Spring is here (or just around the corner)

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!

Whistling three sheets to the Wind

Cheers to Justin Patrick Moore for sending us this great instrumental from Luna called Drunken Whistler and a lovely little number it is. For some reason it reminded us of something that may have been on Andrew Weatherall‘s excellent Live at Antenna Studios mix (below) which we have mentioned a good few times.

If you haven’t heard the mix before it’s well worth a listen, there’s a track from Manfred Mann of all people called Just for me (“And there, I saw trees reaching to the sky. And birds full of colour and flying high”) and Harpers Bizarre with Witchi Tai To. Excellent stuff of the eclectic kind! Cheers again Justin for sending us the track recommendation.

Who needs patience when you have a bin bag or two?

We’ve had those seed spuds for a couple of weeks now and they ain’t half burning a hole in our pockets. We’ve an egg box with a handful of them chitting away by the back room window, a couple went in in the cold frame (an old window frame found in a skip, balanced on bricks) and we’ve just put two in each raised bed down the side even though it’s a liitle bit early to be putting in Maris Pipers.

We stuck a bin bag over the bed, made a rough hole in the plastic so light will show through and stuck the seed potato directly under it. We then covered it with compost and now we’re keeping our fingers crossed that they survive any forthcoming frosts. On two of them we have put some old wire shelving from a plastic greenhouse to stop certain felines (ours) stop digging up the soil and leaving presents. Seed spuds we wish you luck!

And music today is one from a long time go from Cosmos called Summer In Space (Mark Harmonic 33 Mix). It’s a lovely chilled out number for a Sunday.

And as we have a lack of patience when it comes to gardening here’s Nish Wadada with Patience Dub. It’s a lovely bit of dub!

What a difference a day makes (again)

Saturday was a lovely day so we tipped around in the garden, done some weeding and tidied up. Some seed spuds were sown in the old window frame on bricks (halfway in the picture on the left hand side). The rest of the spuds we procured from B&Q were put in empty egg boxes next to the window in the back room to start off the chitting process.

Come Sunday though, it was grey all day and from mid-morning constant drizzle but one thing with rain, even if you’ve just scratched the top layer of soil in a bed it makes it look great like you’ve spent hours working on it. Viva the good weather!

Music to send you to sleep

Tune in via Shortwave Gold this Sunday 10th March 2024 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz to the sound of sleep with WZZZ. This is a horizontal themed show and they’ll be lots of great tunes to drop off to and to dream to, all around the sleep theme from the Imaginary Stations crew of DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore and One Deck Pete.

At 1.50 minutes in they’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete called “You may say I’m a dreamer” with tunes by Jah Wobble, L. Pierre, The Barbados Steel Orchestra,
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and Owen Gray. Tune in for an hour of tunes on a sleepy tip next Sunday if you fancy a morning/afternoon snooze or an early night depending on the time.

And our good friend Gerry Hectic has compiled an answer mix (above) called “You’re not the only one” and an excellent mix it is too so listen and dream. Cheers Gerry it’s great stuff! Here’s the tracks:
Janek van Laak – Sloppy Dreams (Sonar Kollektiv)
King Jammy – Dreams (Dub Version)
MG Gost feat. Jack Jones – Dream Chaser
SEED Ensemble feat Cherise Adams-Burnett – The Dream Keeper
Spiritczualic Enchancement Centre – Dreaming of Miles Davis (Transporting Salt [Enhanced Version])
Miles Davis & Michel Legrand – The Dream

Opening a can of worms

The Sunday just gone we were given a small water bottle full of worm liquid AKA worm wee or if you want the technical name, leachate. This supposedly good liquid fertilizer (which needs to be diluted probably one to ten parts water depending on how strong it is) is basically the run off from a wormery and different from worm tea that you hear about which is a brew made using worm castings. We will keep you updated on how we get on with it.

We did a google search for wormeries which took us to this great article about alternative composting methods from the great Bob Flowerdew on his website. There is a little bit on worms but there’s far more on other novel methods. Have a look here for the article. Through this we found a great page of links of Bob’s gardening articles called Best of Bob. Have a butcher’s here for some informative reading!

No complaints about the cold today

Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a photo of what the view was the like from his front doorstep on Saturday. Now that looks cold! And to accompany the picture, Rich said “The mountains are still covered this morning but not ground level. A lot of people were posting pics of the northern lights last night.” That is crazy stuff. Keep warm Rich and keep on sending us the pictures.

Rainbows over Lewisham

Yesterday the weather forecast on the telly said it was officially the first day of spring even though we thought spring started around the (spring) solstice but what do we know? We’ve just looked online and here’s the official line: “The spring season associated with the vernal equinox, called astronomical spring, occurs on or around March 20, but meteorologists recognize March 1st as the first day of meteorological spring, which is based on annual temperature cycles and the Gregorian calendar.” Ah so now we know.

It’s been a weird mix of rain and sunshine here today and on the way back from an early morning jaunt to see if they had any gardening based centre-aisle specials in Lewisham Lidl, we caught a rainbow (above).

This afternoon between the showers we tidied up the bed next to the garage, trimmed off any dead wood and gave the soil a good hoe over. A couple of days previous we cut the lawn (giving it three quick cuts as it was so overgrown. We did the old council springtime trick of first cut of the mower on long and then two “shorts”, also a rake in-between every cut) it looks a bit better now and another cut in a week will have it looking great. For a maximum “crisp” look to a lawn, tinker around the edges with some clippers or a strimmer.

Whenever you think the season starts, watch the weather as it’s well cold tonight and for God’s sake don’t be fooled just because we have a couple of sunny afternoons of late that spring has finally sprung.

 

The Bedworth musical connection

The other week we had a bit of nostalgia for second-hand shops that smelt of damp and mould (Post here). Recently whilst going through records for a shortwave mix we found an ace LP called “Step Forward Youth” featuring Prince Jazzbo, I-Roy and The Aggrovators with a stamp from one of the shops we visited that day.

 

We checked on google to see what the shop is now and of course we weren’t expecting it to be Westminsters New and Used Furniture as we’re talking 1978/79. It was worth tapping it in though as what a nice suprise we had to see it now as Keith Richard’s Hairdressing. Great stuff, we love it!

Life is one big circle innit?

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!