Got a spare few grand?

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Big shout to Gerry Hectic for sending us the link to an auction this month called “The John Peel Collection” featuring all sorts of stuff from Peel Acres. There’s John’s copy of Joy Division’s Ideal for Living 12″ with a letter from Rob Gretton. Got £3,000 handy? Have a butcher’s at what else is up for grabs if you’ve got some spare cash here.

And we’re pleased as punch to see the fanzine Ded Yampy in a couple of lots (below). Nothing as pricey as the Joy Division rarity but still a couple of hundred quid we ain’t got. Did we really send him 3 copies of Issue 1?

Years ago we faxed John Peel a couple of pages over with details of one of our Steroid Abuse nights to see if he would read it out on his show. We were suprised when he started reading said fax out saying, “News just in that Steroid Abuse have a party in London this Saturday. I can’t tell you where it is, who is on or how much is it to get in as the last page of the fax has failed to come through.” How daft is that? Bloody faxes eh?
R.I.P. the great John Peel.

Two towers of power

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Cheers to our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore for the picture of his mullein plant which as he says “is in its next stage now!”

And here’s ours down by the pond. Coyboy’s toilet paper indeed.

A shortwave slow down

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Imaginary Stations will be bringing another Downbeat on Shortwave this weekend (cheers Fred!) on Saturday 5th July 2025 at 1200 hrs (UK Time) on 6160 kHz and on Sunday 6th January 2025 at 1000/1400 hrs (UK) on 6160 kHz and at 2100 (UK) on 3975 kHz/6160 kHz.

Our good dub gardening friend Jesse Yuen from Perth, Australia and One Deck Pete from Brockley Village, London will be bringing you two 15 minute downtempo mixes each in a back to back downtempo style.

Tune in your shortwave radio this weekend or if you haven’t got one, via an online Software Defined Radio here (tuned into 6160 kHz) at the right time in AM mode and listen in and chill out to their slow-mo selection.

Why buy seeds when you can dry seeds

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It’s great to hear that Gerry Hectic is taking on a new seed saving project after tasting a strawberry that was so nice he got given one that he is now saving seed from and trying to grow a plant from it. He is now trying the same method on the above!

We will keep you posted on how he gets on! Fascinating stuff though and more free plants if they take. We found a great link about seed saving here. Good luck Gerry.

Pollinators in full effect

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Thanks to Mike & Julia for sending us some pictures of some pollinators doing their thing (cheers to Mike for the blog post title). Talking of pollinators, we were told this week that bees, flies and whatnot are not supposedly that keen on geraniums/pelargoniums.

We have not heard that before and just checked with AI “Bees, in particular, often avoid pelargoniums, especially those with double blooms, due to the difficulty of accessing the nectar”. That’s a new one on us!

Taking a breather from the garden

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We cleared out a lot of stuff from a couple of raised beds yesterday which revealed some spindly tomato plants that haven’t been staked properly let alone side-shooted or nipped out after 5 trusses. It just looks like we just let them go mad, sadly we did. We have a level of shame here as usually we love taking off side-shoots and tying up the plants to a garden cane at regular 2-inch intervals with green garden wire. 

The (above) are the Black Moon variety that the Thompson & Morgan Blog team kindly sent us alongside some other seeds. It’s been an odd year here this year so lost track of things and we’re not sure what else we have of the other seeds (we lost the plant labels and did have a couple of seed disasters we remember) but we’re sure by autumn other stuff will surface. We’ll keep you informed about how things turn out especially with the black moon.

Here’s another bed (above) that has been thinned out showing the San Marzano tomato plants we grew from seed (well worth growing if you want to make sauce from them). We wonder if the chilli plant at the front is the Thompson & Morgan Quick Fire? It would be great if it is, as it mentioned on the pack that you can get up to 100 chillies per plant!  

Some “hot” themed tunes. The second youtube goes out to our mate down south who loves buses like we do, Gerry Hectic. No idea why the bus video to go with the Big Youth tune but we don’t care as it is great. “No standing on the top deck please”, “Tickets please” and “Hold tight” of course. Keep cool today and keep in the shade.

We’ve got a Barbara Hepworth in our garden (supposedly)

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Cheers to our mate Nic G across the pond for letting us know that the thing we found in the skip the other night is more than likely an example of sand-casting leftovers.

We’ve now got it as a sculpture at the bottom of the garden (just by the part under fence that is used as a cat/fox run) and with the sunlight on it this morning looks like a fox looking up at the sky.

We are hoping to pass it off as a mini-Barbara Hepworth next time Antiques Roadshow visits Catford and give the “specialists” some spiel about “Dame Barbara gifted it to my late father after he tidied up some flower beds in St Ives.”

We do think it looks similiar to a fox today. Who knows what it may look like at 3pm, sand casting leftovers perhaps? We do hope not.

Haven’t they grown?

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A few months ago we picked up some plants (cheap) from a community garden stall outside Crystal Palace park (here). There’s been a bit of growth since then and the Persicaria (description from the excellent Go Gardening Facebook group: “It’s a perennial & once established spreads quite rapidly. It sends up tall..usually red…flower stalks with small flowers”) is now sending up those red flowers. 

The Sweet rocket (Hesperis Matronalis – from the Go Gardening Facebook group: “It’s a biennial or short lived perennial”) has now some nice white flowers on it. That was a great few bargains we bought that day, sure all the plants were £2.50 each!

We also had a suprise today when making space for new sowings of lettuce, basil and parsley and found some beetroot from a plant we thought was some sort of Perpetual Spinach. We pulled them up and got these light coloured baby beets which we boiled for half an hour. Not bad for something we didn’t know we had!