If you like it chilled like we do on a Thursday night here’s one on a slow-mo tip to soothe those aching bones from Jay-Jay Johanson called Not time yet and it’s a grower! There’s a lovely dub of the track as well. Search it out!
And a lovely dub of Sandra Cross & Vibronics “Sound System Girl” doing the rounds on the radio. Not chilled but still one for a Thursday night!
A big shout to Shane at the ever excellent Garden of Earthly Delights for a top show last Friday which featured Mårble, Creation Rebel and Errol Grandson and lots more. The show also rebroadcasted all of Dr Strangedub’s classic “In the garden of dub” mix. Big up all dub gardeners everywhere! Full tracklist of the mix here.
Big thanks to DJ Frederick for including One Deck Pete’s Second hand shop classics in today’s broadcast of the excellent Free Radio Skybird via Channel 292 in Germany. If you like sound of fading and excitable radio waves have a listen to the below.
Big shout to DJ Frederick and everyone involved. #shortwavesnotdead #freeradioskybird
Time is strange. We as gardeners have been waiting patiently throughout the spring, holding back sowing those seeds just in case it’s “too early”, checking if they’ll be late frosts and hardening off seedlings and before you know it, it’s the summer.
Big shout to our good friends Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss for getting us off to a good start with some sunny tunes on this week’s Echo Chamber on KFAI here featuring Gingermon, Omar Perry, Sandra Cross & Vibronics and lots lots more!
This week there was also a rebroadcast of (part of) “In The Garden Of Dub”, a mix from a few years ago by Dr Strangedub featuring Singers & Players (ft. Prince Far I), Madtone, Leroy Sibbles, Jah Wobble, Lee Perry and lots more which goes out to all dub gardeners everywhere!
Big shout to another friend “across the pond” Justin Moore (who has a great piece on the strange world of Fred Judd here) for letting us know of some gardening zen dub in the form of Memotone with Sidewise dub, heavy and on the out there tip!
And to finish off another horticultural related track by Errol Grandson with Jah Garden. May the weather be with you as old Eric Robson used to say.
DJ Frederick’s Free Radio Skybird returns to the shortwaves this Sunday June 9th via http://www.channel292.de/ on 6070 kHz at 1600 UTC (1700 UK time). With a menu of jazz, avant-garde, ambient, folk, rock, indie and more, the hour transmission will also feature One Deck Pete’s “second-hand shop classics and more” which includes a track from Madtone.
The transmission is beamed via Channel 292 (Rohrbach, Germany) and can be received via a shortwave radio on 6070 kHz in most of Europe or via the Channel 292 website here. Tune in!
It’s only been a couple of weeks since the last post about the seeds on trial from Thompson and Morgan but there’s been some changes. The spinach plants in the pot on the windowsill (below) are doing well. We’ll transplant a couple of them in the garden so leaving a couple in the pot and see how they get on. There’s a couple of patches of T&M’s spinach outside that seem to be tolerating our London clay soil.
A sunflower in its very early stages plus one of the tomato plants were transplanted outside yesterday morning with no hardening off. The both of them seem to have survived the searing weather on their first day outside too, let’s see how they get on with the local slugs!
The lewisham recycling bin has the nasturtiums in and they’re making progress, we reckon we’ll be leaving possibly only one in the bin and move the other plants around the garden.
And finally the spaghetti squash is doing well, no slug damage as yet and putting on some growth. Let’s see what the weather brings. Give us a few weeks and we’ll keep you updated with this and the other trial plants in the garden. Ta T&M for the chance of giving the plants a go!
Yesterday morning we watered the Weeds HQ garden at just gone 8am in preparation for the 27° heatwave. The poppies we enjoy sowing randomly, just throwing seed here and there have done very well (above and below). There’s no rhyme or reason to our flower sowing sometimes but yet we’re OCD as they come when it comes to straight as a die vegetable seed rows. What’s all that about?
We’ve stuck the cacti and succulents outside now (below) as the weather’s on the up and loaded up the south suburban box found in the skip with night scented stock which are both on the top of an old belfast sink just outside the back door.
And the bonkers as anything Egyptian onions (below) are now starting to “top set”. More pictures to come of these strange onions.
And last night this tune was on rewind on the estate behind us at their summer party last night, Koffee with the tune Toast. Tune!
Which, if you’ve had a drink has a similar chord structure to the below. Well sort of, but we ain’t complaining as they are both two very good tunes and there are only so many musical notes, ain’t there? Please tell us the producers, Major Lazer’s Walshy Fire, and Izy Beats have been tuning in to the late great Holger Czukay.
