Category Archives: Jobs to do

Around the world, around the world – Part 2

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A big shout to Jesse Yuen from the excellent North of the River Swan radio show (which is on a sabbatical for the time being) from RTM FM  presently living in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia. He sent us some pics of a job he did yesterday taking Frangipani cuttings that he’s been drying out over the last few weeks.

We don’t really know much about the plant (aka Plumeria) apart from it grows in the subtropics, has distinctive smelling flowers and the plant can only be grown here as a houseplant. Best of luck with the cuttings Jesse, they look like trees compared to the tiny cuttings we usually take over here, blimmim’ eck!

Also a big thanks to our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some more excellent pictures from a Ukrainian countryside garden (below). Cheers Wlad, some great stuff and appreciated as always!

Why ain’t plant varieties named after punk bands?

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Here’s some pics taken around the garden in a week that has has some varying weather to say the least! What was funny was that last Friday the night of a torrential downpour, a couple of hours before that we were meticuously going around the beds with a watering can. Exactly the same thing happened this week across the pond to our good friend Justin Patrick Moore (just before an almighty storm).

The tomatoes (below) we think are the San Mirzano variety we obtained a couple of years ago at a seed swap at Glengall Wharf Gardens SE15. They’re fine tomatoes and wish we had some more! Now these tomatoes appreciate water and also a regular comfrey liquid feed.

And at the bottom of the garden (below) there’s a small bed that has a right mixture of stuff in the tiny space include chillies, some mini-melons and these peppers that we think we may have been given when we swapped some plants earlier this year.

And in the wild bit down there you can’t forget those proud cardoons that are as spikey topped as you like. Punk ain’t dead in that part of the garden, it really ain’t. Why in the world hasn’t anyone named a variety of cardoon Charged GBH or Charlie Harper yet?

When the chips are down

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The back garden path was looking well worn what with weeds growing between the 1970’s inspired crazy paving, very loose slabs and all that combined with a sinister lean towards down the hill. Let’s say it wasn’t the most safest garden path to walk on so the other weekend we made a start on trying to improve it.

First job was to rid the path of the slabs and chuck them by the pond. It’s looking like a concrete jungle up there at the moment so it’s better we don’t show any pictures! The concrete underneath the path would take lots of work to get out so we thought we’d best leave it in.

Over a couple of evenings with 6 bags of woodchip (on offer on Wickes), some decking boards and a couple of lengths of 1″ x 1″ procured we had a go at a wood chip path, allotment style.

We remember a mate telling us a few years ago that there was a craze of people going around pinching estate agents boards for their wooden posts which were being put to better use at local allotments in the production of wood chip paths. We wonder if that was a real thing or were we having our leg pulled? Well anyway those 1″ x 1″ came in well handy for making that path safer and looking a lot better.

Wild plants connect us all

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Last week we received some pictures of local vegetation from our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv, Ukraine spotted while on his daily walk. We sadly haven’t got much knowledge when it comes to foraging but would love to know more about wild plantlife.

As for the picture Wlad sent above, these here are the same flower aren’t they? Those were seen a long while ago in the Welsh countryside (here). As far as we know from a comment posted at the time from our friend Jan, they are Yellow Toadflax. More on the plant here. Thanks for these pics Wlad as they are interesting viewing.

We’ve also just heard from Rich R in the Lake District saying he left the garden for a week and those Fox and Cubs have taken over and are a foot tall. Crazy stuff! Wild plants eh?

It’s those little things

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Even though this growing year is far from over, every year is one of learning for us in the Weeds garden. Even if it’s the old “We won’t be growing that blimmin’ thing again” after a particulary bad crop, we’re always learning. We’ve been loving our trips to Lldl for the peat-free compost and the cheap seeds of theirs and learnt that peat-free compost needs a little helping hand with nutrients but it isn’t that bad for £1.99 and you can transport the bags easily on the bus.

This year we tried spuds in pots and bags which worked, even if they were small on the actual harvest, the chillies in pots are doing just fine (above) and the giant garlic turned out great too. We don’t usually have much sucess with garlic to be honest but we’re happy of the normal to larger garlic (instead of giant) which is now hanging up in the loft to cure (pictures to come). Most of them didn’t divide into seperate cloves so something else was learnt this week: “Garlic needs 30 nights at less than 10C over the winter for the cloves to develop properly. If this doesn’t happen, then you do just get one fat onion-like bulb” Alys Fowler mentioned that here.

And after trying a good few times it’s only this year that we are actually getting some oregano growing in pots. We imagine it’s not that hard to grow it’s just that we haven’t had much luck in the past and the time we went to Shannon’s to buy a plant they didn’t have any so we bought the marjoram instead. We’re well chuffed with the two straggly plants we grew from seed, it’s good being easily pleased.

