Category Archives: Wildlife

Foxes on roofs and seeds in trays

Posted on by
4

It’s been a nice dry bright day today for a change and it hasn’t been too cold either. Earlier a fox came through the garden just as we were putting an old bucket over the clump of rhubarb shoots. It weren’t bothered with us and the intricacies of forcing rhubarb, rather in the roof of the shed a few doors down. There it stayed for a good few hours.

Thanks to our radio pal Justin Patrick Moore across the pond, who sent us a wonderful seed catalogue from the US from Farmacie Isolde that has many “out there” seeds on it. Even though you won’t be able to order from them (unless you are in the USA), it will give you some great ideas and you could source a seller over here. Download or browse here.

There’s so many we have never heard of before but the above and below are real suprises to us. We forwarded the catalogue onto our mate Gerry Hectic who enquired about “Flat of Egypt (300 seeds for $3,75) or some Bulls Blood? on Page 31″. Isn’t gardening great?
Anyone started any seeds off on this bright Saturday? Pictures and stories if you have. One deck pete at gee male dot com.

 

Wednesday night dub

Posted on by
Reply

A nice track from the Partial Records Bandcamp from King Tubby called Rising Dub, the dub of The World Has Just Begun (The Children Rise) by Earl Sixteen and The Heptones.

 

This is Kyiv calling, this Kyiv calling

Posted on by
Reply

∑∑´´Big thanks to our good friend in Kyiv, Wlad (US7IGN) for getting in touch this week. He last post was in November and if you remember, there was a potato shaped like a love heart and photographs of his good friend Sergiy UT3UFD‘s collection of seedlings that were started from seeds of whatever he eats here.

Sergiy’s advocado is coming along well (above) since last time and as Wlad jokingly said “His banana even had a baby!” (below).

Wonderful stuff, when you think they are having as he told us, “regular problems with heating, water (out for up to 3 days), and electricity, but we survive even at -20C at night.” Wow, that is some going -20C!

The best thing we think, is how he experimented with the seeds from a pitaya he bought and they’ve started to come really well, growing their first set of “true” leaves (main picture at the top and below).

And if you remember, this is how he heats his plants, with this ingenious set up:

Great to hear from you as ever Wlad, thanks for the pictures of Sergiy’s growing experiments, as they are fantastic!

By the way Wlad has finished his third book, which is available here. Here’s a mention of it on SWLing Post here.

First sowings of the year

Posted on by
Reply

We know we mentioned a couple of posts ago that you don’t want to be too keen on sowing seeds at this time of year, but we’ve started a couple off, seeing as both seeds need a few weeks to germinate.

This morning, we put 3 pots each of Reals Seeds Prairie Fire Mini Bush Chilli Pepper and Lemon Drop Hot Citrus Pepper in a heated seed tray. This year we’re using some B&Q bought Rocket Gro seed/cutting compost as the cheap supermarket shop-bought peat-free we bought a while ago just weren’t that good and we lost a load of seedings to the dreaded damping off.

On looking at the packets, the Prairie Fire takes 2-3 weeks to germinate and the Lemon Drop 3-4, now that’s a long wait. We will be training patience in this exercise and will keep you in the loop if we see any movement at all.

It don’t get better than this (again)

Posted on by
2

We have no idea how to describe this excellent track, it’s absolutely bonkers and something else! It’s by Lifetime Pineapple and called Double Busfare and what a wonderful graphic too.

The Thursday Tune (bus related of course)

Posted on by
Reply

As usual, looking for some tunes for a forthcoming shortwave mix we found a nice tune.  It’s a great bit of Polish Rap from Litlost from the Olszak / Bitykradne – Night Bus EP called Promienie słońca Brooklynu. Really good stuff indeed.

A passport to beer and nuts

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve just listened to this weeks Great Lives on Radio 4 with John Cooper Clarke about one Johnny Green (once hippy, driver, writer and the road manager of The Clash and Tour De France fan). It’s a great 27 minutes with contributions from his kids, Topper Headon and Chris Salewicz. It’s nice to hear old JCC’s distinctive voice again. To listen to the show click here.

On the subject of Johnny Green, here’s something about him on blackmarketclash.co.uk (here) about The Clash’s Bury St Edmunds gig in 1978 (where we were also in attendance). We love the line at the end which makes us smile “I considered the Camden Town rockabilly as my friend and a passport to beer and nuts”. We all love a passport to beer and nuts.

WNTR in dub

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend just gone saw the broadcast of WNTR by Imaginary Stations on Shortwave Gold. As they said on SWLing Post: “Winter vibes abound as per with the show, and the temperature outside may only a few degrees, but we will be transmitting as much winter warmth as we can!” Enjoy the warm vibes of WNTR.

At 43.19 in is One Deck Pete presents a festive dubwise mix.
Here’s the tracklistings:
Kohei Yoshii – Cold Ice Dub
Forgotten employee – The backroom tapes – A Merry KMART Christmas (excerpt)
Mal – Powder Snow dub
Michael Powell – Christmas Dub

In a blink of an eye

Posted on by
1

It was bitterly cold here this morning at around the minus 2°C mark. We had a couple of bags of bark mulch delivered from B&Q, which the delivery blokes left by the back gate. From there, we dragged them down the garden, sliced the bags open with a pair of scissors, and topped up the garden path with a flinging of a rake to level it all out.

We were only out there for ten minutes at the most but we still came in chilled to the bone. Little and often but perhaps a little less often in this type of weather. Anyone else “braved” the weather today?

It pays not to be too keen

Posted on by
Reply

This week we read a facebook post from Real Seeds about why it’s best not to rush into starting seeds off too early, even though some chillies do benefit from an early start. The main point was that you usually end up with leggy plants far too soon, with nowhere to put them. As they said: “Resist, unless you have ample heated space and use grow lights.”

We have been in this position a few times before. We start the year being very keen and then in March end up with leggy tomato plants sitting on the windowsill (above). Seeing that the frost down here can be as late as mid April that ain’t much cop. To get a bit of an idea of when your last frost could be, stick your postcode into lastfrostdate.co.uk here. This is what we got:

We are going to resist for the time being, and have ordered some seed compost and in a couple of weeks time will get the heated seed tray out and start off some chillies, but until then we will do little and often in the garden if the weather allows. We got two big bags of multi purpose compost today and filled a couple of raised beds just before the sun went down. Total time in the garden, ten minutes. It’s a start!

It may be some while before we can get back out there again as there’s a cold spell coming. To cheer ourselves up we can always open up the seed tin and read the back of seed packets. Here’s a few nice packs we got for Christmas (below). Better (weather) will come!