*And finally as we were checking that the name of the blog post was the correct name of the song from the punk band Eater, we came across an interview (here) with Dee Generate (at the time their 14 year old drummer) from about 2002. Well what do you know, another ex-punk into gardening: “I have a sloping garden which I have designed myself, with a deck area and terraces. I have put in Fatsia Japonica, Yuccas, Cordyline, Ferns and other big plants. I plan to make some big sculptures when I get time.” As they say in the Punk circles of today: Gardening’s not dead!
Thanks a million to all at the Thompson & Morgan blog for sending us a lovely package a few weeks ago that contained some packs of yet-to-be-released 2020 seeds to trial in our garden. They came in a nice green wallet and the actual seeds (that were in sealed plain white metallic packs) were labelled simply “spinach 201902”, “squash 201904” etc as the proper names of the varieties are under wraps and will be given out later this year. We love that sort of thing here at Weeds. Very GCHQ. Walls have ears and all that!
Above is a bit of an experiment, we recently moved a small silver birch we originally found in the street a couple of years ago (post here) and around it we planted a ring of broad beans, don’t ask us why but it made sense at the time!
In the circle we thought we’d sow a row of the lettuce and spinach. Hopefully the shade will be just enough to keep the plants growing but not bolting (aka going to seed early) as spinach and lettuce do have a tendency to do so if the weather is too hot. It’s only an idea, let’s see how we get on.
We’ve already started off a fair few tomato varieties this year but we welcome another one with open arms especially one in a plain white envelope just called “tomato 201905”. We may have started them off too late (and we didn’t write down the date of the sowing sadly) but it seemed like they took their time to germinate on the kitchen windowsill (compared to the spaghetti squash that was planted on the same day). Out of the three tomatoes that have germinated so far, nearly all of the seedlings are nowhere near the centre of the pot. When/how did the seed move? There must be a scientific explanation, answers on a postcard please. We look forward to finding out what varieties these are. Will they be small cherry tomatoes or beefsteak ones the size of your hand?
The tropaeolum (nasturtium) was sowed directly outside in the Lewisham Council recycled bottle bin and has germinated like a treat. We’ll transplant a couple of these around the garden. We like the look of the darker leaves than the usual varieties of nasturtiums we usually put or self seed in our garden.
The spaghetti squash is something new to us and it will be great to see what they look like and actually taste like. The seed was germinated on the kitchen windowsill and went out in the garden just when it had two seed leaves on with the minimum amount of hardening off (one night under a cloche!) and it’s doing well!
Apart from spinach in a pot on the kitchen windowsill (above) there’s sunflowers in a seed tray, some lettuce sown (in the ridge) in between earthed up potatoes and zinnias (that we have never grown before but look interesting) sowed straight into the ground. We will keep you posted!
A big thanks goes out to DJ Phil Harmony in Berlin for playing (and for the kind words too) a couple of tracks off Jazzmin & Madtone’s “This Frequency E.P” on his excellent Dubnight Radioshow on Radio Blau. Another gardener of the dub variety (a few interesting past posts from Phil are here and here) he’s sent us some recent gardening pics of his pots on his balcony where there’s limited sunlight.
The first is of the herb Lovage. As Phil told us “I was very surprised when I cleaned my pots as I found the root in the soil with little sprouts so I let it sit and a few weeks later it came back to life! I love this herb for potato or other soups. We also call it Maggi herb”. Looks good, we’ve heard of it here before but never used it, perhaps we should!
And some spuds he started off this year, and they’re looking grand! He only had a smallish harvest last year (below) but as Phil says “the taste you get from your own harvest is not like anything you can buy, not even in the organic shops! Even if you only grow just one tomato it’s not comparable with anything from the supermarket!” and he’s right! Good luck with the spuds Phil! Keep sending us those pics.
There were big plans in store for the Weeds garden this weekend but due to the cold weather nothing was actually done. As reported last week, a new solar-powered pond fountain (due to the last one going for a burton after just two years or so we thought) was purchased for £49.99 but it was a small price to pay for keeping the midges away and the fish and pond skaters happy.
The whole kit and kaboodle was to be replaced Saturday afternoon combined with the pond being given a good clean-out but due to the weather all we did was plugged in the new charger unit (the model purchased was exactly the same as the last one and the old pump and fountain were still ok). As we said, we were initially fed up as the last fountain didn’t have that long a lifespan. And then we read the instructions…
Let’s just say the words “Bxggxr” and “Dxmn” came to mind. We must remember though there was a point when we moved in years ago (pic below) where we were going to fill the pond in but it was thanks to our good friends Anu and Chris who suggested we keep it going. Thank God we listened!
We’ve had problems with it but here’s to the pond and its many visitors over the years. Big shout to all of the Forest Hill pond dwellers!
Weeds up to me knees 