There’s a new day and time slot for The Dirt on Radio Fab International from today. Tune in every Monday night from 7-9pm here for “a gardening programme like no other.” Tonight’s show featured some great tips on compost by Geoff Garrad (including rip up your tea bags before putting them in the heap or they’ll never rot), sausages and calories in alcohol amongst other things.
Our contribution to the show this week is also about composting. I had so many failures with my early heaps I went on a great “composting in the city” course (taught by our good friend Scarlett) and I’ve imparted a couple of things I learnt that day.
SFTS is 20.55 minutes into the podcast which is available here and on iTunes. Record of the week is from Dillinger with the track called Ragnampizer. Keep on rotting y’all!
Sounds from The South13 – Nightmare in New Cross Our contribution to The Dirt this week is a true halloween tale set deep in South London. Tune of the week is from the The Wailers with Fire, Fire. This is the last show on a Sunday night when The Dirt moves to it’s new spot on a Monday, same time, same channel. Keep it locked!
Have a listen on play again here and Sounds from The South is 7.30 minutes in. Cheers again to Si, Ricky and Paul!
Three corkers this week, one from the back garden and two from Ross Allen and Andrew Hale’s brilliant show on Misoul available here.
The above is the squash/blue pumpkin harvested this evening. This is the first time I’ve ever had success with squashes, I got this specimen (which was the only one) from a plant that I constantly watered and fed weekly during the summer. It went all sprawling over the shop, but it was worth it for this mad looking thing with weird eyelashes! Big up the squash!
Johnny Clarke – Babylon – Cha Cha And here’s two corkers from Ross and Andrew’s excellent show on Misoul, it’s been a while since listening to it and the first time back I wasn’t disappointed. The first is the excellent Johnny Clarke with Babylon, a Jah Shaka favourite which has a great dub too.
Gloria Ann Taylor – Love is a hurting thing Next is a tune I’ve never heard before and one that puts me in mind of Siouxsie and the Banshees “Happy House” and Eddie Kendricks’ “Girl you need a change of Mind” with Liberace at the controls! Don’t listen too hard to the mix as the kick drum is well up front. Two tunes to take your mind of the bad weather of late!
I was feeling well fed up towards the end of last week then I twigged, I hadn’t done anything in the garden for a couple of weeks.
So as soon as I got in from work Friday night I got the old flymo out, tidied up the lawn, picked some tomatoes, green beans and the few parsnips (in a That’s Life stylee) I sowed way back in February. Now all I need to do is make a start on the weeding…
And here’s how the sweet corn is getting on, not brilliant but better than the time I tried a few years ago. Only small cobs at the moment.When that old gardening lark goes well, it’s a grand old life!
Stephen Marley feat. Sizzla & Capleton – Rock Stone (Revelation Part II: The Fruit of Life)
A massive birthday shout out to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim for Thirty years of the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire. Well worth tuning into Live on a Saturday night from Midnight to 2am on Sunday or on Listen again here. Cheers for the One Deck & Popular and Madtone radio plays in the past, it’s appreciated!
On last week’s show Fenny replayed his first record he ever spun on the show, one that I’ve never heard before by the ace Mark Perry (I’m very partial to Mark’s delivery of Reggae, ATV’s Life after Life is one of my favourite ever tunes!) with a cover of a BB Seaton/Ken Boothe’s “Whole world’s down on me.” I didn’t even know of that one either. Cheers to On The Wire for passing on their musical knowledge yet again!
While we’re on the subject of great radio shows, a big shout goes out to our good friend Dr Strangedub for playing a track off Hayereyah’s new CD on this week’s (September 10th) Echo Chamber on KFAI available on listen again here. Big up the radio!
Thanks to the Rt Hon David Rodigan for informing us about this video of the excellent single from Protoje featuring Chronixx the tune of which we stuck on weeds a few weeks ago. Have a look at the smartly dressed taxi driver, does he look familiar?
This morning I had a look at the excellent vertical veg website (run by Mark Ridsdill Smith who picked out that corker of a tune from Bessie Banks on The Dirt the other week) and found some great tips for growing tomatoes. I’ve a few plants in the ground, one in a well overcrowded hanging basket (plonked inside another hanging basket, novel eh?) and others in reused ready-mix cement buckets up near the house.I’ve staked them up with bamboo canes, give them a regular water, a weekly feed and take off any sideshoots so all the plants energy goes into making the fruit. When the plant has formed about 4 or 5 trusses I nip out the top except the hanging basket one which I’ll leave. Most have been raised from seed except the ones kindly given to us from Dig This Nursery, who will be having their annual tomato festival on the 9th of August and know a thing or two about toms!On vertical veg, Mark speaks to a guy called Nick Chenhall who runs the website Tomato Growing about growing the ‘umble tom in growbags and containers. Some brilliant tips on the video (see it here) like feeding them little and often (dilute the feed more than you usually would) and one mad one I’ve never heard before, adding a cup of used washing up water to your watering can once every couple of weeks which acts as a wetting agent, and helps bring back moisture to areas that have dried out.
