Category Archives: what will be will be

Starting them early my friend

Posted on by
8

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.

A blast from the past

Posted on by
Reply

We were looking back through the blog for a tune to accompany a forthcoming blog post  and found this video from 2016 here. It’s from Mind Enterprises with a great tune called Idealistic with a spoof video of a “better than well” guru cult complete with a lovely bit of Tai chi-like dancing throughout it. Do have a pen and paper and your credit card details handy for the end!

Music opens up a whole can of worms (and more)

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve had Bargain Bin DJ (an A5 24 page fanzine) for a couple of weeks now (“print in the old fashioned way” as the song goes) produced by our good friend DJ Frederick from Groveton, New Hampshire.

If you love those bargain bin finds, this publication is for you. We don’t want to give too much away but issue number 1 has a review of Record Time magazine (the newest edition of said publication has all sorts of musical features from Polka to Sex Pistols inspired novelty records), Lawrence Welk, Kado Wilson, Forgotten 45’s from 1955, Sounds of Synanon, Moondog and Surf-Punk New Hampshire hero, Jonee Earthquake.

An excellent read if you love music found in the cheapo section or in a box hidden away under some damp smelling jumpers and coats in a charity shop. Cheers to Bargain Bin DJ fanzine for alerting us to the tune above under “sound-alike or plagiarism?”. A great track off an LP called Mood Indigo by Jean Jacques Perrey, “influenced” possibly by a tune called Telstar. We reckon it’s more than likely to be a tribute to the great Joe Meek. It’s a great one and we love the run out which we want it to go on forever.

If you want to find out more about obtaining the fanzine drop Fred an email at radiothriftshopnh@gmail.com

And here’s two sides a Bargain Bin classic of ours. An excellent single from Jamaican singer Jimmy James (he of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds later in his career). Wonderful stuff.

 

Even council gardeners love a bit of ambient

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a long and lovely track from Irrelevant called Touches. This is the Ambient Council Worker Mix from Gordon Strange. Excellent stuff, glad to see that council employees get a namecheck! Are there any tunes specifically about council gardeners you reckon?

Feeling hot, hot, hot. In January?

Posted on by
Reply

Big thanks to Paul Greenstein once resident of East Dulwich now of Melbourne, Australia for sending us a couple of photographs of his gardening related exploits. Above is his garden at the moment (That sunshine makes us weep here as the weather is on the cold side in SE23 at the moment) and here’s some accompanying words from Paul:

“Garden looks a bit wild from this angle. There’s an Oregano bush that’s taken over one of the veg boxes. Apricot tree in the foreground. We had a good crop of Apricots this year after the tree was almost destroyed by the local possum. Apricot mead is on the cards. We’ve learned that you have to net the tree once it’s pollinated or the possum wins. Just out of sight is a Bramley tree that’s currently netted – this time it’s the parrots that eat all the fruit. Australian wildlife; either it’s trying to kill you or it wants to eat your fruit and veggies.

The weather is a bit crazy at the moment, we are getting 2-3 day runs of high 30’s (Celsius), then high 20s, with thunderstorms. On really hot days, we are banned from lighting fires (which makes a lot of sense). Still, this is nothing, we live in Melbourne, which is considered ‘temperate’ – i.e, it can get really cold here. Other parts of Australia like Tropical North Queensland, it’s shorts and a vest all year round…”

If you remember Paul also keeps bees in his garden and as he told us in his post last year here he had some Mead fermenting (above) and “each mix includes around 1.5k of honey. World’s oldest alcoholic drink apparently..”

We only made it once here and it tasted like battery acid so we didn’t even bother again.

“Mead Bottled! The cherry is made with Morello cherries, the rhubarb grows in the garden. The cherry is around 15%ABV, the rhubarb around 11%.” Looks absolutely wonderful, unlike the stuff we produced. Cheers for the report and the pictures Paul, they’re appreciated.

Talking of Mead we found this the other day advertising Penge’s first ever Wassail. We hadn’t a clue what it was, but the mention of “Bring something to make lots of noise – saucepans and wooden spoons are perfect” made us very interested.

