Category Archives: Songs to sow seeds to

Dreadlocks the time is now

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It’s been exactly a fortnight since we lugged that bag of seed compost on two buses from the nearest B&Q and then sowed various seeds on the kitchen and the upstairs windowsills (post here) but we’re now seeing some action (it’s the tomatoes that are popping up first rather than the chillies). It’s been less time since we sowed the sweet peas (a week perhaps?) below.

There’s people who say they’d rather buy plants than seed as “they haven’t the time” to wait for the seed to grow. They forget after the seed has been sown and it has the right conditions it’s the seed that does all of the hard work in the background. All you have to do is make sure the compost is kept moist and all’s okay. Then all the gardener has to do is get on with their own lives (eat, sleep, drink and be merry) while the seeds get to work. There’ll be a bit of pricking out and repotting in the future but that’s hardly hard work and then the plant will just keep on growing hopefully.

Seed sowing, give it a try, you’ve got nothing it lose and it’s far cheaper. If you’ve got your own transport you won’t be lugging bags of compost on two buses either.

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

Report from the garden

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It ain’t The Good Life but we’re starting to get some more edibles out of the garden. The shallots are small but we’re getting a lot of them, that’s the first Zuchinni/Courgette (above) and the chillies are really doing well and there are a good few on the plants. As a good gardening friend of ours said a long time ago “Keep picking the fruit and cutting the flowers and more will come”.

As for our anarchic seed sowing style we have a Cardoon up near the house from when we broke open a seed head and just chucked the seeds around the garden. There are better looking Cardoons up the road but we ain’t complaining especially as they’re from free seed.

And as for the Barley Straw in the pond it does now look like it’s working and been working for a while. The fish seem happy and you can actually see them now!

 

 

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?

It may (not) be winter outside

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It isn’t officially winter anymore yet it still doesn’t feel like spring all the time does it? We’re getting some lovely days then a few days of cold.

Perhaps April is always like this but here’s an excellent set of dubs to cheer you up from Mad Calypso & Apocalypse Dub Faction called Winter Skank. We’ve a soft spot for Winter Dub 2 here. If these tunes are Winter, we don’t mind it!

And they’re off part 2

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It looks like there’s action on the Miner’s Lettuce stakes and we only put the seeds in last Saturday, that hasn’t taken long to germinate has it? Nothing on the others but it’s early days yet. We’re still keeping the propagator lid on and opening the vents during the day. We’ll keep you posted on the others. As the Desperate Bicycles once sang “It was easy, it was cheap, GO AND DO IT!” Buy those seeds and get them started, it won’t be till spring.

Old time (radio) business come back again

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This Sunday the imaginary radio stations crew have a right treat for you. KTAB will be featuring “Yesterday’s music today” on 9395 kHz at 2200 utc on Sunday 31st July 2022 via the magic of the wireless.

The show will feature all sorts of old time music from the year dot to the late 1950’s including a mix called “I’ve got those broadcasting blues” from One Deck Pete at 24 minutes in featuring this classic from Keith & Enid called “Worried over you”. Tune into the shortwave time machine.

Spring may have sprung

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One great thing we love with this gardening lark is the passing on of surplus seeds from one gardener to another. This week we received a little package off a gardening friend with some interesting seeds and stuff that we’ve never grown before (Cheers again Ruth!)

Firstly there was a small envelope with some Amaranth seeds (more on them here) which we’ll be sowing in a sunny area in the garden as they like that. Also in a brown bag was a climber called Mashua which we’ve never heard of before, turns out it’s climbing Nasturtium with deep orange-red trumpet flowers with edible tubers and the young leaves can be eaten in a salad. You learn something every day, especially in gardening!

The other bag contained some Jerusalem Artichokes (aka Sunchoke), we read it’s not like the globe variety but a kind of sunflower with an edible tuber. We’ve also learnt they can spread like wildfire but we will be giving them a go. We’ll keep you posted on how we get on with everything above. Any tips appreciated!

And on the shortwave radio tomorrow evening at 10pm UK time is a repeat of a transmission of a while back of KSOL which features a mix from One Deck Pete called “A bit of sunshine and soul” which feature tunes by Jackie Lee & Delores Hall, Cat Stevens, George McCrae, Carl Bean and Love Unlimited. If you haven’t a shortwave radio you can tune in here.