Category Archives: Indoor gardening

(Don’t) build me up buttercup

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Big thanks to the horticultural team at Thompson & Morgan for their helpful advice following Jesse Yuen’s post the other day (here) about ongoing problems with Bermuda Buttercups (Oxalis pes-caprae*). It’s looks like a chemical weedkiller (which Jesse is not going to use) can’t rid a garden of them.

“Bermuda Buttercups are a plant that you may have to learn to garden with rather than against. Pulling up plants always leaves tiny bulbils behind that grow into new plants, it can also result in the spread of bulbils to new areas. These bulbils act as storage organs which are very persistent, lying dormant beneath cardboard or mulch for months, possibly years, so that as soon as the ground is exposed to light they re-emerge. Constant hoeing will help to deplete the bulbils, but again – it will take years for this to have any effect.”

“Even If you decide to use chemical weedkillers, timing of application is critical and you may have to do it more than once. You need to catch the plants just at the point before or on flowering. This is when the bulbils are exhausted of food whilst young bulbils are too small to survive. Not all plants will be at exactly the same stage so repeated applications for several years are required.”

Thanks again to all at Thompson & Morgan for imparting their knowledge about the plant that is giving our good dub gardening friend Jesse a headache at the moment.

*The specific epithet pes-caprae means ‘goat’s-foot’, possibly in reference to the shape of the leaf. (wikipedia)

 

 

A message from Kyiv

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As always, it’s good to hear from Wlad (US7IGN) in Ukraine. If you remember, Wlad was featured in a Radio 4 documentary called Lights Out in an episode called Call Signs (here) which was about life as a radio amateur living and working in Kyiv during the Russian invasion. He also has two books out about his experiences and they’re well worth reading if you want an insight on what is life is like out there. More about the books here.

Wlad was telling us that his good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD) is not only growing a banana tree (more on that here) and bonsai but he’s also growing seeds from fruit he eats. The photos above and below are his avocado plants, brilliant stuff. Thanks for keeping us updated, Wlad, and as always, our best wishes to you and Sergiy over there.

We’ve found something on the RHS website about growing avocados plants from seed here. It’s interesting stuff.

Do you know where you lad’s going tonight?

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Here’s a recording of last weekend’s Skybird School of the Air broadcast via Shortwave Gold featuring an education theme. There’s all sorts of school/university/teacher references in there including a mix called “Lesson1” at 2.57 in from One Deck Pete.

Here’s the tracklisting:
Timetable – Anti Chamber
Madtone Vs Biggabush – Where’s your bike
Teacher Jekyll – Otro Sonido
Do you know where your lad’s going tonight? 1970’s Public Information film
Eccentronic Research Council – Bun Fight in the Open University Staff Room
Madtone Vs The Upsetters vs Kenny Everett
L’Equipe du Son – Lesson 1

Enjoy the start of term vibes!

September’s weather has come in August

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We’ve got some time off work for a week now and typically there’s a good bit of rain on the way. It’s good for the garden (as it’s parched), the pond (water levels are low) but not for us (lounging around in the sun doing nothing is fun, can’t lounge around in the rain!)

The garden is going to go wild with all this rain and of course mixed with a bit of sun that may come out from behind the clouds this week. Above is a reminder of what plants in the sunshine look like just in case you have forgotten. This is the salvia we got from B&Q a few weeks ago and it’s loving where it is.

 

 

An Eric and Ernie bank holiday monday dub connection

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We’ve just found this tonight, a dub piece by the great Scientist & Alicia Previn called Scientist Spacewalk. Super strings dub on the answer rhythm. More on the collab here.

 

And it’s nothing to do with the strings on 1970’s UK reggae releases…

 

 

Shivering Sands calling live on channel

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Here’s an excellent radio programme featuring those Maunsell delights Shivering Sands. It’s a 24 minute great listen so tune in here for a very interesting listen. Thanks to the The Maunsell Seaforts Appreciation Goup on Facebook for posting this up!

And when we put Maunsell dub into Bandcamp it came up with this, a great version of United Melody by Addis Pablo no less.

 

Pelargoniums on platform one

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A big shout to the staff at Honor Oak Park train station for maintaining the wonderful display of pelargoniums there. They get a good daily watering and when we have some comfrey liquid ready, we pop some in. We think they’re serious on the annual stations in bloom competition and with that display they should be!

We’ve taken some cutting from said plants (above) and they seem to root very quickly and now flowering after not many weeks.

While we’re looking at flowers here’s a new poppy from this morning!

Tunes for a Thursday night

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Thanks for Vintage Obscura Radio for putting this up on their bluesky feed and what a tune. It’s from Fadoul aka Bob Fadoul and it’s called Fi Jamique. Yes it is a familiar rhythm (None Escape the Judgement) but it’s a lovely take on it! And there’s more!

There’s a downside to being a bit keen…

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We’ve spoken to a few gardening friends of late who have tables, windowsills and even parts of rooms filled with seed trays and seedlings galore now waiting for the chance of frost to pass so they be planted outside. We reckon another few weeks and these lot we have indoors (above) can go out. There’s even some flowers forming on one of the geranium cuttings we took.

We’ve even got a tomato plant with a truss of flowers with another forming and a nearly three foot, giant sunflower on the windowsill (above). It’ll be like the day of the triffids if May don’t come soon, it really will. For everybody in the same boat, hang in there, it won’t be long!

Cosmos update

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We’ve had an update from Debby H on her cosmos and some good advice. The seedlings are now starting to get their first “true” leaves, which are fern-like as you can see in the picture above. She said when they have 3 or 4 pairs of the true leaves, pinch out the next pair of leaves to make sure the plant grows bushy and not “leggy”. Good tip as we didn’t think of that, even though we use the same technique with sweet peas encouraging them to bush out more.

Also Debby’s germination method of using the cardboard insides of toilet rolls seems to be a sure fire method what with the plant’s long roots. She did say which is also important, “I think the cosmos will be ready to pot-on soon, but not ready to go outside yet. We learnt last year that these plants are very susceptible to slugs when they are tiny.” Good stuff Debby!