Category Archives: Jobs to do

What the hail?

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Here’s some pictures to convey how bad the weather was yesterday around 5pm in London town. It started as a downpour, then heavier rain and then mad hail! To say it was chucking it down was an understatement. A fast flowing stream appearing under the back gate from the drive and then the hail built up at the start of the lawn and it’s still there now.

Watch those seedlings. We may not be having frosty nights but heavy rain and hail can be a pain. One good thing with all of this rain is that the pond is filling up. That makes a change!

Three’s (not) a crowd

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We spent another couple of hours yesterday “tipping around with a hoe” as they used to say at the council and sorting out what’s what, now the new fence is in. As we cleared the side bed the day before we now can see what can go where.

At the bed at the bottom of the garden (pic above top) are a couple of cardoons that are now on their third year now after getting them originally from Shannon’s knowing nothing too much about the plant. I mean we don’t now that much about them now apart from the plants soar up to seven feet high and their thistle-like flowers attract bees and all sorts of pollinators in droves.

There’s also a globe artichoke next to the cardoonswhich we obtained after doing a swap with a mate at a local community garden for some egyptian walking onion bulbs (another “out there” plant). We’ll keep you posted on how they get on this year but do have a look at getting a cardoon or two if you fancy a bonkers looking plant!

About the weather

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We’ve just found out that it’s supposedly going to be sunny and 16° this Saturday, how mad is that? And it was only a couple of weeks ago we had snow!

There’s also signs of life in the herb pots we started off (above: Basil) using the indoor house plant compost as we don’t want to invite those fungus gnats back into the house. We were told that the supermarket bought herb plants also have been known to house the critters. Fingers crossed we don’t get the small clouds of them this year as we’ve had in the past.

We popped into Shannon’s this week and got a few bags of compost for the raised beds in the back, more indoor houseplant compost for starting off some seeds (as we don’t want to take any chances!) and some seed potatoes which are presently chitting by the window in the back room. There’s the argument that chitting don’t do that much as they’ll grow anyway but we’ve done it for a few years now and they always seem to help the plants get a good start. We may also use the “cut ’em in half” technique to get twice as many potato plants to plant. More on the process of chitting here. Here’s to the start of the gardening season.

And here’s a nice and melllow tune from Sum Total called Bakery for a Thursday evening in lockdown.

Holding back the tiers

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We go up another tier level this week, how are we going to cope with another lockdown? You can’t really go out in the garden as it’s a bit wet even though there’s been some warmer weather promised later this week. One job we will do is to get some gnat-free herb plants going on the kitchen windowsill after a summer of constant clouds of fungus gnats on our old pots. We’ve watered from the bottom and put up sticky traps and now going to admit defeat and starting again from scratch. More about the gnats and how to protect against them here.

We took some advice from the folks at Shannon’s and bought some indoor houseplant potting mix which should be free of any gnat’s eggs, put the old plants outside and give the actual pots a good clean with some disinfectant and then rinsed them through a few times for luck. It’s a bit early to be sowing anything really serious but we may start off a bit of basil (above: a few packs of seeds bought off ebay the other week) off in a pot with a see-through plastic bag on the top as a temporary greenhouse. As soon as the seeds show signs of propagation we’ll take the plastic off as to stop any damping off occurring.

Next summer we may be experiencing “a new normal” in the kitchen (ie. without clouds of gnats flying about or those sticky traps that don’t look too nice with lots of dead flies on them!)

The weather it is a-changin’

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Wow, it’s December can you believe? No wonder it’s freezing out there and the rest of the week looks like it’s going to be getting colder. We’ve heard from our gardening pals in Cincinnati  (Cheers Justin!) and Freiberg, Germany (Cheers Jazz’min) where they’ve had their first dusting of snow so I doubt it won’t be long until we’ll get some.

Those dahlias were still looking fine last weekend but we reckon it won’t be long till the frost comes and blackens the plants when it will be time again to dig them all up and stick them somewhere frost free and dry for the rest of the winter, keeping an eye out for any rotting or mouldy tubers while they’re in storage.

We can’t complain as those spikey orange ones have been great this year, flowering right up until we last looked so going to the effort of digging them up and storing them indoors is a small price to pay for a few more years of the same.

And the nice plastic looking pink variety we were given this year was great too (cheers Marc).

And the beds in front of the Dad corner (that has been productive this year thanks to the new raised beds) have been tidied up a bit and now ready for the winter. In the pic you will notice a couple of cabbage stalks that we left when we cut the leaves off them. Not sure if it will happen over the winter but usually when you cut them off like that, the leaves grow back again. Value for money or what?

Is there anybody out there?

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The bed at the bottom of the garden is always a bit of a problem as it only gets sunlight in the late afternoon. At the present moment the nasturtiums have taken over and so has the borage behind them. We haven’t had a hard frost yet so it’s looking a little wild to say the least!

If you can remember we were going to “rest” the bed and fill it with the Thompson and Morgan Beneficial Flower seeds mix then COVID 19 came along. We were so fed up that one of the local shops had a 3 potato per person rule we put in a couple of rows of spuds plus some onions and broad beans there (see the  bed in July here). After they were harvested in mid-August we gave the bed a good tidy up (here) and boy has it grown since!

