Category Archives: Raised Bed of the month

Get those buckets out, possibly

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This scene is from a couple of years ago but this weekend we may go back in the time machine and relive it as it’s going to be 2°C overnight on Sunday, supposedly.

We’ve got spuds that have sprouted and even some coriander seed that have propagated outdoors so it’s better to be safe than sorry. We reckon give it a couple of more weeks and we’ll be out of the danger zone but then again remember that snappy old-time gardening saying “Button to chin, till May be in, cast not a clout, till May be out. If you lose your seed spuds you will get angry and swear and shout”.

The sun’s out this morning, the sky is blue but it’s still nippy. Whether we’ll be in the garden today for long is another thing. So for this sunny morning, here’s a tune by Billy Hope with Riding West which has a bit of a Steptoe and Son vibe to it.

Spring must be here!

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Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.

Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.

We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
So cheers Mike and Julia for sending in the pictures of your great garden and do let us know how things are going later this season!

 

Who needs patience when you have a bin bag or two?

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We’ve had those seed spuds for a couple of weeks now and they ain’t half burning a hole in our pockets. We’ve an egg box with a handful of them chitting away by the back room window, a couple went in in the cold frame (an old window frame found in a skip, balanced on bricks) and we’ve just put two in each raised bed down the side even though it’s a liitle bit early to be putting in Maris Pipers.

We stuck a bin bag over the bed, made a rough hole in the plastic so light will show through and stuck the seed potato directly under it. We then covered it with compost and now we’re keeping our fingers crossed that they survive any forthcoming frosts. On two of them we have put some old wire shelving from a plastic greenhouse to stop certain felines (ours) stop digging up the soil and leaving presents. Seed spuds we wish you luck!

And music today is one from a long time go from Cosmos called Summer In Space (Mark Harmonic 33 Mix). It’s a lovely chilled out number for a Sunday.

And as we have a lack of patience when it comes to gardening here’s Nish Wadada with Patience Dub. It’s a lovely bit of dub!

What a difference a day makes (again)

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Saturday was a lovely day so we tipped around in the garden, done some weeding and tidied up. Some seed spuds were sown in the old window frame on bricks (halfway in the picture on the left hand side). The rest of the spuds we procured from B&Q were put in empty egg boxes next to the window in the back room to start off the chitting process.

Come Sunday though, it was grey all day and from mid-morning constant drizzle but one thing with rain, even if you’ve just scratched the top layer of soil in a bed it makes it look great like you’ve spent hours working on it. Viva the good weather!

Rainbows over Lewisham

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Yesterday the weather forecast on the telly said it was officially the first day of spring even though we thought spring started around the (spring) solstice but what do we know? We’ve just looked online and here’s the official line: “The spring season associated with the vernal equinox, called astronomical spring, occurs on or around March 20, but meteorologists recognize March 1st as the first day of meteorological spring, which is based on annual temperature cycles and the Gregorian calendar.” Ah so now we know.

It’s been a weird mix of rain and sunshine here today and on the way back from an early morning jaunt to see if they had any gardening based centre-aisle specials in Lewisham Lidl, we caught a rainbow (above).

This afternoon between the showers we tidied up the bed next to the garage, trimmed off any dead wood and gave the soil a good hoe over. A couple of days previous we cut the lawn (giving it three quick cuts as it was so overgrown. We did the old council springtime trick of first cut of the mower on long and then two “shorts”, also a rake in-between every cut) it looks a bit better now and another cut in a week will have it looking great. For a maximum “crisp” look to a lawn, tinker around the edges with some clippers or a strimmer.

Whenever you think the season starts, watch the weather as it’s well cold tonight and for God’s sake don’t be fooled just because we have a couple of sunny afternoons of late that spring has finally sprung.

 

Sowing is sweet during lunchtimes

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As we’re working from home we do have a bit of an advantage that we can do a litle bit of gardening at lunchtime during good weather. Today as it was on the warmer side we decided to sow a few more seeds. The kitchen window has become a little crowded so we utilised some spare space in the raised beds under plastic out in the back.

