It’s a bit previous but…

Posted on December 28, 2016 by onedeckpete

chitting-2016-stylee Here’s something that’s well up our street, a bit in advance though but one well worth sticking in the diary all the same.

Roots & Shoots Potato Day
Sunday 12th February 2016
11.00am-2.00pm
Walnut Tree Walk
Lambeth
London
SE11 6DN
www.roots&shoots.org
Potatoes, seeds, sets, fruit trees and bushes on sale and other stalls. Admission charge and all funds to Roots & Shoots.

A few years ago we attended a Potato Day event at Sydenham Girls School (post here) and it was great. It had a mix and match seed potato sale, bulbs, fruit canes and even a seed swap. It was only a few quid to get in and the spuds weren’t too badly priced either.

We’re not sure about the admission price or if there is a seed swap at the Roots & Shoots event but we’ll put the feelers out. It’s a great venue, as a few years ago we attended an Introduction to Beekeeping course there. After a while when we were there we forgot we were actually in London. Do pencil it in the diary…

More on the Potato Days around the UK here.

Are you SURE we’ve enough sausage-meat?*

Posted on December 24, 2016 by onedeckpete

sausage-rolls

A massive season’s greetings to all from Weeds up to me knees and may 2017 bring less slugs, less diseases in the garden, a better veg and flower crop and more decent music! echo-chamber_xmas

Talking of which, if you’re looking for a dub-wise christmas soundtrack here’s a couple of radio shows worth checking out. The first is from our good friends Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss who present The Echo Chamber on KFAI. Their festive 21st December show is here.

The second is Terry C out of Chicago’s Echo Beach as mentioned in our last post. Here’s the Echo Beach 10th Anniversary & Happy Holidub Special from the 23rd December.

Break out the Bailey’s and have a good old festive season!

*Also applies to the vegetarian alternative.

Reachin’

Posted on December 21, 2016 by onedeckpete

thereach_terry-c

Big shout to The TurntableTerrorist Terry C out of Chicago for sending us this pic of his garden from a few years ago. As he emailed this evening “I especially long for it now that we’re in deep winter in Chicago.” We know what you mean, even though the snow and the frost aren’t showing their faces in the UK at the moment but they will.

Check out Terry’s excellent show “Echo Beach” that is a big 10 years old this year on WLUW 88.7 Chicago live here and on the Mixcloud site here.

As it’s says on the WLUW website it’s a “bass-heavy sonic journey through the world of dub, starting with old-school roots and covering dub and dub influenced music including new-school roots, ambient dub, dubhop, dubstep, digi-dub, Asian dub and more from around the globe. Rivers of bass flowing into oceans of dub…all from the shores of Lake Michigan.” A show well up our street and definitely one to tune in to. Cheers to Terry C for playing our tunes on his show. Appreciated!

And while we’re here, here’s a lovely bit of chilled out vibes to celebrate the winter solstice (it’s all uphill from here) as heard on the Rt Hon David Rodigan show this week. Tune!!!

Dubble bubble

Posted on December 19, 2016 by onedeckpete

https://soundcloud.com/weedsuptomeknees/jazzmin-madtone-i-once-saw-the-revolutionary-in-you

Big shout to our musical collaborator Jazz’min Tutum (Dub Poetess, DJ and host of the Dub Kali Roots radio show and vocalist of the great Zion Train) for this latest instalment of the Jazz’min & Madtone musical adventure. Don Letts garden2 Also a massive thanks to Steve Barker, Fenny and Jim from the excellent On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire for playing it on their 3rd December show here and to the dread gardener and DJ, Don Letts (above – a shot of his garden featured a few years ago in weeds here) for doing likewise on his 13th November Culture Clash show here. Excellent stuff, we here at Weeds salute you!

Gardening at the speed of light

Posted on December 11, 2016 by onedeckpete

rots-and-shoots_dec16 We had to do a bit of speed gardening today (at the pace a council worker would go at if their foreman had said “as soon as you’re finished you can go home”) as we’d left it a bit late in the afternoon when we started. There were good intentions to begin earlier but you know how it is on a Sunday. speed-gardening-bed-after In the space of an hour, a couple of beds were dug over, some plants moved, lost root veg rescued and the Lemon Verbena hopefully protected for the winter. There’s still a good few beds to crack on with but at least we’ve started. The more you get out of the way now the less work it is in the spring. It’s just making that start! another-clean-bed

Tango Mango was my favourite Can LP

Posted on December 10, 2016 by onedeckpete

This week a mate at work sent us a link to a Mr Thing radio show where he played some choice 45’s and the Mandrill tune below was spun (sampled by The Jungle Brothers many moons ago here).

