Category Archives: Raised Bed of the month

Keep off the stones, please

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Cheers to Justin Patrick Moore for letting us know that Tele Novella have a new tune out and guess what it’s called? Ring of stones. There’s too many coincidences here! Cheers Justin. And as the band say themselves “Supernatural Medieval vibes!”

And someone mentioned this series from many many years ago (below), we have never watched it but know it is a bit bonkers and involves standing stones and has some out there music featured in it.

We are ending the standing stones blog series now.

Until the next time we mention it.

In the Doctor’s garden of dub

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A big shout to our old friend Dr Strangedub Radio DJ and Dub Gardener who presents the great show called The Echo Chamber (with DJ Baby Swiss) on KFAI from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul. It’s on every Wednesday from 2:00 to 6:00 am (8am-12 noon UK time), if you love dub, reggae and all sorts of bass business you’ll love the show. Tune in live at the allotted time here. 

Thanks to the good doctor for sending over some snaps of what’s growing in his yard at the moment. We love the tomatoes (everyone else’s is doing better than ours, we are not jealous, honest!), the herb container and the raised bed and the stairs look like a good place to sit and chill on a summer’s evening. Cheers Dr Strangedub, keep in touch and update us through the growing season! Cheers for the plays of the One Deck & Popular, Madtone and Jasmine & Madtone tunes throughout the years.

Vampire freaks and gardening

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A big thanks goes out to Spike from Morschen43 from a very sunny and hot Le Puy-en-Velay, France for keeping us regularly updated about his great garden in the mountains (here). The other day he sent us pictures including some of how his tomatoes are doing.

We were only saying to ourselves the other day that we think the feed we are using (all-purpose feed rather than a specific tomato feed) is making the leaves dark green and were wondering were we feeding them too much nitrogen? We’ve now got a couple of flower trusses starting to show on our plants so they may be okay but looking at Spike’s plants with some large size fruits growing we’re not so sure.

The plants are looking well happy and we love the classic companion planting of Marigolds above (there’s a nice bit about companion planting here). Spike was telling us when he bought the plants they included these varieties below which we’ve never heard of before and they sound well interesting:

The Beef Heart “A heritage variety with a most unusual heart shape fruit. Beefsteak type with excellent flavour and few seeds. Ripens to deep red.”
www.mammothonion.co.uk

Black Crimea “An old, heirloom variety AKA ‘Black Krim’, this sweet and spicy beefsteak tomato has a wonderful aroma and distinctive dark reddish-brown skin ideal for soups, slicing and sauces. Named after the peninsula, ‘Black Crimea’ each olive-shouldered fruit can weigh in at 350g each!”
www.rhsplants.co.uk

Andean horned “Tomato Bellandine, sometimes nicknamed Horn of the Andes, is an indeterminate cordon variety producing long, elegant plum-shaped fruits. Each tomato typically weighs 180 – 230 g and measures up to 18 cm long. The flesh is firm, very fleshy, and almost seedless, delivering an excellent sweet flavour with a rich aroma.”
www.simplyseed.co.uk

Alongside the pictures of the tomatoes he sent us a picture (below) of the vine growing across the house which they got off a neighbour of his grand parents in Troyes (Capital of the Champagne region). Great stuff Spike. Do keep updating us as we appreciate it here!

If you love a bit of rock/punk and a bit of reggae, ska, dub, metal, hard rock, tune into Spike’s Vampirefreaks radio show here. The shows are archived here.

Standing stones in a yard sale style

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Cheers to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore, for sending us the flyer for his yard sale that was on Saturday that featured some standing stones “Callanish Stones I think..” There’s some great standing stone coincidence vibes going on. Cheers Justin!

Get plugged into the solstice

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Want to see the Sun rise over the heel stone at 04.52 am tomorrow and enjoy some true solstice vibes from the comfort of your own home/bed?

Feeling a bit too long in the tooth for standing in the cold all night, and listening to the sound of early morning drumming workshops with no sleep is not the aural delight it used to be? Tune into the above youtube for some genuine solstice vibes piped to you via the internet. Put on your best Stonehenge slippers, have some tea and toast ready and watch that magic moment when the sun rises.

