Chit them up!

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Chitting in SE23

I’ve been ill all week with the dreaded flu so I treated myself with a nice big bag of seed potatoes (earlies) for £4.49 from Shannons and stuck them in a cleaned out seed tray to give them a head start. They’re in a cool dry room by the window getting some light and they’ll sit there for a good few weeks while they develop some nice small green shoots (aka “chits”) which aren’t those horrid long yellow ones that old spuds get when they start sprouting in a dark cupboard. Just stick them in an egg box/tray with the blunt end (the one’s with the “eyes”) upwards in a cool, light room and wait until the danger of frost has gone (late spring) then stick them out.

Thanks to Lewisham Gardens for getting in touch about their forthcoming seed swap, the actual date is still to be confirmed but they are looking at possibly Sunday 23 February in Hither Green and it’s FREE! More details nearer the time. We’ll be there!

Also thanks to Mick Matthews who emailed us today about the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group (CSSG) Potato Day/Seed Swap on 15 February 2014 and it’s at The Commemoration Hall, 39 High St, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE29 3AQ and also FREE, so if you’re in that area, support it! There’s 40 varieties of Potatoes available at £1.00 a kilo and children’s activities as well to keep the little ones happy while you swap your unwanted seeds. Cheers for getting in touch, Mick.

***STOP PRESS*** We’ve just had another email from Mick who mentioned: “Our potato day is not only free but we sell by the kilo so people can buy enough for a row or two without breaking the bank. It’s £1-00 per kilo and that’s been the price for the last four years. We did have a young lady visit the year before from Croydon who had missed the South London potato day and she commented that it was the best potato day she had been to and we only had 25 varieties that year!” Brilliant!

Also he passed on a great tip which is: “Spray the tubers with a weak solution of liquid sea-weed once in the egg trays just enough to wet them, this encourages stronger shoots and roots. Also if necessary plant out with sections of the tray attached as the roots sometime grow into the trays” Cheers again Mick, very helpful!

Sunday steppers business

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Zion Train/Jazzmin Tutum – Political Ting
Big thanks to our good friend and musical collaborator Jazzmin Tutum for sending us her new tune with the great Zion Train. A lively uptempo steppers number with snatches of warrior charge horns, great stuff! A tune for blasting out loud while looking at the frosted over back garden with a cup of tea and toast out of the kitchen window first thing on a Sunday morning!

Sydenham spud no more

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the umble spud

Thanks very much to Ann Other who contacted us this morning with information that the Sydenham Potato Day and Seed Swap event later this month has been cancelled according to the Potato Days 2014 website. I am gutted as I was well looking forward to it!

On the site it mentioned that the next London event is the one sponsored by the RHS in February. It’s free to RHS members but I wonder how much it is to non-members like myself? I will contact the RHS and Potato day website and see what info can be gleamed.

RHS Potato Day
In conjunction with London Plant & Design Show
21st-22nd February 2014
RHS Horticultural Halls
Vincent Square, Westminster.
Free to RHS Members.

While we’re on the subject of seed swaps, someone at work yesterday let us know about a site called Garden Swapshop which looks well interesting! The seed swap page is here.

STOP PRESS: Chris from Pennards Plants on the Potato Day website emailed me today: “I do not organise this event and was told last week by the organiser that he was cancelling as he could not get the venue. We are involved in The London Potato Day being run in conjunction with the RHS at the Lindley Hall, Vincent Square, Westminster on 21st/22nd February where we will have our full range of potatoes (which we could not do at Sydenham) as well as our Heritage seeds, onion sets, shallots etc.” There is NO seed swap at this event!

Throw mi corn

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Witherspoons

A couple of posts ago (Cloches over the Westway) I mentioned seeing The Clash at The Corn Exchange in Bury St Edmunds many moons ago. I’ve googled the venue to see if it was still there and was shocked to find out it’s now a Wetherspoon’s! I’m very glad though to see it has 5 Star food hygene and WiFi and that the interior is very posh (see below) but there are a few questions I would like to be answered. What are the quality of the Sausages included with their all-day breakfast like, has DJ Derek ever had a pint in there and is there a dress code? I am on the phone to JD Wetherspoon now…

Witherspoons 2

One to watch the garden shed fly away to by…

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Decadance Vs Italoconnection – On and On (Fears keep on) – Leo Mas & Fabrice Danceology Dub Mix – Disco Modernism 003

What a lovely old tune! First heard tonight while sorting a mix from soundcloud to stick on the stereo. This track is featured on a great mix from A love from outer space (Andrew Weatherall & Sean Johnson) at the Electric Elephant in 2013. An excellent tune from an very excellent mix tape. Funnily enough I’ve just picked up for a quid in the local charity shop another classic from Mr Weatherall, the Skunk Weed Skank mix of James’ Come Home , an oldie but goodie!

