Ras Muffet – The Lord/Lord Dub – off “Dubs from Greenhouse Studio” LP – Roots Injection
Cheers to Simon at The Dirt on Fab Radio International for giving Weeds Up To Me Knees a shout on tonight’s show and playing a tune for all dub gardeners. We salute you! Have a listen to tonight’s show when it gets put up on play again here.
Thanks to our good friend Scarlett for getting in touch about her favourite brand of gardening gloves. It’s funny as one of the light pair I got last week (part of a two part set) fell into the bucket of comfrey liquid yesterday rendering them useless! Great eh, they didn’t even last seven days! Here’s Scarlett’s nomination for favourite gardening glove, the dry touch by gold leaf. I’ve just checked amazon and it says that they are widely recognised as “The World’s Finest Gardening Gloves.” These are a classy pair of gloves unlike mine that are now hanging up to dry to get rid of that putrid comfrey water smell!
Dry Touch by Gold Leaf – my favourites so far in my life.
Made from the same quality leather as fashion gloves and lined, they are super comfy and long lasting, and they look fabulous too. A pair of gardening gloves lasts me about a year. I bought these Gold Leaf gloves in November 2012. They’re starting to go a bit now on one of the fingers so will probably need replacing at the end of the year, by which time they will have lasted me two years! A bit more expensive at around £20 but regular gloves cost £10-£15 for a decent pair, so these are worth the extra. Here I am vogue-ing on Magic Plot 7 when they were clean and new.
I still use Gloves in a Bottle when doing small jobs like seed sowing, light pruning and cutting. A fab product!
Have a look at Scarlett’s great gardening blog here.
A big shout to Simon Diamond of The Dirt, “a gardening programme like no other” on Fab Radio International from Manchester (via the web) who got in touch with us last week. As it says on the website, it’s a programme that “champions have-a-go gardeners and outdoor idlers,” there’s no mention of latin names of plants or any Andy Williams tunes.
It isn’t like anything else. I listened to the last couple of shows on play again last week and it’s an interesting mix of gardening related stuff with a sense of humour. They had an angus beef farmer who also runs a music festival, the week previous, an urban beekeeper in Manchester and a chat with David Bevan, aka The One-handed Gardener. It’s not GQT and the show don’t take itself too seriously, but you know they’re well passionate about the old gardening lark. A while ago they rang their gardening expert for his weekly update only to speak to his neighbour who was around his house feeding his cats as the chap was away on holiday, all live on air, great stuff! The audio of that daftness is here.
Also each week it features the Idiot Gardener. I’ve been listening to his podcasts at work all last week, absolutely mental! He’s knows his stuff and don’t take fools gladly, think of MC Pitman on the allotment. A warning though, he’s not Alys Fowler and uses some choice language (like we all do.) Hear his appreciation of the big tin can in space (The International Space Station, you know we love that here at weeds) here, his views on the Big Allotment Challenge here (we’re with him on that!) and finally the Idiot Gardening ethic here. Big up Idiot Gardening!
The Dirt is not your usual gardening show and it’s a good one, have a listen, you will laugh! Every Sunday on Fab Radio International or on listen again.
Desmond Dekker and the Aces – Music like dirt (Intensified ’68) – Pyramid UK
Thanks to our Mihaly and Renato at Dig This Nursery for passing on an advance flyer for the next leg of their tomato festival in August. If you want to know anything about the humble tom, go down and have a word with them, the nursery is just opposite New Cross Gate Station.They know quite a bit seeing as though they’ll be having 92 tomato varieties at the festival. How mad is that? 92!
Neotropic – New Cross – Council Folk Recordings
A big thanks to our good friend Jane for passing on this great tray of vegetables which included three pea plants with forming fruits, a nice climbing french bean in flower and some well healthy cabbages.
As soon as I got in from work, the peas went into the sink nearest the house (a couple of leaves of Comfrey went in the hole first after the plant had a good soaking.) The others will go into the garden over the weekend when I get a spare minute and if the weathers okay, as I’ve heard it’ll be violent storms and hailstones over the weekend here in London.
