Category Archives: Tips for happy gardening

It’s those little things

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Even though this growing year is far from over, every year is one of learning for us in the Weeds garden. Even if it’s the old “We won’t be growing that blimmin’ thing again” after a particulary bad crop, we’re always learning. We’ve been loving our trips to Lldl for the peat-free compost and the cheap seeds of theirs and learnt that peat-free compost needs a little helping hand with nutrients but it isn’t that bad for £1.99 and you can transport the bags easily on the bus.

This year we tried spuds in pots and bags which worked, even if they were small on the actual harvest, the chillies in pots are doing just fine (above) and the giant garlic turned out great too. We don’t usually have much sucess with garlic to be honest but we’re happy of the normal to larger garlic (instead of giant) which is now hanging up in the loft to cure (pictures to come). Most of them didn’t divide into seperate cloves so something else was learnt this week: “Garlic needs 30 nights at less than 10C over the winter for the cloves to develop properly. If this doesn’t happen, then you do just get one fat onion-like bulb” Alys Fowler mentioned that here.

And after trying a good few times it’s only this year that we are actually getting some oregano growing in pots. We imagine it’s not that hard to grow it’s just that we haven’t had much luck in the past and the time we went to Shannon’s to buy a plant they didn’t have any so we bought the marjoram instead. We’re well chuffed with the two straggly plants we grew from seed, it’s good being easily pleased.

There is a land far far away (musical update)

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Here’s a quick update to the last but one post featuring Jesse Yuen‘s parents garden in  Perth, Western Australia. Cheers to Jesse for sending us an update of what he’s listening to on the Hi-Fi at the moment.

This mix from Aussie producer Cousin is a great eclectic mix up:

Also Paul St. Hilaire’s – Tikiman Vol​.​1 is on heavy rotation

And this local reissue of 90s dub/downtempo tunes is also getting frequent spins. This is some nice stuff by the way!

Cheers Jesse for sending us some nice recommendations that we’re going to explore further.

A tune for a frosty Friday morning

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A big cheers to Your Host of This is a music show “The finest second-hand vinyl finds only on shortwave” for alerting us to this tune from The Romeos from an LP called Precious Memories which was played on the show the other week. There’s is something about this tune that grows on you!

Still life (with worms attached)

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And the heat in there is impressive too! Look at the build up of brandling worms at the bottom. We’ve just seen on the web you can buy them, 100 for £11! All we did is put a wet piece of cardboard down the bottom of the garden. Two days later, worms! Thanks to the great Bob Flowerdew for that! #theuniverseinthecompostbin

Who knows what tomorrow will bring (in lockdown)

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It’s funny how the days all melt into one during lockdown but certain days bring certain pleasures. Yesterday we spotted our first courgette/zucchini flower even though the plant was sown very late as the ones we sown earlier amounted to nothing. We’re going to be keeping this one watered and fed a lot so we can get some decent fruits.

And after a delve into the compost in the raised beds (making sure any small marble sized spuds were covered over as they turn green in the sun making them poisonous) we got a nice amount of small new spuds!

And we found these two fibreglass tubs in the street to be chucked out for the binmen. They’re about a foot high and needed a wash and a lick of grey paint (which we found in a half opened tin under the stairs, we didn’t even know we had it) and they are as good as new. There you go, something good to report in lockdown!
#gardeninginlockdown #lostandfoundinlockdown

You’ve come a long way…

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It’s mad, the photo above shows the raised beds just before lockdown in March. My, how time’s flown eh? How many week’s have we been lockdown for? 14, 15, 16? The garden isn’t bothered how long though, it’s cracking on and with this present warm and wet weather here in London it’s getting on with what it does best. Look at those raised beds now (below), the spuds (Two bags of seed potatoes from Shannon’s. By the way the garden centre did a sterling job getting people supplied with stuff around the start of lockdown) are starting to take over and it’s becoming a bit of a jungle around there. There’s peppers, lettuce, carrots and a cabbage somewhere in amongst that lot! That’s our new incinerator too, ta for Marc B for dropping that off in a social distanced manner!

