Thanks to Penny Golightly, here’s news of a great little plant mart in Lee next Saturday May 17th from 2-4 p.m. outside 2-6 Micheldever Road, Lee SE12 8LX and the event is a fundraiser to get money to plant more trees in the area. There’ll be a wide range of plants for sale at a good price as well as lots of other stuff (cakes, books and CDs, cream teas and 2 botanical watercolour workshops at 2.30 and 3pm). Looks great! Cheers Penny!
Sometimes it’s small things that make you think. We were just reading the “What to do in the garden in May” piece on Penny GoLightly’s excellent blog here. She mentioned “The month has started with a mini heatwave, but I’m not rushing to plant out most of my seedlings too soon” and we have a bit of a realisation and checked the weather forecast for SE23 and thought “Ahh, she has a point”.
Its looks likes there’s going to be a little bit of a change in temperature this weekend to say the least. From those glorious summer vibes to a humbling 13°C tomorrow. Funny enough we just found a pic (above) from May 17th 2020, look at those sophisticated forms of frost protection and thats in mid-May!
To be honest we did get a bit carried away and put a couple (and more to be honest) of tomato plants out and yes there are some chillies seedlings that have been repotted and left out overnight. We’ve even dismantled a cold frame (aka took the bricks off holding down the polythene and folded up said polythene and chucked it in the bin). Looks like all of that will have to change this evening, alongside the flip flops and shorts going back into the wardrobe.
We’ll be bringing the chillies in tonight just to be on the safe side as it may drop to 4° C and we have a massive roll of bubble wrap purchased initially for selling stuff on eBay that will come in very handy.
We feel a bit sorry for the bloke on Facebook the other week who put out all his 30 odd tomato plants saying there won’t be a frost. He may be alright, but it does seem a bit nippy in the evenings next week. Good luck and may the (frost) protection be with you and enjoy those rays of sun rays today as you may have to put the jumper back on tomorrow.
A big thanks to Debby H who sent us some pictures of how things are getting on gardening wise in north London. First are the cosmos (above) which are looking healthy. Those inner toilet tubes seem to be working well as plant pots by the way.
And above are the tomato seedlings which are sown in an interesting way as we usually sow one to a pot, but this method seems great. The tomatoes as well as the cosmos are ready to be repotted, and Debby has given us a great idea for further sowings.
Above is the azalea in her garden is looking great. As she wrote “I just found that the azalea is a type of rhododendron.” We didn’t know that.
And Debby has just got back from a break in Suffolk. “By the coast near to Dunwich the whole area was covered in the most amazing yellow flowering gorse bushes” “It went on for miles. I have never seen it looking quite so spectacular.” Brilliant stuff Debby, cheers for the update and we look forward to more pictures this year.
Things are looking good in the garden, the clematis (above) is flowering profusely this year after a couple of years of not doing much. We once heard on Gardeners Question Time if you threaten a plant with a “final cut with a pair of secateurs” it can do the trick but it’s not something you want to do as it doesn’t seem right. Nature just did its thing with the clematis.
The bottom part of the garden has now vegetables starting to germinate (the sticks keep the cat out) even though the home-made plant labels have the touch of small gravestones if viewed at the right angle.
And we remember the late great Joe Maiden mentioning on the BBC Leeds gardening programme many moons ago that Good Friday is traditionally when you plant your seed spuds. These cara potatoes are starting to sprout now, and we’ll be earthing them up as that hopefully will keep them protected if there is a threat of frost over this weekend.
Happy Easter everyone and we hope you get the Easter eggs you desired. There was a bloke we worked with once when asked what he thought of Green & Blacks 70% chocolate and “quality” chocolate he replied, “I’m a cheap easter egg bought at the local market type chocolate person myself, none of that posh stuff, real chocolate”. And on that note…
We’ve had an update from Debby H on her cosmos and some good advice. The seedlings are now starting to get their first “true” leaves, which are fern-like as you can see in the picture above. She said when they have 3 or 4 pairs of the true leaves, pinch out the next pair of leaves to make sure the plant grows bushy and not “leggy”. Good tip as we didn’t think of that, even though we use the same technique with sweet peas encouraging them to bush out more.
