The Blue Peter Garden at the grass roots of dub

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Here’s a new mix from One Deck Pete called “An introduction to Dub Gardening” and goes out to all dub gardeners everywhere and we welcome contact from (dub and non dub) gardeners wherever they may be. Dedicated to the late Percy Thrower.
The mix features:
Augustus Pablo – Melody Dub
Soulware – Augmented Seed (Dub Version)
Biggabush – Beat Dem in Dub
Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – Return to the Branches (no hams mix)
Vassell Meka – Flowers Dub
Madtone – Compost your mind

We’re not completely sure where the Dub Gardening phrase originates from but it may (or may not and we apologise if it was somebody else) have something to our good friend across the pond Dr Strangedub (alongside DJ baby Swiss) who brings you the The Echo Chamber which is broadcast on KFAI every Wednesday morning from 8 am-Noon UK time here.

A good few ago the good doctor put together a gardening related mix called In The Garden of dub which is below and has also been featured up on Weeds a few times but well worth posting up again! Features lots of artists inluding Singers & Players (ft. Prince Far I), Earlyworm, Madtone, Finn The Giant, Juno Gad Allstars meet Earlyworm, Leroy Sibbles, Jah Wobble, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bakshish, DubXanne (ft. Ranking Roger) and lots lots more. Big shout to all dub gardeners.

Gathering a beat for a cold thursday morning

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Cheers to Gerry Hectic for sending this over, a track with nice vibes for a cold Thursday morning here in SE23. It’s Leaf Erickson with The Gathering (featuring John Robinson, D Strong & Wildelux). Great stuff Gerry!

Cosmos taking over

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Hi to Debby H for sending us pictures of the state of play in her garden when it comes to continuing cosmos flowers at the moment and it is really crazy stuff. All the garden borders have the plants in them and the volunteer/self seeded one in the north bed has the most amazing colour (above).

“I have borders on 3 sides of my lawn, and there are cosmos flowers in all of them, including the northern border where I didn’t even plant any!” said Debby. They really are brilliant and as we said a few posts ago we ask our readers to send us some cosmos pictures next year, wherever you are in the world. Cheers Debby, you’ve started off a growing cosmos trend hopefully!

Redistribution of gardening wealth

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One of the best things about this gardening lark is when people pass on things and we’ve picked up all sort of stuff from out in the street or left on garden walls with a “Take me” note on it. We’ve found gardening tools, a very strange coatstand that works as support for climbing plants (here) and even our silver birch that is growing so tall now (here).

In the last week we’ve kindly been given some seeds (Cheers Debby H!) and the other night we happily received a couple of bags (pic above) of Russet Apples (Cheers Adrienne!) which we’ve never tasted before and were very pleasantly suprised when we had them with some frozen berries (found at the bottom of the freezer) with a sponge top.

So keep that circle-a-turning and if you’ve got something that you don’t need, pass it/them on!

There’s a cat in me firebowl what am I gonna do?

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We had a bit of a burn up in the firebowl last night alongside £30’s worth of Lldl fireworks thet seemed to go in about 5 minutes. We got rid of a lot of old tree prunings and the side of an ancient shed that was plonked by the compost heap for the last year or so (below).

The top picture was what we woke up to this morning! Our cat had been there for hours we reckon and spent a lot off today there too. It must have been warm at one point…

Custodians of the cosmos

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Cheers to Debby H for influencing us here at Weeds to grow that plant with a lovely flower called cosmos. We’ve only got one flower on ours at the moment (above) but we’re not complaining, as it is November.

We had a daft idea here, to make 2025 “The year of the cosmos”. So next year we’d love to see lots of cosmos pictures and we could even do a cosmos from around the world feature. Spread the word to “Make the cosmos come alive in 2025” (and boy do we love a cliche here!)

And here are 3 great cosmos tracks:

 

 

Now here’s a view!

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Cheers to our man in the Lake District Rich R, for sending this wonderful picture from when he visited Hawes in North Yorkshire last week. As he wrote “This is on the main street!” Blimmin’ eck, what a view. Beats the usual McDonalds, Asda and the like and imagine that as the view out of your front room window. Excellent stuff Rich.

Tie a yellow ribbon around the strawberry tree

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We’d like to think that we knew our local area well but last Friday just around the corner we spied a woman getting fruits from a tree and eating them. It looked like she was a gardener on her way to work as she had a pair of loppers in the panniers of her push bike and was wearing some overalls and a pair of steel toecaps.

We initially walked past but did a U turn and asked “What fruit are they?” as we were so curious as we walk past the tree on a near daily basis. She replied still eating the fruits and not really turning around “It’s a strawberry tree, the fruits are lovely but do go for the red ones as they’re the ripest”. Because we spied the loppers and that she was wearing toecaps we had a daft idea that we could trust this person. We didn’t worry we may be sitting on the loo a few hours later or possibly in Lewisham A&E, so we sampled one of the fruits and do you know what, they’re very pleasant and taste like, Strawberries.

A quick search on the web brought us more about the plant Arbutus unedo, it’s the national tree of Italy (as the leaves are green, its got white flowers has red berries, the colours of the Italian flag) and sometimes known as Killarney strawberry tree. It looks like when they are established the tree is quite hardy and can tolerate temperatures down to -10°C.

We’ve also just found online a recipe for a strawberry tree crumble cake which looks great here so we have to strongly resist the urge of carrying down a pair of stepladders and a dessert bowl to said tree or we may get done for filching of fruit (AKA Scrumping)!

 

A journey through the cosmos

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Big thanks to Debby H in north London who has sent us another great photograph of her cosmos patch that is looking brilliant even at the end of October. As Debby wrote “My cosmos plants are still producing an unbelievable amount of flowers for the time of year, and there’s more buds still coming! This is very similar to one that I sent to you previously but I have attached it just to show you the amount of flowers that are still blooming.” They certainly are blooming. Cheers Debby.