Category Archives: Wildlife

Pick up the garden fork and now breathe…

Posted on by
1

The sun’s out again and it’s 27°C and very dry in the garden this afternoon.

Last week we heard Christine Walkden on Gardener’s Question Time who said she likes to give her garden a good water with just a watering can and it can take her up to 2 hours at a time.

Since ditching the hose after watching a great special about conserving water on Gardener’s World a while ago it now takes us quite a while too just using a watering can without a rose on the top. We enjoy the slow ritual, the endless walks back and forth to the tap, making sure the soil gets a good soaking. We probably wouldn’t like it that way if we were going to catch a train but it’s a nice thing to do on an early morning on a day off work or in the later evening after a day of toil.

Is there such a thing as “meditative gardening”? There was a lot of staring into space with one foot on a garden fork when we worked at the council so it may have been around for years.

Talking of meditative gardening, there’s a great horticultural themed set from Monster Rally (we have a feeling that someone may have mentioned this to us before, our mates Gerry Hectic, DJ Frederick or Justin Patrick Moore perhaps?) called Botanica Dream. It’s full of some lovely downtempo business and at the moment the track above is our favourite but they’re all excellent.

And here’s a promo from the Skybird Council Gardeners Association for The Scented Garden radio show for you all to enjoy.

And an episode of The Scented Garden from earlier this year for your gardening/listening pleasure. Tune in, turn on and sit yourself in the middle of a flower bed preferably and enjoy the flowers.

Never mind the heatwave

Posted on by
Reply

Even in the heatwave we’ve had some visitors to the garden. The stag beetle (we’re sure it is) above didn’t seem to mind the high temperatures. They look brilliant when they’re flying over at dusk (looking for a mate) like some small army tank/helicopter hybrid machine. More on the stag beetle here.

As it says on the site it’s good to keep some dead and decaying wood lying about as it’s a vital habitat for them. So don’t “Keep it tidy” when it comes to some parts of the garden, the beetles will thank you for it.

Also the compost heap at the bottom of the garden seems to be thriving in the heat. We’re trying to give it a daily turn over with a garden fork making sure the ingredients are well mixed up which at the same time adds air into the pile this speeding up the rotting process. The pic below is pre “The Big Mix Up”. We prefer the traditional pile now as opposed to those dalek ones that seem to take the skin off your hands when giving it a fork over.

Enjoy this spell of cooler weather!

Welcome back my friends to the WELK that never ends

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to everyone who’ve been sending us their accordion classics since last week’s transmission of WELK.

Thanks to John F. who alerted us to Kimmo Pohjonen. We had no idea that this sort of madness existed, talk about taking the accordion to the next level! We love Kimmo’s get up but don’t think the local allotment committee would allow this sort of gear to be worn on-site especially in this forthcoming heatwave. A great tune by the way.

And he reminded us about this great tune by Les Negresses Vertes a band we here have seen a few years ago but had well forgotten about.

And also Slim of the Urban Voodoo Machine, Slim Cyder Co etc. Here’s the great man in action with Joe Ely from a few years ago.

He also mentioned the Grace Jones tune “I’ve seen that face before” a reworking of Astor Piazzolla‘s “Libertango”.

Steve Barker had also said about the maestro Astor Piazzola amongst lots of others (Clifton Chenier, Rocking Sidney, Boozoo Chavis and Amédé Ardoin and many more) which we’ll look into soon. He also mentioned Flaco JImenez and this tune with Ry Cooder.

And last and not least Mark Paytress who sent us this classic and called it “perhaps my fave squeezebox tune of all time” and he may be right! The Three Suns “Delicado”.

Keep on squeezing as they say and thanks to everyone who have got in touch with their recommendations.

Life on the wild side

Posted on by
1

It’s going to be hot this forthcoming week, we’re looking at nearly 30°C in SE23 and we think the garden is going to enjoy it. So get the watering, weekly feed and any fiddling with a hoe out of the way early and then park yourself in the shade and enjoy the weather.

The courgette/zucchinni plant we stuck in a pot as we couldn’t find any space (above) is doing well, giving us some nice flowers. The area around it with the raised beds of potatoes (below) are also on their way but impatient as we are, we keep looking around the plants and still only getting golf ball sized spuds.