Also Debby’s germination method of using the cardboard insides of toilet rolls seems to be a sure fire method what with the plant’s long roots. She did say which is also important, “I think the cosmos will be ready to pot-on soon, but not ready to go outside yet. We learnt last year that these plants are very susceptible to slugs when they are tiny.” Good stuff Debby!
Cheers to Debby H for letting us know about how her cosmos seedlings are getting on in the last post. We took her lead this week and sowed some of the seeds on Tuesday afternoon and come today we are seeing some results. Wonderful stuff, it didn’t take long did it? Remember 2025 is the year of the cosmos!
And for this sunny Saturday morning here’s a track that was played on the great On The Wire (a radio show well worth listening to as we always say) the other week, a track previously unknown to us here at Weeds from Ijahman Levi called Chariot of Love from 1977 and it’s a great single and now re-released on 7″ with a great dub too!
With the pictures Debby H kindly sent of her garden in the last post, she also sent us some pics of how her cosmos seeds were doing. “I planted some cosmos seeds on Thursday afternoon. By this morning (Sunday), they had germinated!” (pic above). How good is that?
Then on Monday she sent us pictures of how quick the seedlings have grown (taken about 25 hours later after the original photographs). As she said “I find the growth since yesterday to be quite amazing” and we agree!
She also sent some useful information about the seedlings that we didn’t know “…cosmos plants have long roots, even when they are small, so egg-boxes didn’t work well last year. This time, I have tried to use the cardboard insides of toilet rolls. I put these in a plastic trug planter thingy to keep them upright and stable.”
Now that is a great tip Debby and good luck with the seedlings. We sowed some yesterday (Tuesday) and hoping we get some quick germination results too. Thanks again.
STOP PRESS: A picture from today (Wednesday). They are looking great Debby and ta for the update!
Pic – Compost in a compost heap.
“I wanted at least one aubergine plant – last year got none from my first
batch of seeds. Planted 3 seeds, 3 plants. Chillis – wanted one plant. 3 seeds, 3 plants (both pics above).
Cucumbers (above) – couldn’t get anything from seed last year so had to buy a plant
from the local nursery (it died, so bought another). Planted 5 seeds hoping
for 1 plant – 5 plants. Have one or two to give away to my daughter.
Tomatoes (above) – never normally a problem and again very good results, near 100%
germination.
Onions (above) very good results with near 100% germination (Weeds note: That is brilliant Alan, we’ve never done onions from seed before we don’t think or they’ve never been successful if we have).
Sweet peas – very poor last year with maybe 10% germination. This year about 50% germination. All are growing well and I water once a week. They’ll go into the polytunnel soon. The sweet peas (above) are only a small sample of what I have grown. The pots had 3 – 4 seeds each pot so one plant each is not too bad.
In terms of the process I don’t think I’ve done anything very different this year so I do suspect that the better moisture retention in the compost has helped germination by keeping the seeds moist while producing critical early roots. So as far as I am concerned I will stick to my mix – next up are my peas. Broad beans did well and they are in the ground now.”
Brilliant Alan, that is so good to hear. Your seedlings are looking great and we reckon that tip of adding the home-made compost works. We noticed the same here compared to last year as well. We only added a smallish amount but it makes a difference. Cheers again Alan and do send us more pictures on how they do in the garden!
Pic: The grass outside this morning.
The sun’s been out, it feels lovely and warm and you feel a real need to sow those seeds outside or get those seedlings into those freshly prepared beds. Think again, do your research, watch those John Craven’s Countryfile weather forecasts and have a look at the frost calculator here.
You only want to be going to the garden centre/nursery for those bedding plants once. Watch out for frost!
Pic: John “good bloke” Craven
Weeds up to me knees 