Category Archives: Tomatoes

Make your own luck (and muck)

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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.

What a difference four days make

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It doesn’t take long, just a few days of dryness to ruin what you have in your garden. Our good friend Gerry Hectic came back the other week from Gilles Peterson‘s We Out Here festival and his tomato/strawberry experiment in one of those strawberry pots was looking the worse for wear. It is totally sad to see the before (above) and after (below).

Please tell us there’s a happy ending Gerry!

And to change up the vibes on this sad event here’s a wonderful number from Cyril Diaz Et Son Orchestre with Feeling Happy. May this tune lift spirits and sad dry plants everywhere.

 

Ball Hill calling to the faraway towns

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We took a trip to Coventry the other weekend and popped into the Coventry Music Museum/Two Tone Village in Ball Hill Village. We spotted the lesser spotted Ded Yampy fanzine wedged between two King singles (one of them was even signed!)

They don’t half love their tomatoes up there as at the Music Museum we spotted a couple of plants outside, we would have loved it even more if the variety was called two tone or something like that. They looked healthy enough as well.

Also walking up Albany Road later on almost opposite Jerry Dammer’s old flat we spotted a table of tomato plants with “Free. Please help yourselves!” We do like a sign saying that, did they mean we could take the table thing as well we wonder?

And the tune for tonight is sadly not from Coventry but from Iceland from Leik with Toy center at night and a lovely little tune it is too. One going out to our Coventry and Birmingham friends around this gardening globe of ours.

Bargains, bargains, bargains!

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We’re always up for a bargain here at Weeds and a few weeks ago we found this great looking geranium (above) on the plant stall in a local summer sale in a church hall in Hither Green. The stall was sandwiched between a retailer of hand-made baby clothes and a vendor of grape juice from that famous grape growing region called New Cross. The geranium cost us the whopping sum of a fiver but we were happy with that as it really has come on a treat. Strange flowers as well.

This weekend we were at a local park for their annual festival. Earlier in the morning someone mentioned in reply to the horrible weather forecast for the day that “they” could be wrong, “I mean remember Michael Fish got it wrong in 1987?”, sadly “they” weren’t. It turned out to be a right washout but the sun did come out an hour before the festival was meant to close but by then it was far too late, sadly.

There was a upside to the downbeat day though when we obtained some 4 small tomato plants for £2.50 from a stall ran by the local allotment society which we didn’t notice until right at the end. Pic above: you can see the plants are pretty small in relation to the big tomato plant at the rear and the chilli pepper next to it and it is July now but you never know what may happen especially with this strange weather we’ve been having.

The comfrey liquid will be applied, a few prayers said and we’ll see. Let’s raise a glass of grape juice (preferably New Cross Nouveau) for more bargains!

Serving up the subsonic stew

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A big shout to Dr Strangedub who alongside DJ Baby Swiss hosts the great Echo Chamber on KFAI. If you love Reggae, Dub and Downbeat you must tune in live here or to their archive show here. The programme goes out in Minneapolis + St. Paul on a Wednesday from 2 to 6am and that translates from 8 to noon here in the UK. It’s a wonderful show and one to listen to live if you’re an early starter. Tune in for some serious good tunes from the reggae spectrum and associated genres. We also thank our good mate Will J for originally informing us about the show many many years ago.

A big thanks goes out to Dr Strangedub for playing at 18.13 minutes in on this week’s show here for an early mix of Madtone‘s “Replace the soundcard” (though “Replace the hard drive” is a good title too Dr Strangedub!) amongst some great tunes over the four hours including this one from Dry & Heavy and that one from The Frightnrs. There’s also some tunes which were left over from last week’s Dread Western show here as well. A show to tune into. Big ta to our mates from across the pond!

Spring is here (or just around the corner)

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Cheers for Debby H for getting in touch with us today. She sent us a pic of daffodils in full bloom in a council maintained bed near her home in North London (above) and they look great!

Debby has recently started off some tomato and cosmos seeds. The cosmos seeds were straight off the flower heads of the plants they grew last year. After being left in a box all winter they were sown a couple of days ago. As she said: “We just scattered the whole dead heads on earth/compost and covered them over. We didn’t bother to try to separate out the seeds first. Within two days the little things were germinating madly!”  (Photo above). That is crazy! The seeds must have had exactly the right conditions that they loved as two days is good going for germination.

Debby told us a great tip that she used with the cosmos seedlings (pic above): “I re-planted some of them in an egg box as they were growing too densely. The idea Is that, when they are ready to go outside, I will cut the egg box into individual sections, then plant each section separately. As the egg box is made of cardboard it should bio-degrade so I won’t need to remove the seedlings from the box partitions before planting them.” That is a top idea, we have been using some biodegradable pots from B&Q but this idea is better. What we usually do with our egg boxes is chuck them on the compost heap but we reckon we’ll be putting seeds in them!

Cheers Debby, thanks again and look forward for more pics soon!

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!

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.

 

 

It’s time to sow (or is it?)

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In-between the rain and sunshine yesterday, we got out into the garden and sowed some seed in the raised bed at the side with some transparent plastic tacked over the top so to create a cheap mini greenhouse. Those pallet box collars we were given a few years ago have had a good life, the polythene on the top don’t last sadly and needs replacing every year but they do work. In these “poor people’s greenhouses” we sowed some beetroot, the Lldl lettuces we purchased last year and some parsnips. Parnsips are funny anyway and need fresh seed but these seeds were bought last week so touchwood should be okay if the soil gets warm enough in there. Fingers crossed we will get some germination out there.

And speaking of germination we have had some success on the kitchen window with two  cherry tomatoes showing their tiny seed leaves. Great stuff, all we need is the rest of the windowsill seeds to kick off now.

Why ain’t plant varieties named after punk bands?

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Here’s some pics taken around the garden in a week that has has some varying weather to say the least! What was funny was that last Friday the night of a torrential downpour, a couple of hours before that we were meticuously going around the beds with a watering can. Exactly the same thing happened this week across the pond to our good friend Justin Patrick Moore (just before an almighty storm).

The tomatoes (below) we think are the San Mirzano variety we obtained a couple of years ago at a seed swap at Glengall Wharf Gardens SE15. They’re fine tomatoes and wish we had some more! Now these tomatoes appreciate water and also a regular comfrey liquid feed.

And at the bottom of the garden (below) there’s a small bed that has a right mixture of stuff in the tiny space include chillies, some mini-melons and these peppers that we think we may have been given when we swapped some plants earlier this year.

And in the wild bit down there you can’t forget those proud cardoons that are as spikey topped as you like. Punk ain’t dead in that part of the garden, it really ain’t. Why in the world hasn’t anyone named a variety of cardoon Charged GBH or Charlie Harper yet?