We’ve pulled out a few handfuls of spuds from around the potato plants making sure that the plant wasn’t disturbed too much and then we piled the earth/compost over the crown of the plant so any spuds near the surface wouldn’t have the chance to turn green. And here’s the spuds (below), we’re confused if they’re the first earlies, second earlies or premature maincrop ones. It doesn’t really matter, they tasted excellent and what did they taste of? Yes potatoes but real potatoes!

The lockdown may be getting us all down but if you’re fortunate enough to have a garden/windowsill/balcony and growing stuff, you know that it keeps you that little bit sane(r)! By the way here’s two tips we swear by here at Weeds, the first is to nip the sideshoots out of your tomato plants (not if they are the bush variety though) so all the goodness goes into the main stem and the flowers.

And a silly but effective one, if you know it’s going to rain get the hoe out a few hours beforehand and just scratch up the surface of somewhere in your garden that don’t look that grand. Below is a particulary not brilliant bit at the bottom of the garden which seems to get all sorts of weeds and bindweed a lot. We gave it a good “tip-around with a hoe” (as they used to say in the council) yesterday and it now looks great! We’re hoping it get’s a good covering of borage for the next couple of months to keep the bees happy. Happy lockdown gardening! #gardeninginlockdown #goingmadinlockdown

Well you live and learn!

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Gardening is such a massive subject it’s impossible to know everything. Even if you know a bit there’ll always be a bit more you can master. Why not get back into the classroom (or learn from home or in the great outdoors) and undertake a gardening course. As well as learning new stuff there’s a good chance you’ll meet like-minded people who may turn into future gardening friends (Hi Scarlett!)

There’s all sorts to choose from including the varying levels of the RHS certificates, gardening for beginners and seed saving workshops and then there’s the loosely gardening-related courses like foraging and bee-keeping. The courses go from the cheap to the expensive so there’s something to suit all pockets. If money is on the tight side there are free courses about or ones that are as cheap as chips, they just take that bit more effort to find. We’ve also seen courses at various community gardens that are free, all you have to do is help for an additional hour with some small gardening chore in exchange. A favour for a favour and all that!

A few years ago we did a couple of free courses at a local city farm. The first was making a herb garden in a window box type planter and the second was worm composting in the city for beginners which was well informative (above is our wormery made from a bucket cadged from the local butchers not long after the course). The herb course even came with a free planter with a great selection of free herbs to choose from too, talk about a bargain! Have a look online (tap in “free gardening courses” on google, facebook or twitter) or in the local press. Community groups, local allotments and gardening charities may be good to contact about free courses too.

Another free way of learning is on the web, the BBC has a series of great informative gardening guides available, from growing fruit and vegetables to the basics of soil here. Well worth having a look at!

If you hear of any good courses on the cheap or for free do pass them our way and we’ll blog them here. Best of lunch with your gardening studies!

 

 

The seedy side of swapping

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We at Weeds like to mix it up when it comes to getting our seeds. We purchase them from our local garden centre, have more than a fondness for a ebay “vegetable seed job lot” (if it says “rare” or “unusual” then all the better) and do we love a seed swap. What’s nicer than passing on something you got a few of and exchanging them for something else.

Organised seed swaps are fun events to attend, you’ll meet like-minded people (great for exchanging gardening tips and information) and you’ll probably bag yourself something that you’ve never thought of growing before or some heirloom/heritage varieties you rarely come across.

One of our favourite seed swaps was in a pub in Hither Green on a Sunday night; a small crowd of gardening enthusiasts gathered to drink, chat horticulture and flick through boxes of interesting looking seed packets (some customised and hand-decorated, much more interesting than your average pack). That’s how a Sunday evening should be spent rather than having to put up with the likes of Highway and Antiques Road Show.

We never like to go to one empty handed and try to bring things as interesting as possible, these have included: chitted seed spuds, Egyptian walking onion sets and a couple of packs of night scented stock as we’re always trying to turn people onto growing those.