Even better, at the end of the video the guy from Tomato Growing is seen serenading the toms in his polytunnel with a classical guitar. It’s that old music/gardening connection again, brilliant! Me, I will be playing mine some happy hardcore and see if that gets results!
Temples – Move with the Season (Beyond the Wizzards Sleeve remix) – Heavenly
It’s been a lovely day today so there’s been a bit of flymo-ing, weeding, sowing root veg of the beetroot and carrot variety and this evening, big action with the garden hose, all the while wondering if all those tales about watering in sunshine are true.
Then this evening it starts to chuck it down. Brilliant, as usual I am bang on with my timing. To accompany this tale of gardening woe here’s some mad Eroll Alkan/Richard Norris business on a well trippy tip and if it weren’t so blimmin warm I’d get me kaftan on. But then again if I did, I wouldn’t be able to give it large to the tune below.
Thanks to our good mate Will J for passing this mad tune on. Is that the sound of bagpipes? And I do love the punk rock style ending!
Augustus Pablo – Thunder Clap/ Ken Boothe – Ain’t No Sunshine
In the video above there’s a scene from a pub called The Enterprise which I’m convinced was the one in Camberwell where in the 1980’s I had my first “sunday afternoon stop back” to a soundtrack of old reggae, classic soul and clinking beer glasses plus a free plate of chicken, rice and peas from the generous landlord Louis when everyone else was going home to their sunday roast. In the good old days London pubs used to close at 2.30 then reopen at 7, bonkers!
Talking of which, the weather’s also been bonkers today, while I’m writing this, it’s tipping it down with added thunder and lightning. Yet at just gone 9 this morning the sun was blazing, so a bit of early “tipping about” was in order so I tidied up the beds down the left hand side of the garden. This can you believe was once where a couple of greenhouses stood before one of the previous owners smashed them up. Criminal isn’t it? I’d love a greenhouse (with heating, hi-fi and disco lighting of course!)The beds nearest the house contain peas, one solitary cabbage, onions, rhubarb, parsnips, beetroot and carrots. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the beds, (I mean just one solitary cabbage!) some rows go north to south and some go east to west. The raised bed to the side of them (made from a couple of scaffolding boards found in a skip) contain runner beans and raspberries (I was given a bag of roots with shoots that a friend of mine was going to chuck out when he was thinning out his raspberry patch on his allotment.) The bed furthest away has a dwarf plum tree, three tomato plants, a couple of courgettes, a pumpkin which is now starting to wander, some borage for the bees to the side and a couple of houseplants that are having a “summer break” in the terrarium/fishbowl thing in the middle. Pick and mix jazz-gardening or what? Talking of tomatoes, I heard a great tip on last week’s episode of The Dirt, don’t forget to give your tomato flowers a light shake to help the pollen on it’s way. Good eh?
I found out the other day there was a tomato with the great name of Reggae Roma (aka the humble italian plum tomato that you get in tins in the supermarket.) I mean with a name like that, we had to grow one here! There was only one place that would know about getting them and that’s Dig This Nursery in New Cross (a garden centre, an organic food shop with a second-hand record shop in the back, what more do you want!) It’s my nearest tomato specialist and has over 90 odd varieties of tomatoes! Yes, 90+ varieties!
Tonight I popped in after work and a big thanks goes to Mihaly for sorting us out with a couple of roma plants. He’s one person who knows a thing or two about tomatoes if anyone does and knows a bit about growing them (some info here.)
The plants will be put in the ground first thing in the morning, in a hole filled with with a couple of ripped up comfrey leaves and then well watered to give the roots a healthy start.
We love the name here (it’s supposedly because the hanging fruits look like dreadlocks, huh?), what next, a cabbage named “trap”, a strain of dub-step carrots and a variety of onions that are “balearic”? Get on one matey!
Sounds from The South 14 – Viva la rot
I was feeling well fed up towards the end of last week then I twigged, I hadn’t done anything in the garden for a couple of weeks.
Weeds up to me knees 