A word to the wiseguy/girl

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Dillinger – Ragnampiza – Black Swan
“My name is Ragnampiza and I don’t eat fertilizer” toasted the great Dillinger in the 1970’s and he’s right, I’ve just walked down the garden and smelt the new load of comfrey water fermenting and it don’t half whiff. It’s not the sort of stuff you want to ingest!

On Gardener’s Question Time last week Bob Flowerdew (we’ve been sending him emails on and off for the last year asking for his musical top 5 but he refuses to answer) mentions he cuts his comfrey liquid with stinging nettles and borage to get an all-round plant feed. Big up D.I.Y. liquid fertiliser making if you can put up with the stench!


One Deck & Popular – Son of Stitt – Black Country Route
This tune is nicked off that. I do know, as I know the bloke who ripped it off!


Bob Andy – Chains – Studio 1
But the original tune is nicked off this! Thanks to Mistah Brown for educating us on this classic a few years ago. Tune!


Bob Andy – Set Me Free – High Note
A later redo produced by the late and (very) great Sonia Pottinger. Lovely bonkers organ solo in an (very) non Rick “freemason of lodge 3098” Wakeman stylee.

Dub like dirt

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Ras Muffet – The Lord/Lord Dub – off “Dubs from Greenhouse Studio” LP – Roots Injection

Cheers to Simon at The Dirt on Fab Radio International for giving Weeds Up To Me Knees a shout on tonight’s show and playing a tune for all dub gardeners. We salute you! Have a listen to tonight’s show when it gets put up on play again here.

King Tubby – Chapter of Money Dub – off “Dub like Dirt” LP – Blood and Fire

Gardening glove of the week

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Thanks to our good friend Scarlett for getting in touch about her favourite brand of gardening gloves. It’s funny as one of the light pair I got last week (part of a two part set) fell into the bucket of comfrey liquid yesterday rendering them useless! Great eh, they didn’t even last seven days! Here’s Scarlett’s nomination for favourite gardening glove, the dry touch by gold leaf. I’ve just checked amazon and it says that  they are widely recognised as “The World’s Finest Gardening Gloves.” These are a classy pair of gloves unlike mine that are now hanging up to dry to get rid of that putrid comfrey water smell!

Dry Touch by Gold Leaf – my favourites so far in my life.

Dry-Touch-Gloves_large

Made from the same quality leather as fashion gloves and lined, they are super comfy and long lasting, and they look fabulous too. A pair of gardening gloves lasts me about a year.  I bought these Gold Leaf gloves in November 2012. They’re starting to go a bit now on one of the fingers so will probably need replacing at the end of the year, by which time they will have lasted me two years!  A bit more expensive at around £20 but regular gloves cost £10-£15 for a decent pair, so these are worth the extra. Here I am vogue-ing on Magic Plot 7 when they were clean and new.

Hand in glove

I still use Gloves in a Bottle when doing small jobs like seed sowing, light pruning and cutting. A fab product!

Have a look at Scarlett’s great gardening blog here.

Digging The Dirt

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The Dirt

A big shout to Simon Diamond of The Dirt, “a gardening programme like no other” on Fab Radio International from Manchester (via the web) who got in touch with us last week. As it says on the website, it’s a programme that “champions have-a-go gardeners and outdoor idlers,” there’s no mention of latin names of plants or any Andy Williams tunes.

It isn’t like anything else. I listened to the last couple of shows on play again last week and it’s an interesting mix of gardening related stuff with a sense of humour. They had an angus beef farmer who also runs a music festival, the week previous, an urban beekeeper in Manchester and a chat with David Bevan, aka The One-handed Gardener. It’s not GQT and the show don’t take itself too seriously, but you know they’re well passionate about the old gardening lark. A while ago they rang their gardening expert for his weekly update only to speak to his neighbour who was around his house feeding his cats as the chap was away on holiday, all live on air, great stuff! The audio of that daftness is here.

Also each week it features the Idiot Gardener. I’ve been listening to his podcasts at work all last week, absolutely mental! He’s knows his stuff and don’t take fools gladly, think of MC Pitman on the allotment. A warning though, he’s not Alys Fowler and uses some choice language (like we all do.) Hear his appreciation of the big tin can in space (The International Space Station, you know we love that here at weeds) here, his views on the Big Allotment Challenge here (we’re with him on that!) and finally the Idiot Gardening ethic here. Big up Idiot Gardening!

The Dirt is not your usual gardening show and it’s a good one, have a listen, you will laugh! Every Sunday on Fab Radio International or on listen again.


Desmond Dekker and the Aces – Music like dirt (Intensified ’68) – Pyramid UK

New Cross, New Cross

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Tomato bonanza aug

Thanks to our Mihaly and Renato at Dig This Nursery for passing on an advance flyer for the next leg of their tomato festival in August. If you want to know anything about the humble tom, go down and have a word with them, the nursery is just opposite New Cross Gate Station.They know quite a bit seeing as though they’ll be having 92 tomato varieties at the festival. How mad is that? 92!