Once at a seed swap we saw a girl (dressed in a steam-punk style) pull out of her pocket a list of “what she had” consisting of 2 double-sided typed A4 sheets. Her black gothic style rucksack (with metal bits and all sorts) was filled with tons of numbered “dealer bags” full of seeds which came complete with home made labels and even sowing instructions. That’s a bit over the top for us here but that’s how passionate people are!

Sort of related are the annual potato day/seed fairs arranged by Pennards plants that combine a seed potato sale, heirloom/heritage seeds and sometimes have a seed swap section. Have a look at www.potato-days.net for your local one.

So save your own seeds this year (there’s lots of sites online that’ll give you pointers on how to do it) or see what you may have left over in your seed tin and next year have a look on google/facebook/twitter for a seed swap near you and go down and participate and see what you can bring home! Why not make a weekend of it and go to the big annual Seedy Sunday in Brighton (Sunday February 3rd 2019). Also have a look online as there’s numerous sites that encourage the art of seed swapping without even leaving your own home. Good luck! #onaseedswaptip

No tyres, no fires, no fridges

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When passing a builder’s skip do “keep ’em peeled” (as Shaw Taylor used to say) as you never know what you may find. We at Weeds have bagged all sorts over the years including a collection of terracotta pots complete with a bag of multipurpose compost, a nearly new IKEA table and even a carrier bag full of Happy Hardcore singles (also this lot in the bottom of the picture below). Some things will come in handy in the garden but if not, they can be stuck on ebay and any profit made can be put towards buying plants/seeds etc. A win win situation!

Be clever when looking through a skip though, don’t jump up and down in it like an excited child, a sly glance when walking past then a quick swiping movement (in and out) with the hand will suffice. Alys Fowler in The Thrifty Gardener mentions if she sees something of interest she will always ask the owner of the skip first out of politeness before actually taking it. She may have a point.

Once while driving past a skip with our good friend “The Portuguese man with a van” (number on request) we noticed some lovely pieces of timber suitable for making a raised bed. We got out and inspected the wood which was ideal width-wise but far too long to get into the van. Our man then disappeared into the back of his vehicle and procured a saw, problem solved! Whilst he was perched on the top of the skip just about to make the first cut, a very irate man came out of the house opposite shouting at the top of his voice “WHAT THE XXXX ARE YOU DOING?” with his wife in tow trying to calm him down. It turns out the wood had just been delivered and was going to be used the next day for his loft conversion. Thank god we found out just in time or that would’ve been an expensive raised bed! Ask first if unsure.

As well as skips, do have a lookout for stuff left out for the binmen and items left outside houses attached with a note saying “take me” on it. Remember rifling through other peoples dustbins is illegal and if caught you will end up on some sort of register and certainly be given an ASBO. 

Seek and you will find! #getstuckintoaskip

Are you feeling comfrey? Then we’ll begin…

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Comfrey is a plant that the bees love and a very useful one for the gardener. Get a root of it and you’re made for life but watch out as the plant can spread and easily get out of control. A thin layer of comfrey leaves can be used as a compost activator – alongside human urine applied from a bottle of course! – and a couple of leaves put in the hole before you put your seed spuds in will get them off to a good start.

We also use a big handful of the leaves to make a wonderful plant feed (that needs to be diluted) adding some borage and nettle leaves to give it extra goodness. Leave everything to steep for a few weeks in a bucket with a small amount of water and wait until it all turns to a horrible looking dark mush.

Public health warning: The liquid smells to high heaven, like a intense case of body odour or the smell of a dustcart in hot summer climates times fifty! We’ve had family members retching after spilling a bit in the kitchen when filling up our watering can the other month. Do not, we repeat DO NOT get any of the neat (or diluted for that matter) liquid on your clothes or gardening gloves as the smell don’t half linger. If you want an exclusion zone when walking through a crowd or a row of seats to yourself on the train in the morning then this is the perfect aroma for you!

Aside from the downside of the pong of the liquid feed, it’s a great plant to have in the garden and if Witchipedia is to be believed: “Wrap your money in a comfrey leaf for several days before going to a casino, poker game or bookies. It will help keep your bets coming back to you.”  #keepitcomfrey!