Searching for the tune on youtube I noticed a reggae interpretation by the In-Crowd which I’d long forgotten about and what a tune! Anyone fancy crowd funding us £60 to buy it off discogs?

And while we’re there, the vocal of the track below was played on the show which is a tune but the instrumental is something else!

Tuber labelles

Posted on December 4, 2016 by onedeckpete

tuber-labelles The sun was out today so went out and pulled up a couple of weather-bashed dahlias. The foliage on the plants have now turned black after the frosts so it’s time to bring the tubers in for the winter.

It’s a simple process, you leave on few inches of the stalk at the top, knock off as much as soil as possible on the tuber (and carefully remove any damaged parts), leave to dry off for a week or two and then keep in a frost free place (under the stairs is good.) Keep a check of them over winter and come next year they’ll be ready to go out again. If you leave them in the ground (which you can if you want to risk it) there’s a good chance they’ll turn to mush! More on lifting Dahlias here.

And this week’s dahlia of the week is the brilliantly named bed head (below). I’ve just seen on the web too the statement “don’t write off dahlias as your granny’s flower” and with varieties called “Poppers”, “Blah, Blah, Blah” and “Rave Machine” they certainly are not!

bed-head-dahlia I also checked the compost heap I hadn’t touched for a good year and it’s looking great. That lot won’t be sitting in that bin for long! Don’t look too closely in the bin as there’s two elastic bands, a piece of string, a paper clip and a plastic spoon. How did they get in there? compost-and-elastic-bands

London’s Burning…

Posted on November 26, 2016 by onedeckpete

punk-protest-fire

This afternoon Saturday 26th November around 15.30pm (it it’s not too dark to find the matches by then) we here at Weeds will be doing something rather controversial in our back garden. We will be firing up our faithful dustbin incinerator in protest. Not at Lewisham Council who deem our area as a smokeless zone but something far more serious than that.

We at Weeds:

• Are sick and tired of the assimilation of Punk by the establishment and the mainstream, and the way that rather than a movement for change, Punk has become like a museum-piece or a tribute act.

We at Weeds:

• Will be using our incinerator and be destroying an old pair of gardening trousers, two christmas trees (one from last year and the year before), some gardening gloves with holes in them, a couple of old gardening magazines, a cardboard box, an old ripped tea-towel and a Big Daddy Annual from 1976. At the same time we will be blasting out Tom Robinson’s “2,4,6,8 Motorway” from the back room (apologies in advance to the neighbours).

The event will be streamed live here from 3pm and next week we’ll be selling off the ash from the fire (in lovely artisan-made commerative bags of course) at our local car boot sale if anyone is interested. #burnpunklondon

Dub what you see

Posted on November 23, 2016 by onedeckpete

As played on the Rt Hon David Rodigan radio show this week, the excellent The Frightnrs out of NYC with a dub and a half of “Dispute” mixed by the great Victor Axelrod aka Ticklah. There’s some fine flyers too from the band here. Can you get that tinkering piano part out of your head? I can’t.

Say what you see

Posted on November 20, 2016 by onedeckpete

back-garden-november Popped out in the garden today to cut the grass and to do a little bit of tidying up and it’s made a difference (above). The garden’s been in a bit of a state of late due to that virus and was looking rough to say the least.

While putting the flymo over the wet grass, thoughts of the things learnt (through the power of the internet) while lying in bed or sitting watching tripe on the telly while under the influence of that virus. silvermachine Mick McManus (aka The Dulwich Destroyer or The Man You Love to Hate) supposedly had a hand in writing Hawkwind’s Silver Machine (info here.) Kendo Nagasaki managed
The Cuddly Toys and disco diva Laura Pallas (info here) and during the day they show old episodes of Catchphrase with Roy Walker.

After the hour or two in the garden today I settled down in front of the telly for a rest and watched today’s instalment. This one had Roy telling a contestant (a police dog handler) a joke that went like this “I saw a funny looking dog with a policeman once, it was half-Chiwawa and half Dachshund. I said to the policeman, how can THAT be a police dog? The officer replied, (pause for 1970’s comic timing) he is, but he’s under cover.” Awful, truly awful!