Neotropic – New Cross – Council Folk Recordings

Keeping the circle around

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Pass it on

A big thanks to our good friend Jane for passing on this great tray of vegetables which included three pea plants with forming fruits, a nice climbing french bean in flower and some well healthy cabbages.

As soon as I got in from work, the peas went into the sink nearest the house (a couple of leaves of Comfrey went in the hole first after the plant had a good soaking.) The others will go into the garden over the weekend when I get a spare minute and if the weathers okay, as I’ve heard it’ll be violent storms and hailstones over the weekend here in London.

I’m always up for giving away any excess plants when I’ve any left over, I mean why waste them. But let’s hope the slugs and snails here in SE23 don’t find out about this latest lot though or I’m knackered!

Beat dis

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tim-sweeney

A big shout (again) to Tim Sweeney for bringing us this great mix via his radio show Beats in Space from the Italian DJ Bottin from Venice. A mix and a half full of surprises on a diverse disco tip featuring some great edits from 70’s Germanic rockers Can and Faust and even includes some clucking hens (well, humans impersonating them!) If this don’t make you feel uplifted, nowt will.

One for blasting out loud into the back garden an hour to midnight on a friday while standing outside with a glass of bevy in your hand staring up aimlessly into the night sky looking for the International Space Station (even though it’s cloudy.) Mad stuff!

Tracklistings:
Redbone – Cycles (Bottin edit)
Can – Don’t Turn The Light On (Zopelar edit)
Faust – It’s A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl (DiMovi edit)
Franco Battiato – Up Patriots To Arms (DMV edit)
FK Club – Unsane
La Nuova Fattoria – Disco Pollo (Bottin edit)
Bottin – Poison Within (feat. Steve Strange/Visage)
Bottin & Rodion – Progresso
Leyo & Special Mike – Don’t Stop The Tape
Elitechnique – Love Triangle (Bottin remix)
Artifact 5 – 15 Minutes (Love Supreme edit)
Carmen Villain – Obedience (Bjørn Torske mix)
Bottin – Parody
Bottin – Lies reprise (feat. Lavinia Claws)

Download it here!

That’s life (not as we know it)

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Pull the udder oneHere’s a mad old strawberry found this morning that looks like something out of a 1970’s episode of “That’s Life!” This wouldn’t be on sale at your local Sainsbury’s, would it? It might look odd but it tasted alright to me! I didn’t know strawberry’s suffer from being “forked” like carrots do, but hey ho, that’s Life! How I used to hate that programme. “That was some very funny odd-odes from Cyril Fletcher and before that, a carrot that looked like a rude body part. Now Doc…” Ivor Biggun indeed!

odd ode man

 

Dub it Doctor Strangedub, dub it!

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A big shout to our good pal across the pond Dr Strangedub for sending us a couple of charts of reggae tunage in a summer style. As you know the good Doctor with DJ Baby Swiss presents the excellent Echo Chamber on KFAI every Wednesday morning (available on archive too) featuring the best in reggae, dub and downbeat. Here’s a selection of summer 2014 listening (in no particular order):

Top 7 Reggae songs 
1. Sunshine Music – Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
2. Watch How You Walk – Inspiration – Jah Wobble & PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)

3. Hope – Dubcatcher – DJ Vadim (ft. Rio Hemopo & Sabira Jade) (Sonar Kollectiv)
4. Caruru – Magnetica – Quantic (ft. Lara Renno)  (Tru Thoughts)
5. Never Give Up – Knowledge Shine Bright – See-I (Fort Knox)

6. Postman – Twice – Hollie Cook (Mr. Bongo) 
7. In This World – FutureWorld – Thomas Blondet (ft. Leyla Chatti) (Rhythm & Culture)

Top 10 Summer Reggae Albums 
01. Island Time – Shandy, Will, & Grruff (Kudos)
02. Twice – Hollie Cook  (Mr. Bongo)
03. Dubcatcher (Mr. Bongo) – DJ Vadim (Mr. Bongo)
04. Send ’em to Outta Space – Yabass & Friends (Atomic Sounds)
05. Inspiration  – Jah Wobble presents PJ Higgins (Sonar Kollectiv)

06. Serious Time – Mungos Hi-Fi  (Scotch Bonnet)
07. Knowledge Shine Bright  – See-I (Fort Knox)
08. Dubmatix In Dub – Dubmatix (Renegade/Echo Beach)
09. World Citizen – Black Slate (Unit 8)
10. Destiny – Raging Fyah (Soulbeats Records)

Upsetting the applecart

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Lee Perry – Station Underground News – Bread
A killer from 1973 produced by Mr “light years ahead of his time” Lee Perry featuring a radio reference (“at 16,000 Kilocycles FM and 1,000 Megahertz on the ground” 00.10) and a Chi-lites sample “For God’s sake give more power to the people” at 1.49.) This tune was played on the Lee Perry special on the David Rodigan show on BBC 1 Xtra last Sunday which is available on mixcloud here. And for the original vocal cut:


Leo Graham & The Upsetters – News Splash – Underground/Upsetter