A Happy Solstice to you all, whatever time it is where you are and wherever you’ll be celebrating the solstice.

We love the stories of the good old days when Ken Barlow used to turn up at a Stonehenge solstice and you could sit on top of the stones and watch whilst Hawkwind played “Silver Machine” as the sun came up. All for Free! Unfortunately we didn’t go to any of the festivals there but attempted it once and missed it by one day. The convoy was driving off when we got there.

Big up Wally Hope by the way, organiser of the Stonehenge Festival. Without him there would be no Crass and without Crass there would be no Crass-like Anarchic seed sowing method that we use.

It ain’t in FM stereo, but we like it!

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Earlier this afternoon we tuned into Downbeat on Shortwave (brought to us via Imaginary Stations) using The University of Twente’s online SDR here. Propagation wasn’t brilliant but we got a signal, unlike the sound of static on our shortwave receiver at home. Hopefully tomorrow’s conditions will be better and the later timing of the transmission helps. Here’s what was heard.

Imaginary Stations bring you music you don’t usually hear on the shortwaves every week and has an archive that is well worth looking through here. Expect the unexpected as they say and a whole lot more! Never mind the genre, it’s all about great music on the shortwave bands with some added remixing thanks to the ionosphere and those groundwaves.

Tune in here tomorrow at 1300 UTC (2pm UK) and 2000 UTC (9pm UK) for some chilled out sounds from Jesse Yuen and One Deck Pete. A big shout to all the Imaginary Stations crew: Fred and NanSea, Justin Patrick Moore and Marc from Belgium. Here’s to more eclectic programming on shortwave!

And over in France

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Thanks to Spike from Morschen43 in Le Puy-en-Velay, for sending over more pictures of his house and garden over there. It looks like they’re enjoying some lovely weather right now too.

We mentioned in the post the other day (here) that we loved the use of an old staircase to put window boxes on and here’s a couple here above with also a nice table from a restaurant in the Marais in Paris which was originally green and has now painted black. Nice stuff.

Another thing we love is the use of fossils (above) and some fossilised wood (below) in the garden as well. The fossilised wood was from his father who used to swap fossils and minerals with a friend in Bourgogne (aka Burgundy). Really great ideas Spike!

It’s mediterranean in the Midlands

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The sun is out in full force in south London today, looks like our friends Mike & Julia have got the same up near Coventry. Mike sent us a couple of pictures of their “Mediterranean themed patio in the actual sun!” It looks brilliant, and there’s some lovely ideas going on there. Do keep sending us more pictures as things progress, ta again for the pictures and try and keep cool up there today.

We didn’t see Gene October sadly

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A million thanks to Araba for getting us tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show this week (above, the crowd in full swing). We didn’t take half as many pictures as we should have, but here’s a couple of snaps of stuff that really caught our eye!

Belfast sinks and taking cuttings

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We’ve a couple of weeks off work so we’re trying to get some jobs done around the garden, weather permitting. The first job was done on Monday, which was getting rid of a load of roots of a climber that had taken over a large Belfast sink. Once they were taken out and transferred by a B&Q quid bucket to the wild area at the bottom of the garden, the massive sink was moved by hand using some bits of wood, a garden fork and spade.

The sink is now in its new position and we’re using all the space to the maximum. It now contains three tomato plants (complete with canes found in the street), a couple of Defender marigolds and some freshly sowed free herb seeds (thanks to Penny Golightly for the marigolds and passing on the information of the free seeds from the Wildlife Trust as part of their 30 Days Wild initiative. By the way, the offer is still on here.)

And now after years of not doing so, we are finally getting to realise that taking cuttings isn’t that hard, all you have to do is keep your fingers crossed that they take. Here’s some cat mint (nepeta) that has now taken and even flowering.

 

This evening going to hit the sack early as we’re off to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show tomorrow, we’ve never been before and have no idea what to expect. We’ll be bringing you a report as soon as we can. We’ll be the ones walking around the site with the large framed rucksack on our backs.