Category Archives: Seed Swap

Life is one big circle innit?

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And they’re off! It’s taken nearly three weeks for the Chillies to germinate in the propagator with the lid and the Lemon Drop (aka Lemon-flavoured Aji from Peru) are the first to show their faces. We’re now waiting for the Pretty in Purple and Albertus Rotoco to get going now. We started them early and know some chillies are hard to germinate due to some of the seed being dormant so even at this early stage we are chuffed.

And the Tomatoes which were started in an uncovered tray are slowly starting to grow. These above are the (first vertical row) San Marzano (second row) Florentino which we are sure we obtained from a Glengall Wharf Gardens SE15 seed swap from two or three years back and (third row) a Cherry Tomato called Cerise from those 6 in 1 vegetable pack from Ebay. Springtime we’re waiting for you to spring!

A seed swap with a few biscuits

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We’ve just found out about the Incredible Edible Lambeth Seed Swap of 2024 which takes place on Saturday 24th February 2024 at the Garden Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB from 1pm-3pm. Looks good! More details here.

Our favourite part of the flyer was “Tea /coffee and a few biscuits will be on offer.” Only a few biscuits? Has that line been put in to put off the free biscuit freeloaders? It looks like a brilliant event no matter how many biscuits available!

Songs to sow seeds to

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A big thanks to Gerry Hectic for supplying us with our first ever guest mix. It’s only three tracks but it really is a lovely mix and goes out to all of the early seed sowers out there. Here’s the tracks:

Gerry Hectic presents
“A packet of three (Seed Varieties) for Weeds up to me Knees”
Fug – From Little Seeds We Grow (4hero Folk Soul – Vocal/Instrumental)
Paris Smith Quintet – Thought Seeds
Seeds Of The Earth – Planting Seeds

So get those seed catalogues out, bang this on the stereo and chill out to this great mix. Thanks a lot Gerry! We welcome all mixes in a gardening style by the way.

First Seed Swap in

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News just in of the first Seed Swap of 2024. It’s not south London but it’s in Hackney Wick at Hackney Herbal at Trowbridge Gardens, 1 Trowbridge Road Hackney Wick E9 5LD. It’s on Saturday March 16th from 2.30 to 4.30pm and Free. More on their Spring Equinox Seed Swap here. If we find out about any more Seed Swaps especially situated  the south side of the river we’ll let you know. If you hear of any do let us know too.

We’ve just found out they have an irregular radio show on the great Soho Radio called “Between 2 Parsleys” which is a show that “explore herbs through the interwoven stories of plants and people.” Sounds well interesting, more on the show here.

Now this is what you call a tape!

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A big thanks to Debby H for getting in touch here about a tape called Abedare Rockers, an excellent reggae compilation from the mid 1970’s. There’s not much info about it and it doesn’t appear online either in digital form sadly but we did have a copy of it years ago which we picked up by mail order or somewhere on a London excursion and it was a bit of a much played classic.

From looking online the tape was available at the 1976 Deeply Vale Festival and as Michael Williams (who worked at Better Badges and Dub Vendor amongst other places and was one of the founders of the Dread Broadcasting Corporation, more info on that here) said on Facebook a few years ago: “‘Aberdare Rockers’ was a compilation made in my flat mid 1970s, can’t remember who compiled it, could have been ‘Nightdoctor’ founder Charles Wood, my brother or Joly MacFie. Joly and I did Better Badges and were reggae fanatics and so duplicated this compilation, to as one did in those days turn people on. It was thought of as a regular underground release but no just a compilation made in the heady days of the 70s amidst ganja fueled evenings pre punk.”

Well Debby has found said tape and sent us a pic of it and copy 64 is above. Brilliant stuff! We look forward to hearing a copy of this one day as it was a wonderful tape. Also she sent us some great pics of covers of other cassettes she has just unearthed and we love that DIY ethic of all of those. Brilliant stuff Debby and thanks for getting in touch!

By the way  this below is an interesting interview with Michael Williams about DBC featuring some good tunes too.

Sorry we ain’t into the Bad Seeds, only the good ones

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Happy New Year to all our music/gardening friends and we hope 2024 is a good one.

It’s now time to think of what you’re going to grow this year and what changes you may be making in the garden, if any. First thing we did was check our seed tin seeing what we may have had left over. There were some Ldll lettuce, a couple of packets off ebay and some stuff we’ve had knocking around for ages which suprised us a little as we thought we used everything up.

As ever we’re on the look out for any seed swaps, or community/allotment sales that have good cheap seed and plant events we may be able to get some interesting variety of seeds. At the present moment we can’t find too many local ones in south London. Garden Organic has a regularly updated list here that is worth checking and also Pumpkin Beth‘s website here which list seeds swaps and plant fairs. If there’s any you know of in the London area or thereabouts, do let us know and we’re blog the dates up.

So we will now raise a mug of tea and hope everyone has a great 2024 and may your garden thrive! And here’s some garden related tunes to give inspiration and good plant growing vibes.

 

 

 

 

A little bit of give and take

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And found yesterday outside a garden wall was this nice plant pot even though it was on the heavy side and took a bit of effort to take home. As soon as we got it in the garden we plonked in a smaller pot which has a potato plant growing in it and it looks like they were made for each other. Keep ’em peeled!

We wanted summer and we got it

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Blimmin eck! How hot was it today? These two poppies which we’re sure we grew from seed a couple of years ago are blooming again. We gave them a good watering this morning as at its peak it hit nearly 29 degrees C today here in SE23.

We’ve got two trusses of flowers on our tomatoes (above), the gardening calendar is cracking on this year and it’s nearly summer solstice. There’s now warnings or a time marker which says “You have just reached the end of spring” or anything, time marches on as Jungle Wonz once sang.

Also we’ve been nipping out any sideshoots on our tomatoes and read in the Vertical Veg email newsletter about using the sideshoots on tomato plants as you would cuttings and we have one which looks like it may have taken root, well it hasn’t gone droopy yet (above).

And something else we love here as well are suprises. Here’s some oregano we don’t remember sowing growing underneath a rosemary bush (above). Now that’s a bit of a bonus as we do love oregano here! We bought a marjoram plant a few years ago as an oregano alternative which is doing great but it’s not the same. 30 degrees C tomorrow you reckon?

We don’t give to receive but it’s nice to

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Earlier this year we were very kindly given some Comfrey roots by our gardening friend Ruth as the plants we did have went to pot when the new fence got put in. Before then we were regularly giving out Comfrey liquid as it’s super stuff but as we had no Comfrey we had nothing to give out.

Those roots have now grown into a nice plant and we’ve been constantly pulling off the leaves and letting them soak in a old bucket with a little water and now have some great plant feed ready. Here’s the first batch we gave out earlier today (below).

As if by magic this afternoon we were given two very healthy looking pepper plants which we’ll be putting in the ground tomorrow. We’re great believers in giving out stuff to people and you never know, you may receive something out of the blue. Keep the old circle a turning as they say!

Another page in your diary

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A couple of events to stick in the old diary. The first is a Seed Swap in the Corbett Community Library, Torridon Road, Catford, London SE6 1RQ on Saturday 25th March 2023 from 10am to 3pm. More on the event here. Thanks to @LewishamGardens for alerting us to this!

And on WRMI this Sunday 5th March 2023 Imaginary Stations presents a KBIN mix up special with WSTL versus WELK. Expect some whistling, yodelling and squeezebox classics at 2300 UTC on 9395 kHz. Get that accordion at the ready!