Where were you in 1982?

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Over the last few days the Cardoon up near the house has been expanding on its neat purple tufts. We don’t grow them to eat but for their great punk rock-like hair arrangement. Talking of the loveable spikey tops, the other morning on Bandcamp we read a great piece on Crass and Anarcho Punk (here) and there was a nice quote from Penny Rimbaud “Crass said that there is no authority but yourself… You know, live your life, find your own garden, and then share it.” We love that quote!

Crass played Birmingham once and the story goes they brought their own PA, support band, fanzine stall etc making it a great DIY event. The only let down of the night was that the beer at the gig was awful. That led to a rumour that the band took the DIY ethic to the nth degree and brought a load of their own home-brew to the venue. We doubt that very much as how much beer would they would have to transport from Dial House in Essex up to Birmingham to keep a few hundred punks happy? If only Crass did produce their own lager. Imagine how good the graphics would be on the bottles/cans too?Another plant we don’t use in the kitchen is Marjoram. We originally bought a plant from Shannon’s as we thought it was an alternative to Oregano and it’s spread like crazy. The bees and all the other winged insects that flock to it in the hot sun certainly love it and it’s well worth having in the garden to keep those insects happy and the masses of flowers look great too!

Report from the garden

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It ain’t The Good Life but we’re starting to get some more edibles out of the garden. The shallots are small but we’re getting a lot of them, that’s the first Zuchinni/Courgette (above) and the chillies are really doing well and there are a good few on the plants. As a good gardening friend of ours said a long time ago “Keep picking the fruit and cutting the flowers and more will come”.

As for our anarchic seed sowing style we have a Cardoon up near the house from when we broke open a seed head and just chucked the seeds around the garden. There are better looking Cardoons up the road but we ain’t complaining especially as they’re from free seed.

And as for the Barley Straw in the pond it does now look like it’s working and been working for a while. The fish seem happy and you can actually see them now!

 

 

This was before the storm

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This morning we knew it was going to be stormy later today so went out early in the morning to put the couple of garden brolleys on their sides and then spotted that a couple of branches from the tree next door were precariously being held up by the fence. They had been blown down in the night and we didn’t even hear any wind and thought all of that windy weather was happening later today (which it did).

About an hour later it was all sorted and everything looked safe and back to normal and the bed below had a lot more light on it than before. Sadly we lost some trusses on one of the tomato plants perched below and god knows if it will survive. You can’t win them all!

And after all the excitement this morning here’s a tune to cheer us up from Minyo Cumbiero called Cumbia del Monte Fuji. There’s a nice dubbed out syn drum middle bit here too. What a tune!

We didn’t sow that

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One plant we always have in the garden mainly through self seeding (thus being a volunteer plant) is the good herb borage. It’s great for the bees and its leaves can be thrown into the comfrey liquid bucket adding some extra goodness into the mix. More on its uses here.

Also if you remember we were a bit fed up of accidently leaving in potatoes when harvesting them and they regrow the year after leaving spuds where you don’t want spuds. One idea we were told about to get around this problem is growing them in a large pot, various containers and even plastic bags so all you have to do is tip the spuds and soil out in one easy action. Here’s one doing well (above) in a green shopping bag with lots of drainage holes in the bottom. Where there’s a will there’s a way as they say.

The fruits of our labour

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We can’t believe that it’s July next week, how time flies (pic above: self-seeded poppy down the garden yesterday). It was just the other week we were thinking if there was going to be a frost or not so we could put those leggy tomato plants out. Gardening is all about patience and just getting on with it, the waiting game so to speak but we’re not very good at that. And talking of tomatoes we’ve got our first trusses of fruit developing on some of the plants we grew from seed (below). That weekly feed of comfrey liquid must be helping as well as sideshooting and a daily water.

The chilli pepper we were given the other week has now got fruits (below) and we were told by the patron of said plant that she started it off very early in January. We’ll be bringing the pot in this winter and see if we can keep it going next year. Peppers and chillies are perennials so we’re told, as it says here “...all peppers – that is sweet peppers and chilli peppers – are perennials, capable of living for several years. Peppers come from the tropics where there is no winter period.” The things you learn eh?It’s funny what with our “sow the seed willy nilly and forget we even sown them” method we still get suprised when something pops up like in the case of the oregano seedlings below. Yes it is in a pot with a plant label with “Oregano” written on it as clear as day but we’re still suprised. Perhaps we should have a colour coded spreadsheet with a map of the garden so we know when we sowed something and where. We reckon that would take the fun out of it though. Happy growing and may that spot of rain we had earlier today further boost up your garden’s growth!