Top of the pile(s)

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The top of the pile

There’s not much gardening been done in good old London town this week due to the Christmas festivities/very wet weather but this morning I did rip up a few big cardboard boxes from the kid’s christmas presents (image above with brandling worms posing at the top of the pile, the vain gits!) and whacked them in the compost bin in layers in between some kitchen waste (remember to keep your pile well-balanced, man!) And the more varied stuff you put into the heap, the better quality that will come out of it and all that good compost is free (and you can never have enough of it!)

Compost bin number 1 can’t take much more now so the other darlek type one I’ve just emptied (bin number 2 which I got gratis off the council, so check if you can do the same!) will now be the one I’ll start to fill again. Talk about full circle!

While down the bottom of the garden I noticed there’s still a massive pile of cuttings/prunings that couldn’t go in the bins and that I need to get rid of, so as soon as it all dries out (some chance with this blimmin rain) I’ll be getting that incinerator back into action (cue neighbours complaining and slamming their windows shut!)

Also one last thing. I’ve got some assorted herbs on my kitchen windowsill (Basil, Lemon Balm, Coriander and the like) and it’s attracting a lot of mini-flies even in this climate. Any ideas how to keep them away?

Cloches over the Westway

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Um Bongo

I was rummaging through some boxes in the loft for some horticultural fleece the other day and found a cassette by a band called Bongo Joe featuring a cover of “Sympathy for the Devil” that I acquired many moons ago in 1983. The band featured a couple of members of St Alban’s legendary punks The Tea Set (Nick Egan and Nick Haeffner), samples of Florence Nightingale and Neville Chamberlain and backing vocals from one of Bananarama, a bonkers combination to say the least (more on the St Alban’s punk scene from that time here.) I then became misty eyed while I recalled how I think I might have obtained the tape. People who dislike punk nostalgia please look away from your screens now…

Cloche city rockers

In 1978 me and a mate decided to hitch-hike to Bury St Edmunds to see local heroes The Specials supporting The Clash. I haven’t much memory about the actual gig but I do remember coming out of it with my mate and being surrounded by an angry gang of hairy bikers (not those two chefs off the telly who I’d like to think would rather give you a pork pie recipe than a good kicking.) These lot were hell-bent on inflicting some damage on us, the largest and more leather-clad one out of them all screaming at the top of his voice  “You f-ing punks are dead,” nice! My 16 years of life flashed in front of me, then out of the blue a punk came to our rescue, grabbed both of us and whisked us away. The next minute we were in The Clash’s hotel room and I remember being very excited being there and seeing Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon dancing around to some mad dub coming out of their ghetto blaster (something off Joe Gibbs – Chapter 3 possibly?) I was very shocked as well (being a very naive 16 year old at the time) to see quite a few girls sitting outside in a line outside the band’s room later. Mary Whitehouse wouldn’t have been too happy about it.

After a short while in the hotel (the party being quite a tame affair by the way) we got a lift south from the punk who introduced himself as Nick Egan and told us about his band The Tea-Set, (their grafitti used to adorn a motorway bridge on the M1 around Hemel Hempstead, ever seen it?) We also found out that The Clash got their stage gear made for them by some nice little old ladies in North London, great eh? After our lift I kept in touch and I am sure it was Nick who sent it to us.

I’m now feeling very nostalgic, spiking up what hair I have around the sides like a post-punk Roger De Courcey and contemplating doing the punk kicking dance, even though I could only manage a minute or so these days! I’ve just thought wouldn’t it be great if the remaining members of The Clash (R.I.P. Joe Strummer) are now enjoying the delights of gardening in their older age…

Anyway, have a good old xmas holiday and remember it’s not long before those potatoes have to be chitted!