Category Archives: Jobs to do

A potato finale plus animal nightlife

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And here are the last of the spuds we dug up yesterday as we don’t want them going rotten with all the wet weather we probably get in the forthcoming months. These were originally from seed spuds we bought from Shannon’s and it’s taken us years to work out if you leave the potatoes in for longer they will grow larger. Sometimes it takes a while for the penny to drop. But when it does…

Also the other week we noticed a small tin of opened sweet corn and an opened bread packet down by the pond and thought nothing of it. Then we found that something had severed the lead from the little solar panel that powers the battery of the pond pump. Now yesterday we found they’ve all been severed. We have a couple of cats and they usually keep the vermin away and we’ve never had anything like this before. Any ideas?

Could the above be anything to do with it? We have a big pile of broken slabs piled up at the back of the pond (that we took from the area that has now been seeded) do you reckon there’s something that has made their home in there who likes gnawing through wires? Rodents perhaps? Suggestions please. We are putting an ad on Gumtree today for anyone who wants a load of 70’s slabs for free as hardcore for an old shed or something. That should do the trick to clear the area. Trouble is we still have to buy another pond pump next year. That’ll be the third in as many years, damn!

Smells like teen spirit? No.

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We here at Weeds swear by comfrey liquid used as a plant feed. Ours is made well out of the way at the bottom of the garden in a 1980’s Boots homebrew fermenting bin. A good few handfuls of the leaves of the plant are chucked in the bin alongside a few of borage and nettle and are left to rot in a small amount of water for a good few weeks weighed down with a housebrick, talk about simplicity!

It’s a brilliant feed used well diluted but what of the pong you may ask? Comments heard the last few times we’ve used it have ranged from “that smell is blxxdy awful!” to “that’s worse than the wiff of a thousand dirty ashtrays” to “urgghhh, that reminds me of body odour off a sweaty armpit stuck in your face on a tube at rush hour times ten”. Never mind the niff, it’s brilliant stuff, it’s cheap and works wonders! #comfreyliquidforever #comfreyplantfeediswhereitsat More comfrey info here.

Seek, and ye shall find my friend

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We weren’t feeling too hot over the xmas and new year period as another damn cold/flu struck, but as the garden was looking a bit on the neglected side an hour or so had to be designated to a bit of outdoor tidying up. This one was for the bed next to the garage that  earlier this year contained tomatoes, sweet peas and dahlias amongst other things (past posts about said plants in all their glory are in the links).

We dug up all the dahlia tubers carefully (some of them are the size of big spuds!) which are now drying out under the stairs even though last year we took a chance and left them in and they did wonderful this summer (post here). More on lifting the tubers here.

We even replanted a silver birch (one we found a couple of years ago in a Tesco’s bag with a note that said “Take me” on it outside a house locally see post here) that was originally by the pond but hopefully it will do better at the end of the bed. We’ll be probably moving it again as it’s so near the old garage wall but let’s see.

And as protection from forthcoming cold weather we stuck one of the plastic mini-cloches from another find, which followed the same pattern as before; left outside a house with a note with “Take me” on it (post here) over the Foxtail Lily that’s started to sprout a bit prematurely.

So wrap up warm, happy gardening and keep em peeled as Shaw Taylor used to say.

Keeping it short and sweet

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Little and often is an apt saying when it comes to gardening. The job for today was to tidy up the bed at the bottom of the garden that had gone a bit haywire (above). There was a fair bit of weeding to do and pulling up of dead Nasturtiums that were left to their own devices followed by a good old forking over. It looks like a proper vegetable bed now (below) rather than a bombsite!
In the process we found a couple of spuds that were missed when we initially harvested them in the autumn and also found a few dried out pods of some heirloom French climbing beans we bought at the Roots and Shoots Potato Day earlier this year. That’s one less packet of seeds we’ll have to purchase then!

Talking of Potato Days and Roots and Shoots here’s the next event in a few weeks time and one well worth going to!
London Potato Fair/Roots & Shoots Potato Day
9th and 10th February 2019 11.00am-2.30pm
Roots & Shoots 
Walnut Tree Walk
Lambeth, SE11 6DN
http://www.roots&shoots.org
FREE ADMISSION
More details on this and more such like events (all across the UK) at this site here.

And here’s a festive treat from The Groove Thief from KGNU Community Radio’s “Dub Palace” show. The mix includes some heavyweight bass from RSD, Prophet, Johnny Clarke and our very own Madtone with “Compost your mind”. 

A happy and prosperous 2019 to one and all from us at Weeds!

After the sun has gone

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Last weekend was a corker when it came to sunshine as on Sunday the temperature in London reached 20 odd degrees. The lawn was cut and a good load of jobs were completed and we even gave the seedlings (tomatoes, brussels sprouts, peppers and walking onion) that are on their way indoors a bit of a break in the sun.

