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!
It’s like this every year, you’re waiting for spring to happen and then next thing you’ve got a load of plants to harden off (above). We’ve got some giant sunflowers that are over a foot high now and tomatoes, sweet peas and some chillies we were given over the weekend alongside the geranium cuttings from Honor Oak Park station. It’s only just turned April too!
Also, in the bed down the bottom we started lots of seeds off. The rocket can be seen taking off underneath small branches used to keep the cats and foxes off. The seeds were only put in the other day, or it seemed like it! Hope all goes well on the sowing front your side and the nice weather keeps on keeping on. Keep checking those last frosts dates and do remember nature plays by its own rules sometimes.
We’ve always had this thing about those plastic plant labels. You buy a pack and you have the best intentions of keeping them for ages (using Barkeeper’s Friend to clean off “Lettuce” or whatever their last usage was) then you lose them or they snap and you vow never to use them again.
Yesterday we thought “Never mind that!” and just got a “sharpie” and snapped a few bamboo canes into quarters. Saved us a load of hassle. We then stuck some polythene sheeting on top of some pallet box collars and there you go, a makeshift cloche full of clearly named rows of broccoli, cabbage, leek and beetroot!
Pic: You don't need a glass of wine at a seed swap but it does help.
We’ve just seen these 3 London based seed swaps on the Garden Organic website which look up our street and are all free too! If you hear of any others do get in touch with us and we’ll post them up.
GreenFriends UK Seed Swap
Amrita Hall, 211 Fairacres, Bromley BR2 9UN
(use the entrance via 40A Letchworth Drive, BR2 9BE)
Saturday 15th March 2025 11am
IEL Seed Swap
Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB
Sunday 15th March 2025 1pm
www.incredibleediblelambeth.co.uk
Islington Seed Swap
Olden Community Garden, 22 Whistler Street, London N5 1NH
Sunday 23rd March 2025
The other day we used the tip that Alan mentioned a few posts ago about adding some home-made garden compost into peat-free seed compost to give it a bit of added goodness. We looked at our compost heap thinking we’d have to clear the many layers of rotting vegetables, cardboard and egg boxes to get to the bottom and then remembered last year we found a way to the bottom from the side of the heap (above). All we did was move an old floor tile and voila we were rewarded with some fresh “Black Gold” (below), wonderful stuff!
We only put a few handfuls of it with the remaining peat-free seed compost we had left as we didn’t want it too nutrient heavy and kill the seedlings but just enough to make a difference. Once we mixed it up we filled one of the seed tray, tray lid and bottom set we got from a large DIY supplier (their name rhymes with T&Q) for the bargain price of £4. You can’t even get a pint for that sort of money these days.
In the tray went some self-saved seeds of sweet pea we grew last year, some jalapenos, the black moon tomato we got from Thompson & Morgan and also from T&M, “great stuff” peppers that grow to the size of a human hand! We’ll keep you posted when the seeds germinate and we’d love to hear what you’re starting off at the moment. Remember it’s only February.
Thanks to all at Thompson & Morgan blog for including a tip of ours in their new article “Money saving garden tips: cost-effective seed sowing” here. It’s a great article and a great blog to check out.
By the way we hope that anyone who has sowed early like us is having some success and the seeds are starting to germinate. Looks like the chili seeds we had that said “Sow by end of 2023” haven’t, but that’s a risk you got to take with out of date seeds. Good luck with what you stick in your seed trays!
Here’s a wonderful track (complete with the classic radio being tuned in intro) from a forthcoming shortwave mix that’s called MV Ross Revenge (For Ever!) and it’s by Morschen43 from Le Puy, France. The Ross Revenge was/is the home of the great Radio Caroline (and Radio Monica) from 1983 which once nearly became a cropper on the infamous Goodwin Sands. More on Goodwin Sands and the irregular cricket matches and utter lunacy that sometimes happened there (and still does), here.
Talking of pirate radio stations here’s a snip from the Radio Nordsee/Radio North Sea International film and for years we’ve always wanted to know what the track playing for the first ten seconds was and tonight we’ve found out what it was thanks to the powers of the internet. It’s the start of a song called Big John is my name by Rare Earth.
In the clip does the DJ Leo van der Goot just play the first 30 seconds of the tune and then fades it out or is there another version where the start ends the track so to speak? We would like to know, any ideas?
And if you want more of Rare Earth in a percussive style this one below is crazy! Uncredited edit allegedly by the great François Kevorkian.
Here’s a couple of cuts of the classic tune MPLA, the first from The Revolutionaries on the Channel 1 record label and a lovely horns cut it is too.
The second is a banging dub cut of Freedom Blues (aka MPLA Riddim) on 1st Rasta Records out of Camberwell SE5 7ZJ. We’d love to know more about the label as the location of 1st Rasta Records is in an area (with a bus garage) that is very close to our hearts There’s next to nothing on the label on Discogs except a few records by artists including Frankie Paul, Tommy Trouble (great name) and Johnny Rodgers.
Many moons ago we had a PO Box at the same place and used to collect records every Saturday, in the days promo companies would send out those things called vinyl records. One cold winter’s morning, a 12″ promo in a very warm card envelope was handed over to us by a whistling postman (wearing shorts of course) from said SE5 sorting office. When we took it home we found it was warped as anything and had been left next to the radiator for a couple of day we reckon. As the song goes “What can you say, who can you blame?” Anyone know more on 1st Rasta Records?
And here’s where it all started:
It’s still only January but we’ve started some seeds already. Last year everything seemed to go wrong with the seed sowing as they germinated and then just stalled for a good few weeks and then died. We have no idea what it was, was it to do with the cheap compost we got at a supermarket? Was it those damn aphids who feasted on the basil plants on the kitchen windowsill later in the season? Was it some sort of delayed damping off?
Who knows but we weren’t best pleased as the batch contained some rare chilli and some choice tomato varieties. We ended up buying some chilli plants and a nice bushy tomato plant from B&Q in the end which all done well but it’s not the same.
We’ve now wiped the slate clean and put the memory of last year’s failings out of the way and started afresh with some proper seed and cutting compost in pots in a heated propagator we received as a present a few year ago (cheers Maz and Marc!)
Seeds sown this week: mint, dill, basil, chives, parsley, san marzano tomato, cerise tomato, chilli habanero, chilli Jalapino (the last 3 out of packs that say sow by 12.2023) and some seeds we dried off our chilli apache plant last year. We also sowed some catmint even though we were warned years ago that “you’ll have every cat in the neighbourhood in your back garden”.
In a few weeks every windowsill will be full with pots on saucers, jam jars and plastic freezer bags on top of plant pots as cheap alternative to greenhouses.
Anyone know any good tips for stopping those aphids? Someone the other week mentioned neem oil and we’ve just looked online and may try it. Anyone ever used it? Any tips to one deck pete at Gee mail dot com please.
This came up in our youtube feed just and we’d forgotten how good it is. We love it even more as we imagine that the blokes in the band are standing on a platform at the Elephant & Castle railway station with the old London College of Printing building at the back of them. This is such a good tune! £25 on discogs and worth it, we reckon! Love a 12″ with an extended mix and a dub version too.
Weeds up to me knees 