The state of play at the moment is a Globe Artichoke root (1) we did a swap with a mate at a local community garden (for some Egyptian walking onion bulbs) is now starting to grow and the brilliant cardoons (2 and 3) we bought at Shannon’s a few years ago have starting sprouting again. Talk about value for money! And in the middle of the crazy nasturtiums are a couple of rows of autumn sown broad beans (4). When will the growing ever end?

The day the worm(s were) turned

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We spent an enjoyable hour out the back this afternoon just before the light began to fade and the air got colder. We did have plans of what we were actually going to do beforehand but an unknown force (guilt perhaps?) made us get a garden fork and head down the Dalek bin and give the heap one last turn.

Things are slowing up down there and the egg boxes we didn’t rip up a few weeks ago had to be done as half an large egg box don’t break down half as well as tiny pieces of egg box especially now that winter is nearly upon us.

Whilst turning with the fork using an ungloved hand our knuckles were grazed on the side as usual. When will we ever learn that those Daleks are okay but nothing beats your wooden made square bin with some carpet thrown on the top as a lid.

Compost ingredients in the picture above includes (fact fans): guinea pig straw (plus waste), egg boxes and a couple of sprouting onions. We’ll lift the lid off in the spring to see how it has progressed.

The next job if we get the time soon is to clean up the pond a bit as it’s looking a bit rough. We think it may have sprung a small leak as the brick to the bottom right of the pond has been visible for a long while now even though over the past few months we’ve had a bit of rain. The oxgenating plant that has taken over needs a clear out too. Pond life eh? It never stops!

Misty in dub

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The weather’s been alright up until last night when it felt more like winter. We even had a visit from the Lewisham Heron yesterday who couldn’t get any of the fish in the pond due to the fine pea netting thrown over the top and gave up his statuesque posing after a few minutes. This morning we woke up to the above, mist galore. We reckon they’ll be a few jobs to be done in the garden this weekend, digging up dahlia tubers maybe one of them!

And here’s a great tune for those cold dark nights indoors, A man called Adam‘s Tic Toc (Disco Rockers Dub). It’s excellent stuff indeed, a nice off the wall dub mix reminding us of those great dub B sides on scratchy seventies seven inchers.

Which made us think of another great interpretation of dub from Bronx Dogs of Sizzla’s Rain Showers another piece of clever mixer madness with some nice cut ups thrown in plus what sounds like Tubby’s “Squawky”. A nice tune that works very well even at 33!

And while we’re looking back a few years here’s a great tune Imperial from Lazy Boy that has a lovely dub interlude at 1.16 mins in which could go on for ever in our eyes!

Dub don’t you just love it?

The return of the golden birch

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We had some nice weather during lockdown yesterday and during the lunch break (as we’re working from home) did a little bit of tidying up in the garden. Little and often as they say, even if it is just walking up and down the garden path wielding a pair of snippers and clipping here and there (cutting off the odd dead tomato and courgette stalk). It’s still gardening though isn’t it?

The stuff we sowed in the raised beds at the start of lockdown are still making progress, there’s some beetroot to be harvested, probably two parsnips and the odd tiny lettuce. It ain’t the good life for sure but it’s the life for us!

The upside down terrarium/fish bowl found in the street certainly gets used in the Weeds garden, it might have been moved yesterday to cover a pepper plant that is still going strong but previous to that it was keeping a bit of sprouting ginger and some garlic seedlings warm.

And just to prove it ain’t spring, our silver birch found in the street three years ago here is turning a lovely old shade of golden. It is November you know? The dahlias don’t seem to know it though! #lockdownlunchbreak

On the first weekend of lockdown Argos sent to we…

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It was a lovely morning, this the first saturday of the second UK lockdown so a bit of gardening was in order. It was only a light bit of gardening as we don’t know how long we’ll be locked inside for this time so we’ll make all the jobs stretch just in case. Anyway with gardening we at Weeds always prefer the “little and often” approach every time.

It was mainly a tidy up of the beds in front of the “Dad corner”, getting rid of the old tomato plants and whatever had self-seeded there. As you can see we’ve a new feature, (well we’ve had it for ages but it’s been hidden by self-seeded nasturtiums) part of the front wall that came down when we took out the ivy that was holding it up in the first furlough.

Also yesterday we threw out an Argos slow cooker we had for years that was on its last legs not before commandeering the inner crockpot as something to stick over the rhubarb crowns to keep them warm and come spring “force” the rhubarb to grow that little bit earlier. We know an old crockpot is not as good as candlelight in heated outbuildings (that’s the commercial way of forcing rhubarb. More about the practice here) but it don’t look too out of place in the garden. If they ask, we’ll tell people that it’s an expensive “dedicated rhubarb forcer/warmer” bought on HP from a specialist plant supplier (no mention of Argos either).

There were even a few forgotten spuds from the raised bed found too! Gardening during lockdown brings many suprises!