The second covered raised bed is starting to fill up too. The celery cut from the base is starting to grow, those volunteer giant garlic bulbs are doing well and we have some parsnips in the middle so we decided to put some pots of sweet peas either side. Hope they like the heat under the plastic as we haven’t had decent sweet peas for a few years now. The below pic is going back a few years but it is inspiring us to have some sweet peas back in the garden again.

It’s time to sow (or is it?)

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In-between the rain and sunshine yesterday, we got out into the garden and sowed some seed in the raised bed at the side with some transparent plastic tacked over the top so to create a cheap mini greenhouse. Those pallet box collars we were given a few years ago have had a good life, the polythene on the top don’t last sadly and needs replacing every year but they do work. In these “poor people’s greenhouses” we sowed some beetroot, the Lldl lettuces we purchased last year and some parsnips. Parnsips are funny anyway and need fresh seed but these seeds were bought last week so touchwood should be okay if the soil gets warm enough in there. Fingers crossed we will get some germination out there.

And speaking of germination we have had some success on the kitchen window with two  cherry tomatoes showing their tiny seed leaves. Great stuff, all we need is the rest of the windowsill seeds to kick off now.

Seems a bit milder out there…

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This morning while putting two tea bags in the compost heap (any excuse to get out there) we noticed it was quite mild weatherwise and also spotted what we think are some giant garlic bulbs (volunteers we reckon) resprouting. That’s a good sign but we won’t speak too soon as you never know it may snow next week (we hope not though!)

Aberdare Rockers revived!

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A big thanks to Debby H for sticking the audio of the excellent Aberdare Rockers cassette tape online on Mixcloud. We haven’t heard it for many moons and it is sounding excellent! Cheers to Debby H, Rhyhm Doctor, Karl S and Pete R for their valuable help sussing these tunes out. Any amends or misnamed please let us know.

Massive thanks to Debby H again for finding this classic cassette and for transfering it and sticking it up on Mixcloud. This mix will be on play again at Weeds HQ for the rest of the week! The MP3 can be downloaded here.

Augustus Pablo – Mount of Olives Dub
Mickey Dread – Robbers Roost
Wailing Souls – Mr Firecoal Man
Jacob Miller – False Rasta
Rod Taylor – His Imperial Majesty
Mikey Dread – African Anthem
Aminatou & The Roots Underground – Runaway Dread
Lord Sassafrass & Deborah Keys – Green Bay Inquest
Wailing Souls – Joy within your heart
Wailing Souls – Very Well
Dr Alimantado – Poison Flour
Dr Alimantado – Gimme my gun
Ijahman Levi – I’m a Levi dub/
IllusionInkling Music – Reggae Fusion Odyssey Roots Rhythm
The Incrowd – Mango Walk
Lord Creator – Such is life dub
The Wailers – Guided Missle
The Shadows  – Brother Noah
Culture/Mighty Two – Two Sevens Clash (dub)
Prince Far I and the Arabs – Long Life
Errol Dunkley – A little way different
Junior Byles – Can you feel it (Sufferation Everyday)
The Observers & Niney –Tribulation Dub
Leroy Smart/I Roy – Jah is the Light/Wicked Eat Dirt

Around the garden and SE23 this week

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Here’s some mad pictures from a week around the garden and one from the locality of Forest Hill. The first (below) made us think of Wlad (US7IGN) and his good friend Sergiy (UT3UFD) in Ukraine who is growing a banana plant in his apartment (post here). We are sure that this is a banana tree growing outside in a front garden in SE23. God knows how it survives the winter here, we could be wrong but it looks very much like a banana with fruit on it as well. We love the flower as it looks like someone’s carved it out of wood or it could even open up and start talking.

And the other day we were complaining that we weren’t getting much action from the courgettes (zucchini) in the raised beds until we moved a leaf and found this giant in hiding.

And in the tiny bed at the bottom of the garden there is some sort of melon (we think) and some peppers and chillies. Now it looks like there’s a self seeded cape gooseberry in there too and it’s only a tiny bed as well. A good example of square metre gardening gone wild!