Category Archives: Jobs to do

Pick up the garden fork and now breathe…

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The sun’s out again and it’s 27°C and very dry in the garden this afternoon.

Last week we heard Christine Walkden on Gardener’s Question Time who said she likes to give her garden a good water with just a watering can and it can take her up to 2 hours at a time.

Since ditching the hose after watching a great special about conserving water on Gardener’s World a while ago it now takes us quite a while too just using a watering can without a rose on the top. We enjoy the slow ritual, the endless walks back and forth to the tap, making sure the soil gets a good soaking. We probably wouldn’t like it that way if we were going to catch a train but it’s a nice thing to do on an early morning on a day off work or in the later evening after a day of toil.

Is there such a thing as “meditative gardening”? There was a lot of staring into space with one foot on a garden fork when we worked at the council so it may have been around for years.

Talking of meditative gardening, there’s a great horticultural themed set from Monster Rally (we have a feeling that someone may have mentioned this to us before, our mates Gerry Hectic, DJ Frederick or Justin Patrick Moore perhaps?) called Botanica Dream. It’s full of some lovely downtempo business and at the moment the track above is our favourite but they’re all excellent.

And here’s a promo from the Skybird Council Gardeners Association for The Scented Garden radio show for you all to enjoy.

And an episode of The Scented Garden from earlier this year for your gardening/listening pleasure. Tune in, turn on and sit yourself in the middle of a flower bed preferably and enjoy the flowers.

Life after 40°

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How hot is it today? The front garden is like the Sahara at the moment and we’ve been meaning to weed it of late but the soil is like concrete and the last time we spent a lot of time working out there was in lockdown. We cleared ten or so years of ivy off the front wall, then a couple of weeks later parts of the wall fell down. The ivy was keeping the thing up!

We put in a hollyhock last year, the main stem fell over with the mad wind early this year, then spikes grew out of the main stem on the ground and from the centre part a bush has formed. We’re not complaining as it’s covering the broken down wall and the flowers are attracting all sorts of bugs, pollinating insects and bees.

In this silly heat, do remember to give your garden a good water in the morning if possible and take it nice and easy, the garden will thank you for it!

As for cooling down sakes we’d recommend this excellent mix from Chris Coco, one to have on when all the windows and doors are open and there’s damp sheets hanging down from the ceiling (saw that on the internet) to help keep everyone cold what with the crazy heat today.

And Chris has very kindly put up the track listings too:
1 Calm – Long Summer Dream (Dub Mix) x Tangerine Dream – Love On A Real Train
2 Turbotito – To Feel In Love (Projections x Turbotito Version) x Althea & Donna – Uptown Top Ranking
3 SONLIFE – The First (Chris Coco Version x SONLIFE – She Misses You
4 Blair French – Honey Rooftops (Chris Coco Version Part 1) x Nina Simone – Here Comes The Sun
5 Sauco – Sun Goddess (Chris Coco Sunset Mix) x Scott Grooves – E2E4 Reframe
6 Hear & Now x Chris Coco – For You (The Chill Out Tent Edit) x Hear & Now – Aurora Baleare
7 Reggae Disco Rockers – The Whistle Song (Quiet Storm Version) x King Tubby – A Better Version
8 Quinn Lamont Luke – Don’t Run Away (Chris Coco Version) x Mr Fingers – Can You Feel It
9 Projections – Original Cell (Chris Coco Version) x Thomas Newman – American Beauty
10 Dexter Scott – Break Noise x The Pop Group (Dennis Bovell Dub)
11 Coyote – Home Grown x Gregory Isaacs – Cool Down The Dub
12 Joan Bibiloni – Castanets Eivissa / Mar Blava

Life on the wild side

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It’s going to be hot this forthcoming week, we’re looking at nearly 30°C in SE23 and we think the garden is going to enjoy it. So get the watering, weekly feed and any fiddling with a hoe out of the way early and then park yourself in the shade and enjoy the weather.

The courgette/zucchinni plant we stuck in a pot as we couldn’t find any space (above) is doing well, giving us some nice flowers. The area around it with the raised beds of potatoes (below) are also on their way but impatient as we are, we keep looking around the plants and still only getting golf ball sized spuds.

The one raised bed of tomatoes are now setting fruit and we’re checking that there’s no side shoots forming and tying the main stalk to the support canes when we remember.

And on the wildlife tip, we’ve put another “pothole pond” down the wild bit (below) after being influenced by Bill Shimmers’ great pond here. We stuck some wood leading into the water after Bill mentioned in his reply of our effort on Twitter. “Any water body adds extra wildlife habitat to a garden. One thing I always include, any steep sided ponds need a sloping shelf or ramp to allow critters to get out as well as in. Stones or branches will do.” Our one is not exactly steep but we’re including the sticks to add further disguise to the former B&Q product container.

And in our main pic this week are the inhabitants of our pond, well part of the mob that are in there at the moment. And the big question is where do they disappear to? Enjoy this great weather when pondering on that thought.

Smells like comfrey liquid

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“Well it’s that time again when the comfrey does a grow”. As you know, we like to do gardening on the cheap and there’s nothing more economical than making your own comfrey plant food. The darker it is and the smellier it is, is always a sign of a good vintage and definitely one to pour out of an old plastic orange squash bottle 1 part comfrey to 10-15 parts water (depending on the thickness/darkness of the feed). There’s lots online about the magical comfrey liquid including how to make it and how good it is. Have a look here for more info. Do remember to wear some gloves as the leaves can irritate the skin.

