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!
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!
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!
Pic – Compost in a compost heap.
“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!
Great to hear from Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv and tanks to him for sending us some new pictures today. The above and below are from his good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD) who if you remember has a banana plant growing indoors and they’re great images of the plant that is looking well healthy at the moment.
And Wlad’s green onions on the windowsill are doing great! Cheers Wlad, more pictures please and good to hear from you!
Pic: The grass outside this morning.
The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.
You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!
Pic: John “good bloke” Craven
Where has that sun gone to, the one that appeared here the weekend and the same one that contributed to Sunday being 17°C? You will laugh, as over the weekend we even put some plants out in the back garden to harden off. It’s only March and we’re thinking about hardening off plants, we must be crazy. The above pic is a of self-seeded tomato in front of some suncream, after sun and insect repellent, a taste of things to come you reckon?
Do remember that frost prediction site here as that will come in handy if you’ve got that “we’ll get those seeds/plants in early” feeling like us. It’s nearly there but do wait a little before sticking those plants out. Have you seen the forecast for this week?
While doing a shortwave mix the other night we came across this duo we’ve never heard of before called The Secret Whistle. It’s a great name and turns out they’re from Portland, Oregon and they make some fine tunes. Here’s two here.
A big thank you to Katie and all the team at Thompson & Morgan Blog for sending us over these new vegetable seeds to see how we get on with them. They look great, so this afternoon we popped 4 of the chilli seeds into compost to start off. Quick Fire is the variety and it mentions on the pack that you can get up to 100 chillies per plant! We’ll keep you all posted on how we get on with all of them. Cheers again T&M!
And to continue the festive themed soundtrack here’s a clever little number by Bodyswitch from the Stocking Stuffers EP a nice dubbed up version of Carla Thomas’ Gee Whiz, it’s Christmas.
And a lovely dub from from R. Santa on Nou Art Records out of Barcelona called “Time Dub”
Has Gavin & Stacey finished yet? And is it really the last one?
Weeds up to me knees 