Last night fueled by supermarket bottled lager, I decided to go through a few forgotten about second-hand singles found searching through boot sales and charity shops over the years. In amongst the pile I found some singles that would be worth a mint if they were in a half decent condition (which they ain’t!) but discovered this classic rock-steady guitar instrumental from 1969. Not exactly hi-fidelity but a tune all the same!
Thanks very much to our friend Sharon Bassey of the London beekeeping association for sending us this picture of a very clever idea for a planter from a friend of hers using a wooden pallet. How brilliant is that? She mentions they would look great as dividers or up against a shed/wall and I reckon they’d work well on a balcony too. Any more inventive planters out there? Send your planter pics to us. Inventive planters of the world unite!
A few months ago my wife found this wire plant pot holder in the street to be chucked out. The pot that’s sitting in it was rescued from the garden of the then derelict house next door (which are now flats and inhabited thank the lord) and filled with some self-seeded nasturtiums transplanted from the garden with a little bit of creeping thyme which I got from the growing food in the city course at the walworth garden farm.
I very rarely throw any plant pots out unless they are beyond repair and if they’re plastic and unrepairable they go straight in the recycling bin. In the case of cracked terracotta pots I break them up and stick them in a bucket to use later as “crocks” to put in the bottom of pots as drainage. All the good pots get stacked up at the bottom of the garden (after a good wash out) and reused time and time again. Waste not want not and all that!
It’s been a terrible start to June, the bank holiday was a right wash-out and on the way home from work last week getting soaked in the rain I passed an upside down plastic “darlek” type compost bin outside a house with a note saying “please take me”. Have you ever tried carrying one of those things? When we got ours delivered (free from the council) I had to roll mine down to the back garden so carting one a few streets away would have been murder. I had to pass on it and I’m not usually one to turn down free stuff!
Talking of something for free, I discovered the first bit of liquid that seeped out of my hi-tech “I didn’t buy it” wormery this morning. Total cost so far is a grand nowt as the top area (where the worms do their work) was a bucket I found outside a shop and the smaller bucket underneath (which collects any liquid deposits) once kept tile grout. The worms I got from my compost bin and I feed them kitchen waste about once a week. It’s looking horrible in there at the moment with mould and fruit flies but I think that’s a good sign.
The liquid that drains out of the wormery is an excellent plant feed when diluted. The little I got today I slung into a small bucket of water and did some pots and me sweet peas. Last year I was paying about a fiver for a bottle of liquid feed in the shops so a big cheers to Scarlett for getting me onto this worm composting lark.
Also the water lily we bought three years ago for a fiver from Lewisham’s “premier” pet shop is starting to get a flower bud. I think the guy felt sorry for us when we said we couldn’t afford the £20 for a big one so he done us a deal. I have no idea if this is normal to wait three years for one to flower or is that what happens when you buy one for a fiver! Most of the other plants around the pond I got for just the cost of postage and packing a few years ago from an offer in The Guardian and the Iris’s were given to us by a good mate. Who needs expense in this day and age?
Woofah – Issue 4 (A5 96 pages for £4!) The latest issue of the excellent reggae, dubstep and grime magazine Woofah featuring lots of great stuff, including reggae-wise the late dub poet Michael Smith (“me cyaan believe it”), Joe Ariwa (Mad Professor’s Son) & Young Warrior, YT, UK dub cutting houses, Studio 1 photographer Ron Vester (he mentions that King Stitt used to get loads of female attention) and a great interview with Tony Thorpe of 400 Blows, Moody Boy’s etc (I seen him playing records once at a Saberettes night in a basement underneath the BT tower!). This mag is well designed and well researched with no advertisements and a must for any serious reggae (and dubstep) fan. Big up to John Eden and friends for putting this fine magazine together!
£4 from John direct on http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WOOFAH-4-grime-dubstep-reggae-bashment-fanzine-/230799965259?pt=UK_Magazines&hash=item35bcbffc4b
John also has a great blog called http://www.uncarved.org/blog/
Pound shops, don’t you just love ’em! Those plastic builder’s buckets with handles on they sell cheap have come up in conversation a couple of times this week funnily enough. My mate Will used one to scoop out the water from his kid’s bath to put on the garden thus foiling the hosepipe ban during last week’s mini heatwave. It’s funny, as today it was freezing cold and was tipping it down like there’s no tomorrow. Where’s that heatwave gone when you need it over the bank holiday weekend? Yesterday afternoon I was “tipping around with a hoe” with hot sun burning the back of me neck but today was soaked to the skin just walking down to the compost bin. What’s all that about?
A big ta to Edward for telling us his top tip last wednesday of drilling some drainage holes in the bottom of the plastic buckets and using them to grow spuds in. Using seed potatoes he has left over from the main plot he puts in one per bucket and then puts them in the greenhouse. If you’re lucky enough to have a greenhouse you could put spuds in at varying times of the year thus elongating the cropping season. Bob Flowerdew mentioned he loves keeping some seed potatoes over so he can sow them indoors just after xmas so he’ll have new potatoes for Easter. Good idea eh? I haven’t got a greenhouse but the old window frame I found in the street that doubled as a cold frame has turned up trumps as the potato plant started early on in the year under it is flowering now so it won’t be long now till we have some new potatoes for dinner!
