Category Archives: Jazz Gardening

Summer the first time

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A bit of a mish-mash of photo’s taken on the hottest night of the year we reckon in London town. It’s 9pm and it’s still about 28 degrees!

We do love a dahlia here and here’s a couple in the nearest bed to the house whose tubers were taken indoors over the winter and put in a new position in the spring. It’s early days but we’re starting to get some nice flowers on them.

The nasturtiums (below) from the Thompson & Morgan trial seed collection are just great and we’ve had a few comments about them too. It’ll be worth getting a packet or two of the seeds next year!

And here’s the first flowerbud of the sunflower from the T&M collection too. It looks like it’s a mini one but it could be just where we planted it!

The question is how hot will it get later tonight?

96 degrees in the shade

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Well it’s supposedly going to be the hottest day in London today “since records began”. And talking of records (or audio files in this instance) here’s a nice summery one a mate told us about yesterday. It’s one to chill out to whilst drinking gallons of water, eating choc ices, getting stuck under somebody’s sweaty armpit on the tube and other things you find yourself doing on hot days.

On a beefsteak tip, perhaps?

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The other day we spied what we think are possibly fruits of the beefsteak variety on the Thompson & Morgan trial seeds tomato and (a possible further clue it may be a beefsteak) looking at the sheet accompanying the seeds it does mention that the “plants need side-shooting and support”. We love a beefsteak tomato here, please be one.

Talking of tomatoes, we always side-shoot the plants but the other week we watched Bob Flowerdew on youtube where he was advocating not to pinch out all your tomato side-shoots as growing on two/three cordons ain’t a bad thing. Have at the link look below as he’s very funny, educational and we do love his barnet!

Also we’re now getting flowers (and the start of fruit) on the spaghetti squash. We got what we thought was another spaghetti squash at the bottom of the garden (lower of the two pics) but now comparing leaves we wonder if it’s something else like a courgette (zuchinni) that we may have sown earlier? Only time will tell!

Also another spinach experiment is on the go (we’ve had the seeds sown between the earthed up spuds and inside a circle of broad beans which both sadly didn’t work), we sowed a row at the bed at the bottom of the garden that gets limited sunlight, let’s see how they do. The sticks are to keep the cats off (going back to Bob Flowerdew, on another youtube in that series above he says he welcomes cats into his garden and encouraged them to do there “doing’s” in a dedicated toilet space complete with straw and catnip! We do like his unconventional style!) Updates on the trial seeds to follow.

Saturday morning cardoons

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A year or so ago we bought a couple of cardoon plants at Shannon’s and stuck them at the bottom of the garden and duly forgot about them. We didn’t know much about them when we bought them (and still don’t know much now) but we do know we love the wild and whacky. This year has seen some mad growth spurts in the plants and now some mad thistle type heads. Reminds us of our punk days back in the seventies! #gardeningsnotdead

More from the seed trials

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Here’s an update to the seed trials we’re doing for Thompson & Morgan in the Weeds back garden. The most suprising thing to come up are the tropaeolums (nasturtiums), we’ve lots of self-seeded normal orange types going nuts at the bottom of the garden (below) but look at the pinkish/purple ones from T&M above, how good are they? We’re loving the colour of them and funnily enough nasturtiums normally don’t do that much for us here.

The spaghetti squash that is in the top bed is now making a break for it (below). Hopefully they’ll be more room when the broad beans beside it dies off. The squash is looking healthy and just started to flower. We’ve neglected feeding all the plants for a couple of weeks as the home-made comfrey liquid ran out (we gave Honor Oak Train Station a couple of bottles of it to help them with their station in bloom contest entry!), but we’ve now a new batch on the go. There’s another spaghetti squash at the bottom we sowed late but who knows the summer may go on for a bit longer this year.

The tomatoes (below) are in a bed which once used to house a greenhouse, the soil is not great there and doesn’t get the sun until mid afternoon and not for that long but the three plants there are surviving and there’s at least one truss of flowers showing. We won’t give up on them and we’ll be on it with the comfrey feed this weekend. Cheers again to T&M for the seeds!

On a T’ai Chi tip

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If you’re in the Honor Oak Park area in London next Sunday (21st July) and fancy a bit of Tai Chi, there’s a great event going on from 11-4pm with a seminar from Rose Oliver over at the moment from Shanghai. It costs £40 and will be covering a whole lot of stuff suitable for anyone interested in Tai Chi, beginners or experienced practitioners. Her seminars are good fun and you’ll certainly come away with a bit more knowledge of the art and a couple of more friends. Contact Rose by email roseinchina2006@yahoo.co.uk to prebook or visit the Honor Oak Tai Chi Facebook page here. #SE23taichi #roseolivertaichi

Don’t step on the cracks

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A trip down the garden path tonight produced this trio of pics. Above: The fiver’s worth of water lily we bought from the Lewisham pet shop (whose website’s by-line is “For all your reptile needs”) a few years ago has gone mad this summer. We counted nearly 7 flowers on it the other day. The fish are using it as shade during the sunny periods and the tadpoles as mini swimming pools. The pond need a bit of thinning out this weekend as it would be nice to give the inhabitants more room. We now get our fish food via ebay, and you get double or treble of the volume of food for the price compared to what you get in those supermarket tubs.

The pink flowers shown above don’t look like much and as a plant it’s a bit on the scrappy side but disregard that and grow night scented stock for it’s evening smell!

And somewhere in the middle of the tomatoes and broad beans growing against the garage wall and the dahlias is the Thompson & Morgan trial spaghetti squash. We reckon it’ll outgrow the space in no time!

And finally a dubbed out one for the warm night we’ll be getting tonight (where it’ll be hard to sleep even with the windows are open!), it’s from Masis called Unearthed Dub  and it’s the Frenk Dublin mix. Tune!

Saturday stag night fun

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A few weeks ago a couple of the Weeds team went on a bat walk around Camberwell New Cemetery which was great fun. It’s not every Friday night you can wander around in the dark in your local cemetery carrying bat detectors.

On the night we were told if we wanted to encourage more wildlife including stag beetles into our garden we’d have to keep some wood piles and have the odd rotting stump lying about. Well we heeded the expert advice and have been visited a few times by the friendly stag beetle (here’s one from tonight). When these things take off it reminds us of a heavily fortified military vehicle. Bonkers!

Back yard reportage 2

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A big thanks again to Thompson & Morgan blog (have a look as it’s interesting stuff with tons of hints and tips!) for sending us some seeds to trial this year and this is how they’re doing in July! They are all watered on a daily basis and have a comfrey feed weekly.

The above is the spinach (in the front pot) which was started off on the kitchen windowsill and a couple of the seedlings were transferred outside but here’s the pot with two left in them. They haven’t gone to seed yet and are doing well!

The daft idea we had to stick a row of the lettuce and spinach in the area shaded by some broad beans (so they didn’t bolt) may have not been a good one but here’s what’s going on so far! We won’t even mention the idea of sowing lettuce in the gully between the earthed up potatoes as nothing has germinated there.

The spaghetti squash is coming on a treat and we reckon we may have put it in the wrong place but “Hey! it’s an experiment”. The other squash that had lots of space to run free has been decimated by the slugs so this is the only one at the moment!

And as the song goes “Where have all the zinnia’s gone?” We don’t know what we done wrong but there’s no sign of any zinnia’s yet. Damn! But the tomatoes and sunflowers seem to be doing well and we eagerly look forward to seeing what variety they morph into! Ta again T&M, there will be updates!