I’m always up for giving away any excess plants when I’ve any left over, I mean why waste them. But let’s hope the slugs and snails here in SE23 don’t find out about this latest lot though or I’m knackered!
Here’s a mad old strawberry found this morning that looks like something out of a 1970’s episode of “That’s Life!” This wouldn’t be on sale at your local Sainsbury’s, would it? It might look odd but it tasted alright to me! I didn’t know strawberry’s suffer from being “forked” like carrots do, but hey ho, that’s Life! How I used to hate that programme. “That was some very funny odd-odes from Cyril Fletcher and before that, a carrot that looked like a rude body part. Now Doc…” Ivor Biggun indeed!
A big shout to our good pal across the pond Dr Strangedub for sending us a couple of charts of reggae tunage in a summer style. As you know the good Doctor with DJ Baby Swiss presents the excellent Echo Chamber on KFAI every Wednesday morning (available on archive too) featuring the best in reggae, dub and downbeat. Here’s a selection of summer 2014 listening (in no particular order):
Top 7 Reggae songs
1. Sunshine Music – Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
2. Watch How You Walk – Inspiration – Jah Wobble & PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)
3. Hope – Dubcatcher – DJ Vadim (ft. Rio Hemopo & Sabira Jade) (Sonar Kollectiv)
4. Caruru – Magnetica – Quantic (ft. Lara Renno) (Tru Thoughts)
5. Never Give Up – Knowledge Shine Bright – See-I (Fort Knox)
6. Postman – Twice – Hollie Cook (Mr. Bongo)
7. In This World – FutureWorld – Thomas Blondet (ft. Leyla Chatti) (Rhythm & Culture)
Top 10 Summer Reggae Albums
01. Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
02. Twice – Hollie Cook (Mr. Bongo)
03. Dubcatcher (Mr. Bongo) – DJ Vadim (Mr. Bongo)
04. Send ’em to Outta Space – Yabass & Friends (Atomic Sounds)
05. Inspiration – Jah Wobble presents PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)
06. Serious Time – Mungos Hi-Fi (Scotch Bonnet)
07. Knowledge Shine Bright – See-I (Fort Knox)
08. Dubmatix In Dub – Dubmatix (Renegade/Echo Beach)
09. World Citizen – Black Slate (Unit 8)
10. Destiny – Raging Fyah (Soulbeats Records)
Lee Perry – Station Underground News – Bread
A killer from 1973 produced by Mr “light years ahead of his time” Lee Perry featuring a radio reference (“at 16,000 Kilocycles FM and 1,000 Megahertz on the ground” 00.10) and a Chi-lites sample “For God’s sake give more power to the people” at 1.49.) This tune was played on the Lee Perry special on the David Rodigan show on BBC 1 Xtra last Sunday which is available on mixcloud here. And for the original vocal cut:
Leo Graham & The Upsetters – News Splash – Underground/Upsetter
I spent a few hours in the front garden this morning as it was so nice (and the front was well overdue a tidy-up.) The only trouble was I couldn’t find my usual gardening gloves so did most of it bare-handed without any hand protection. Am I suffering now? Too right, me hands are as sore as anything and talk about blisters!
First thing tomorrow morning (er, midday) I will be popping down Shannon’s for some decent gardening gloves. The ones below are my favourites (as they remind me of my council non-work gardening days,) what are yours? Please send us pics of your favourite gardening gloves to the usual email: onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll show them in our new feature “Gardening gloves of the month.”
Talking of gloves, I remember a couple of years ago when I was on a course ran by our good gardening friend Scarlett I was introduced to the latest in hand protection technology, “Gloves in a bottle.” Now you’re talking, luxury!
Talking of Morrissey, a mate met him once while his band was supporting The Smiths on a couple of dates on a tour years and I recently asked him “Was Mozza a good bloke?” to which he replied “Not really, he had a really clammy handshake.” How can you judge a person by his or her handshake?
Rodigan mentioned on his show that this tune doesn’t sound dated today even though it’s from 1976. We agree Roddy, this tune from Inner Circle featuring the late great Jacob Miller still sounds fresh!
The weather forecast for London tomorrow is mostly dry and cloudy. “Mister, can we have our Sun back please?”
