Good tidings of compost and joy

Posted on December 25, 2014 by onedeckpete

Christmas Eve started on a good tip today with the postlady delivering the 30 packets of seeds I bought on e-bay for £6 odd the other day. There were some great stuff in there, flowers, herbs and vegetables and not a duplicate packet of cress seeds in sight! And they were well in their sell-by dates as well.

Talk about getting a good deal, I recommend everyone having a look on ebay (but not too often as we don’t want to put the local garden centre out of business!) On the veg tip I got some butternut squash, leek, cabbage, red onion, two varieties of tomato (gardeners delight and moneymaker, two decent varieties) beetroot, courgette and pepper (sweet minimix.) As for flowers lots of annuals including aster, cherry rose nasturtium, phlox and nigella amongst lots more. Bargain!

I even spent an hour or so today tipping about in the garden and sowed some leek seeds in a tray under a cloche. I know it’s a bit previous, but who knows what the weather will bring, saying that the weatherman mentioned some cold nights and frosts to come.

So a big festive greetings to all gardeners everywhere and let’s hope 2015 is one good year when it comes to the garden!

Two for christmas eve eve

Posted on December 23, 2014 by onedeckpete

Protoje Ft Chronixx – Who Knows (Gregory Morris Dub Mix)
https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs/afrikan-sciences-circuitous-pan-54
African Sciences – Circuitous – Pan
Two for playing very loud while wrapping up those christmas gifts or dancing around the back room with a Baileys to, celebrating the start of this festive season (and to blot out out the thought of how much brass you’ve already spent on presents!)

No scrumping in So-ho OK*

Posted on December 21, 2014 by onedeckpete

* Not sung to Crass’ “Banned from The Roxy” unless you want to.

Walking down Dean Street, Soho last week I spotted this great apple tree growing from a basement.

What made me laugh more than anything was the first line on the information sheet fixed to the front fence, “First keep your hands off my apple tree which has taken 15 years to grow.” A nice tree with some great fruit on it even in mid-December!

Chucked out for the binmen OK*

Posted on December 20, 2014 by onedeckpete

* Sung to Crass’ “Banned from The Roxy”

Here’s a nice fish related object found by my wife outside a house thrown out for the binmen this week. This’ll look great by the garden pond!

There’s a connection with the fish and this week’s Sounds From The South on The Dirt‘s Christmas Special this Monday night from 7-9pm on Fab Radio International. Tune in live here and turn on (man)!

A soundtrack to seed buying

Posted on December 18, 2014 by onedeckpete

Thanks to the Rt Hon David Rodigan for playing the new tune from the legendary Jamaican duo Keith & Tex called “Back into your world” on his show of late. It’s a tune and a half and features a lovely dub from Ticklah and top bass from Victor Rice whose great dub of a Dubmatix tune was featured on Sounds from the South here. A tune to blast out loud on the stereo while bidding on veg and herb seeds on ebay.Earlier tonight I had a look through my seed tin and made a list of what seeds I was down on which prompted me to look on e-bay. It’s a good job I did as I got a bargain, 30 packs of seeds for £6 odd with postage (let’s hope there’s not a load of duplicates and some well out of date!)

Have a look on e-bay too as you never know what you’ll get. I just tapped in “assorted herb and vegetable seeds.” Good luck!

Thursday pre-frost tunage

Posted on December 11, 2014 by onedeckpete

Here’s a well mellow number played on the Tom Ravenscroft radio show last week. It’s a tune by C Duncan called For and it’s released as a free downloadable on the FatCat label. Just mellow, man.

https://soundcloud.com/mrduncan/c-duncan-for

Everything’s gone green(house)

Posted on December 8, 2014 by onedeckpete

Here’s the first in a new series for The Dirt on Fab Radio International broadcast tonight called Greenhouse Classics. The tune this week is from Weval with One off their Easier EP on Kompakt.

Also in this week’s show there’s detox diets with Mauread Russell, a chat with The Gentleman Gardener and the blog of the week is Two Thirsty Gardeners. The show is available here.

Barefoot gardeners of the world unite!

Posted on December 4, 2014 by onedeckpete

This week’s podcast of The Dirt is now online, and features seed swapping, an interview with The Grumpy Gardener and our feature Sounds From The South which is at 24.30 minutes in here. Tune of the week is the excellent Victor Rice dub of Dubmatix featuring Jay Douglas – Celebrate my Love.

https://soundcloud.com/dubmatix/dubmatix-celebrate-my-love-1

Dreaming of spring

Posted on November 30, 2014 by onedeckpete

Pig & Dan – Friday Freaks – Bedrock Records

Found this on Beatport the other night, a rather nice dubbed out affair on a chilled out tip. A tune to have on the stereo loud while flicking through those seed catalogues and dreaming of the better weather. Roll on the spring!

Dub gardeners of the world unite

Posted on November 23, 2014 by onedeckpete

Jochen harvest 2013

A big shout to Jochen of Splintercell Sound out of Germany for getting in touch and for letting us use some great pics of his veg cultivation. He’s been growing veg for a good few years in a limited space using minimalist techniques but still gets some great results (as these images show!) with the aid of his greenhouse and some tricks learnt along the way!

pollination in progress

Alongside growing other plants, he got fascinated with cultivating Bonsai. He read a lot about horticulture, studying books, blogs and online forums and did his first ‘experiments’ in the small yard of his parents house.

After school he completed an apprenticeship with a breeder of agricultural seeds, studied horticulture for one year, worked at the Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food and now is studying Urban Planning. Sounds like a good grounding for this veg growing lark!

Most of the plants are grown in pots as he only has limited space and has a small greenhouse on top of his carport (above). As he says “it’s urban gardening!” Brilliant!

He grows a lot of different vegetables and plants and always tries to use special strains and varieties. He told us one year nearly every plant was blue; blue potatoes, blue kohlrabies, blue carrots etc. Brilliant, well up my street as blue is one of my favourite colours but I am not sure what I think if it was served up on my dinner plate!

He also tries to grow something interesting like melons or special tomato or chili strains because of his limited space and he tells me that this years cucumber-harvest was amazing! I’ve only tried growing them outdoors twice and haven’t had much success but these below in his greenhouse look brilliant!

Even more up our street, he’s part of Splintercell Sound and also promote a regular party called “Feel like Jumping” in Münster where they play (rocksteady, early reggae and dancehall and conscious Rap.) Here’s a mix on their great soundcloud site (with lots of modern “roots” tunes!) which is well up our street :

https://soundcloud.com/splintercell/sets/promo-mix

And a couple of great tunes picked by Jochen as well, out of his many favourites at the moment, Tell them fi farm by Tydal

And Queen Ifrica with Make you rock produced by Silly Walks Discotheque

Big up Jochen, his veg gardening and the splintercell sound!

Weeds up to me knees

Madtone, gardening and life