Thanks to @rbrt1k on twitter who sent us a link to the wikipedia entry for the word/event. “Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Christmastide and Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.“

Big shout to the Penge Wassailing event and we hope all goes well and you make a right old racket so we all can get a good harvest this year of apples. And potatoes, and carrots and onions etc. Big up with the wassailing!

Professional frost protection. You reckon?

Posted on by
2

We woke up this morning and it’s way below freezing (-3 C at the moment) and the forecasters are telling us it will be like this for the next few days, so it don’t look like there’ll be much gardening done this weekend. Yesterday we did pop out and put some protection over the camelia that has loads of flower buds on it (above). This great bit of fabric doesn’t cover all of the plant and there isn’t any space between the cloth and the shrub where air can circulate but it’s the best we could get our hands on at the time. It will keep all the cats from the neighbourhood away thinking it’s a levitating ghost and may suggest to the neighbours that we’ve finally lost it but the big question is, will it keep the cold weather out?

While out there we saw this (below) in the wild bit at the bottom of the garden that made us smile. It’s some fungi growing beside our “economy” wild pond. This could be another picture for our Alternative to the BBC Countryfile Calendar that we will put into production one day. The wild pond is an old dutch pot that has one handle missing which we sunk into the ground, filled up with rainwater and the odd thinning from plants from the garden pond are popped in there every now and again.  We salute any wildlife that enjoys our “budget-friendly” pond.

And here’s a note from our sponsors (Aldi, Lldl and Argos of course!): Please keep warm this weekend!

 

 

It’s snow joke

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks a lot to our good mate Justin Patrick Moore for sending us some photographs of the extreme weather in Cincinnati at the moment, and we thought it was a bit cold here! Temperature is around -3 at the moment with -9 degrees C overnight with even -13 later on some nights this week. We are not going complain about the weather here any more, ever. Great pictures Justin. And here’s one of his back garden.

And if you fancy a great listen, below is the audio of Trash Flow Radio broadcast on WAIF 88.3 FM from Sat Dec 28 and as it says here:

“DJ Justin Patrick Moore returned to hold down the fort one more time. Hot on the heels of his outstanding recent book event in Cincinnati, Justin was joined in the studio by Slumdog Ethan and Old WAIFer Douglas.  Together, they provided more audio accompaniment to Justin‘s new book “The Radio Phonics Laboratory.”  They also spun choice esoteric tracks from all around the world, including tracks from: Tristwch Y Fenywod, Chelsea Wolfe, Tanya Tagaq, The Fauns, Melody’s Echo Chamber, The Skull Defekts, idialedyournumber, Alan Sparhawk, Josh Datko (Bitpunk.fm), An-Ting 安婷, Controlled Bleeding, Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang, The Limiñanas, Shilpa Ray, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, and more!” Tracklist here.

There’s an archive of the last 15 shows here if you fancy it too. Radio connects us all.

Turn up the heat

Posted on by
Reply

Below is the recording of last weekend’s WARM show from Imaginary Stations. It’s a great show featuring an hour of tunes to raise the temperature including a mix at 3.57 from One Deck Pete called Feeling hot, hot, hot. Tracklistings are:
Cass. – Ethan Veerbek
Bunny Wailer – Love Fire (Version)
Blundetto featuring Courtney John – Warm My Soul
Mice Parade – Warm Hand in Farmland (Stereolab remix)

Tune into the show and forget about the cold weather here at the moment.

Stop with the cutting remarks ok?

Posted on by
Reply

We did something today we hadn’t done in a long while, we took a few cuttings from some houseplants and stuck them into some small pots filled with potting compost (above).

This all started when we did a google search for cutting compound as we needed some (or so we thought). We bought a small tub off ebay and then found an article that mentioned you can use natural compounds like honey, aloe vera juice or cinnamon. It may still be a bit cold for them to take but let’s see what happens. The ones above are from an aloe vera we bought many years ago and some from a great pink geranium we bought for a couple of quid from the plant stall in a summer sale in a church hall in Hither Green last year. Below is the original plant we bought.

We don’t know much about taking cuttings but we’re going to have a go as if all goes well we’re going to see if we can get some cuttings from the wonderful geraniums at Honor Oak Station (in exchange for a few bottles of comfrey liquid) as they are some great looking plants. It’s a good way of getting more plants without putting your hand in your pocket.