The one raised bed of tomatoes are now setting fruit and we’re checking that there’s no side shoots forming and tying the main stalk to the support canes when we remember.

And on the wildlife tip, we’ve put another “pothole pond” down the wild bit (below) after being influenced by Bill Shimmers’ great pond here. We stuck some wood leading into the water after Bill mentioned in his reply of our effort on Twitter. “Any water body adds extra wildlife habitat to a garden. One thing I always include, any steep sided ponds need a sloping shelf or ramp to allow critters to get out as well as in. Stones or branches will do.” Our one is not exactly steep but we’re including the sticks to add further disguise to the former B&Q product container.

And in our main pic this week are the inhabitants of our pond, well part of the mob that are in there at the moment. And the big question is where do they disappear to? Enjoy this great weather when pondering on that thought.

Raking up the Hugel

Posted on by
Reply

Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending us some great reading on Hugelkultur, this time on the greatly named Druids Garden (which has no affiliation to Ken Barlow sadly) site here. 

We’d never even heard of the system before he told us about it a while ago but it’s looks well interesting and if you can get your hands on some logs, you’re in!

There’s more on the way!

Posted on by
2

A big thanks to our good gardening mate Gerry Hectic for sending us pictures of the story so far in his garden. Loving the runner beans in the pot with a trolley from Aldi at the bottom so it can be moved around to catch the maximum of sunlight. Our other good friend Phil Harmony in Berlin used to also use that idea on his balcony for his veg growing. As The Merton Parkas used to sing “You need wheels”.

The peas and tomatoes look great too! Just water them daily and add a weekly feed, all will hopefully be grand! More pics of your progress in a few weeks please Gerry!

They’re on their way!

Posted on by
Reply

Now some of the flowers have dropped off the tomato plants we’ve been giving them and other fruiting plants a weekly feed of comfrey liquid. We’re also been giving the tomatoes some support with canes and garden wire as in a few week’s time some of the fruit will get heavy.

We’ve been using the home-made feed sparingly as we haven’t been getting that many comfrey leaves to make the liquid out of. We usually try and pass the feed on as it’s brilliant stuff but up until now have just about enough for ourselves. Fingers crossed we get a splurge of comfrey leaf growth soon.

The zucchini/courgette we planted in a in a pot is starting to flower now too and the climbing beans plants we got from Shannon’s are setting fruit on one of the three runner bean cane tripods we put in. As for the other two tripods, one went for a burton through underwater and the other one has been overun with blackfly. It’s strange as there’re only a couple of feet apart from each other.

So keep on with the watering through this dry spell and get some plant feed to your vegetables to get the best out of the plants cropping wise.

And while we’re on beanpoles here something brilliant bean support-wise from a few years ago from Vic Godard from The Subway Sect’s Dad’s garden. It’s a 16 caner with a nice tying system at the top and it really looks the part!

Like something out of the generation game

Posted on by
1

This week we found some wonderful examples of custom-made wildlife ponds on twitter by Bill Shimmers (above) @shimmers58. His ponds are works of art and look brilliant!

We’re always looking for new things to do in the garden so we had a go on an Airfix model scale using Bill’s pond as inspiration. Our bottom of a crock-pot mini-pond filled with some left over pond plants just looked like a bottom of a crock-pot filled with some left over pond plants until it was given a bit of a mini-overhaul using some wood from a woodpile, some old bark and whatever else we had lying around.

Of course our attempt is no way as grand as Bill’s brilliant creations (and it’s about a 50th of the size) and we won’t be winning any Chelsea awards this year with our microscopic version with some wood just thrown about over the top of it but it’s made the old version look a tiny bit better. We even caught the cat having a drink out of it and there were some bees buzzing around it earlier so it must be alright!

Cheers for your inspiration Bill and we’re going to have another go in the “wild bit” at the bottom of garden and we may even use something bigger next time (a dustbin lid perhaps?) Well it’s best to start small until we get the gist of this wild pond thing.

Will it sun or will the rain come out again?

Posted on by
2

It’s been a very odd day with the weather today, sun one minute and rain the next. At least the garden can do with a water.

Here’s a great track discovered this morning whilst searching for tunes for the next shortwave mix. It’s a great sample/beat led track by Dubya Beats called New Jack City and it’s a tune. Love the one note piano in there.