Very much influenced by (episode 4 of) Jane Perrone’s On The Ledge podcast combined with the fact that in our seed tray were a few dealer bags with a tiny amount of seeds in them (cress, peas, beetroot, lettuce, coriander, basil and more) that needed to be sown, we filled a large pot full of multi-purpose compost and threw them all in. Come a couple of weeks time we’ve have some micro-greens to accompany our dinner!Traditionally this week (Good Friday) is the time for putting seed potatoes in (so the late great Joe Maiden used to say on his radio show with Tim Crowther). We aren’t too sure if we’ll be doing ours as it’s still cold out and as someone once told us at a potato fair, as soon as it’s warm enough to put your hand in the ground for ten seconds without it feeling cold that’s when you should put your spuds in. Sounds like good advice!

And while you’re waiting for your ground to heat up here’s a nice bit of mix-up business from one Mr Andrew Weatherall on Rinse FM the other week (8.04.2017).

What’s in the mix?

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Life is all about what’s in the mix and the above is what we recently found after clearing out our compost bin of its organic matter. There’s some surprises: a sonic screwdriver (for God’s sake), a silver teaspoon and a plastic bag with some Caesar Salad mix in it! It’s frightening as we think we’re really careful of what we put in the heap.

As for our latest bit of listening pleasure: the Rhythm Doctor’s audio mix for FatCat records (above), there’s no unwanted rubbish in there! Listen out for the following!

 

Gardening at the speed of light

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rots-and-shoots_dec16We had to do a bit of speed gardening today (at the pace a council worker would go at if their foreman had said “as soon as you’re finished you can go home”) as we’d left it a bit late in the afternoon when we started. There were good intentions to begin earlier but you know how it is on a Sunday.speed-gardening-bed-afterIn the space of an hour, a couple of beds were dug over, some plants moved, lost root veg rescued and the Lemon Verbena hopefully protected for the winter. There’s still a good few beds to crack on with but at least we’ve started. The more you get out of the way now the less work it is in the spring. It’s just making that start!another-clean-bed

Tuber labelles

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tuber-labellesThe sun was out today so went out and pulled up a couple of weather-bashed dahlias. The foliage on the plants have now turned black after the frosts so it’s time to bring the tubers in for the winter.

It’s a simple process, you leave on few inches of the stalk at the top, knock off as much as soil as possible on the tuber (and carefully remove any damaged parts), leave to dry off for a week or two and then keep in a frost free place (under the stairs is good.) Keep a check of them over winter and come next year they’ll be ready to go out again. If you leave them in the ground (which you can if you want to risk it) there’s a good chance they’ll turn to mush! More on lifting Dahlias here.

And this week’s dahlia of the week is the brilliantly named bed head (below). I’ve just seen on the web too the statement “don’t write off dahlias as your granny’s flower” and with varieties called “Poppers”, “Blah, Blah, Blah” and “Rave Machine” they certainly are not!

bed-head-dahliaI also checked the compost heap I hadn’t touched for a good year and it’s looking great. That lot won’t be sitting in that bin for long! Don’t look too closely in the bin as there’s two elastic bands, a piece of string, a paper clip and a plastic spoon. How did they get in there?compost-and-elastic-bands

Songs to sow seeds to

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Songs to sow seeds to

Here’s the first in a regular monthly series of tunes to accompany your seed sowing. It’s February and still a bit early, but for the eager beavers out there you can sow a few in the greenhouse or on that plastic propagator on the kitchen windowsill.

We’ve got our tomatoes just on their seed leaf stage at the moment and there’s some mini-peppers coming through too but you could also start off your aubergines, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, calabrese, onion seeds and start chitting your spuds if you haven’t already.

And here’s a tune by Digid called Revolution Sound out on the Lion Charge label to crank up loud while preparing your seed sowing (making sure the compost has been warmed up a bit by being indoors for a few days beforehand rather than stone cold from the outside.) Sow on and sow forth.

Hand in glove

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glove

I made a bit of a slip-up today and now have to buy a new pair of gardening gloves.

I was tidying up a comfrey plant that was getting out of control and snipped off some excess leaves as you do. I then decided to add the cuttings into some comfrey liquid that’s been fermenting in a bucket down the bottom of the garden for a couple of months or so.

The leaves went in, followed by my (gardening) gloved hands. The gloves had to be thrown away straight away and my hands thoroughly scrubbed!

I’m still haunted by that smell of rotting comfrey and can’t get the putrid smell out of my nostrils. Horrible stuff! (More on how to make liquid comfrey feed here.)