We have stripped the plant at the bottom of the garden (above) which is out of the way from view and the plant is looking well bare but don’t worry those leaves will be back in no time to harvest and if you do let the flowers grow the bees love them.

As for our comfrey brewery, ours is kept well out of the way of smelling distance of humans and has at most times a lid on it. We use an old 80’s Boots fermenting container (remember those Boots wine/beer making kits?), a good old housebrick and a little bit of water. What goes in is the leaves and stalks and add nettles, Green alkanet and borage to give it an extra kick. We wait till the liquid is well dark and very carefully strain the liquid (you get any of it on your clothes and you’ll forever be smelling it.) It’s good stuff and a nice thing to pass on to felllow gardening friends but make sure the container it’s in don’t leak or you’ll never be hearing from them again!

Where have all the flowers gone?

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On Saturday morning while we were out and about on our travels we were told of an interesting garden in development around the back of a charity shop.

When we got to the said plot we were greeted with some nice raised beds surrounded by walls with a wooden frame and wire mesh that were covered in numerous empty plant pots all connected up to a clever irrigation system. Even the gate to get in had pots on the back of it, talk about vertical veg and not wasting any space!

No idea what they may be growing but we wonder if it’s micro-greens on a commercial basis. We did see some fruit bushes ready to go in too. Whoever is taking over this garden is taking it very seriously.

Also this weekend we had a right of mixture of weather. It was gorgeous yesterday with the sun out most of the day but today it was a few degrees colder and we even had a bit of drizzle. As it’s still cold at night we have a variety of different kinds of plant protection from jam jars, the tops of propagators and plastic mini-cloches plonked over some tomato and pepper seedlings. (Above) the mini veg patch at the bottom of the garden with the frost protection and the plastic mushroom bought from a bric-a-brac stall at a summer festival which is placed over a cut off washing line pole. Keep an eye on the temperatures at night as we’re still not out of the doldrums yet!

It’s the little things in life

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We took a walk in the garden this morning to check on everything especially stuff that was undercover in old jam jars and home made cloches as it’s been quite cold the last couple of nights. By the way if you ever need a last frost estimator you can check here but it’s only a guide. We do it the old fashioned way and check the weather forecast.

On the inspection we saw that the Egyptian Walking Onions were bursting into life and it looks like there’s a start of some topsets forming (above).

And these (above) are the first of the Mashua that has come up too which we got from the seed swap a few weeks ago. These Nasturtium type plants have edible tubers if you get the right conditions which we’ll doubt we’ll have in SE23 but who knows, stranger things have happened.

You win some you lose some

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This oddity was found on a garden wall today whilst on a post work walk, a bag of seed spuds that had shoots all over and were well past their sell by date. Can seed potatoes be “over chitted”? Who knows but they weren’t binned. They went into the ground just in case we may get some life out of them. We’ll keep you posted on the outcome. What have we got to lose?

Wade in the water

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We hope you had a good Easter and all is well in the garden now that the good weather is upon us. We’d still advise to take it easy putting tender plants outdoors as you never know what the weather will be like and it’s still only April. We’ve been hardening off the veg plants (pic below) by sticking them outdoors for most of the day to get them used to what it’s like out there in the real world.

The pond (top pic) has really woken up now with some frolicking frogs, the odd newt and goldfish sharing the space. The Lewisham pet shop bought water lily is starting to sprout and we welcome a new addition to the pond, some bare rooted stuck Watermint procured off ebay in an old chimney pot which was elsewhere and now submerged in its rightful place (above).

And we’ve gone right off the idea of the Dalek type compost bin as the old fashioned wood version is doing well and giving off some warmth from the grass clippings after a good old weekly mix using a garden fork.

And while we were writing this post we’ve been listening to the latest This is a music show as recorded by @DazDude4000. It’s a lot better quality this week. Enjoy the Bank Holiday!

Spring may have sprung

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One great thing we love with this gardening lark is the passing on of surplus seeds from one gardener to another. This week we received a little package off a gardening friend with some interesting seeds and stuff that we’ve never grown before (Cheers again Ruth!)

Firstly there was a small envelope with some Amaranth seeds (more on them here) which we’ll be sowing in a sunny area in the garden as they like that. Also in a brown bag was a climber called Mashua which we’ve never heard of before, turns out it’s climbing Nasturtium with deep orange-red trumpet flowers with edible tubers and the young leaves can be eaten in a salad. You learn something every day, especially in gardening!

The other bag contained some Jerusalem Artichokes (aka Sunchoke), we read it’s not like the globe variety but a kind of sunflower with an edible tuber. We’ve also learnt they can spread like wildfire but we will be giving them a go. We’ll keep you posted on how we get on with everything above. Any tips appreciated!

And on the shortwave radio tomorrow evening at 10pm UK time is a repeat of a transmission of a while back of KSOL which features a mix from One Deck Pete called “A bit of sunshine and soul” which feature tunes by Jackie Lee & Delores Hall, Cat Stevens, George McCrae, Carl Bean and Love Unlimited. If you haven’t a shortwave radio you can tune in here.

Keep on keeping on

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We heard some great advice when we were out and about this week and it was a simple “Don’t give up”. Quite apt as we were going to put in some fresh seeds into one of the trays in the propagator in the kitchen windowsill next week as we thought the Cape Gooseberry seed sown in there was shot as the Peppers we planted at the same time now have their seed leaves and are looking good. Then this morning we spotted some action in the tray, patience that’s what gardening’s all about and sometimes we ain’t any!

And this morning we were looking for some fresh Tarragon leaves for a chicken recipe and couldn’t find any so we had a brainwave to pop into Shannon’s and get a live plant. It may be small but give it time…