A few weeks ago I transferred the tumbling tomato plant that I got on the growing food in the city course at walworth garden farm to a hanging basket (alongside a lettuce and a nasturtium) on the wall which is doing great (see above). It gets lots of sun from early on and I give it a good water as and when it needs it (usually on a nightly basis!)
I found the hanging basket in a skip a year or so ago and it was in a right state but after bit of a wash and brush up and some wire wool on the chain, it’s looking good! It’s a bit overcrowded at the moment and as it’s only early in the season I’m sure I will be thinning out the thing but lets see what happens. I’ll be giving it a good feed weekly during the summer and lots of water so fingers crossed.
It’s two days of bank holidays now, what’s the odds of getting some good weather?
Here’s how the wormery is doing that was started back in March. I check up on it a couple of times a week and pop in some chopped kitchen waste. When I lift the top off there’s usually flies a go-go and the stuff inside is not looking too healthy with mouldy old bread and the odd yellow potato shoot but when I stuck my hand in today (urgh!) I noticed there were a good few worms wriggling about. Don’t have nightmares, and do sleep well (and don’t look too closely into the bucket)!
The perfect plot (starting an allotment from scratch) – Kim Sayer – Simon & Schuster 2012
The other week I picked up this great book in Holborn Library. It’s a mine of information following an allotment in Devon from a germ of an idea, how it was set up (with advice on how to set one up yourself, getting grants etc) to how it is progressing now. Loads of information on the tools you need, soil cultivation, crop rotation, what to do season by season, pest control and interviews with everyone involved. A great read if you’ve just got an allotment, want to set one up or just want to grow stuff in your back garden. One of the main guys even uses the biodynamic method too, excellent!
Remember if you haven’t got the cash to spend on gardening books join your local library as it costs nowt (and don’t forget the web either) and if you work in a different town/borough join the one there too as that’ll give your more choice. I’ve library membership for three London boroughs and I don’t think you have to work or live in that borough to join one.
On Friday night I saw Goldie talking to Alan Titchmarsh on the telly at Chelsea about his love of Acers. I reckon he might be the next new breed of TV gardener with his tatt’s and gold teeth. What happened to the old percy thrower stereotype in their tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows wearing a clean shirt and tie while demonstrating “double digging”? Times are a changing indeed!
I’ve just noticed some flower buds forming on the super early spuds (below) that were originally started off on the homemade cold frame which are now flying ahead! The ones I put in a month or so ago are starting to get going now as well. Spuds I love em!
Jobs done this week: Weeding (just knock them off with a sharp hoe and leave them to shrivel up in this hot weather), mowing the lawn (it does appreciate a weekly cut), staking up tomato plants, tying back passion flower, clematis and sweet peas and giving the garden a good old water in the evening (I do it with using a bucket, it takes me ages but I like it as it gives me some quiet time on me own). Sowed outdoors this week: Dwarf french beans (nice one Will!), climbing french beans, cut and come again lettuce, borage, lemon balm, sunflowers and night scented stock.
Yesterday I spent most of day sitting in a dentist’s chair having work done on me teeth as I’m a case presentation (aka “case prez”) for a dental student, so still feeling a bit shell-shocked from that combined with the heatwave we’re having here at the present so feeling a bit odd to say the least. I’m not really up for doing much in the garden tonight apart from watering the plants and having a butchers at what nature does best while sipping a cold bevvy from the comfort of a chair!
Anyway, here’s a couple of tunes to blast out in the garden this weekend while ‘tipping about’ with a hoe. Enjoy the old heatwave!
Yesterday I spent an hour or so clearing a small patch of bindweed along the side of the garden in preparation for some more raised beds. It’s the area behind the broad beans, tomatoes and the mini plum tree (below). God only knows how long it will keep bindweed free as it’s horrible stuff and I can see myself pulling it out on a daily basis.
I mean does anyone really like weeding? In Bob Flowerdew’s book on compost he thinks of the plants he pulls up as more material to go onto the compost heap which gets him through it. A good way of looking at it, I reckon.
I remember years ago on a gardening course with the council, (and boy did they like doing courses there! As a workmate once said to me “the more courses you go on, the less real work you have to do, so sign up for everything!”) the teacher’s definition of a weed was a plant growing in the wrong place. She gave an example that a rose could technically be a weed if it was growing on a football pitch for instance.
I got stuck into the area with a hand trowel while on me knees (on an Sainbury’s own range kneeling pad, well worth the couple of quid it cost). If there’s anything that self seeded like Poppies and Calendulas I always transplant them elsewhere in the garden. Nettle leaves I now save in a bucket where I will later add comfrey and borage leaves to make a top plant feed (another Flowerdew tip, as he says adding the other leaves to the comfrey makes for a better all-round feed). Any weeds with seed heads I stick in a bucket of water to rot before chucking the horrible liquid on the heap later and any sticks get put on top of the ever growing mountain of wood to burn (another job I’ll get around to one day). Everything else goes straight on the heap.
Also I took some time to “thin out” a row of lettuces in the salad bed, giving the remaining plants more space to grow and at the same time providing us with salad for tea. Waste not want not, eh?
Weeds up to me knees 
