in the spring, but the changing leaves are also a popular attraction in the autumn. It was a little early when I was there, but as the days passed, there were clearer and clearer signs of the leaves turning from green to gold to vibrant red”.

And to say we are in awe of the greatness of Tokyo Tower above, (officially Japan Radio Tower as it says on Wikipedia) is an understatement. It puts our local radio/TV landmark at Crystal Palace to shame. It would be nice to have a little crystal set rigged up to a MP3 recorder and see what can be picked up from the photo location!

Thanks a million Rob, well interesting photographs and we may even have a part three to this series!

Japan pics © Rob C 2024