(Internet) radio connects us all

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A big thanks to The Rhythm Doctor for playing Jasmine Tutum & Madtone‘s What is Man/Promised Land (Blossoms Kitchen dubplate mix) on this week’s Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio at 5.33 minutes in then followed by The Nairobi Sisters Promised Land dub.

So you fancy an excellent Monday morning listen tune into IDA Radio (Tallinn) at 9am – 11am for the best in jazz, downbeat, dub, ambient, reggae and lots of other eclectic stuff. It’s well worth tuning into! There’s lot of the shows archived here.

Sophisticated frost protection for beginners

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Here’s an example of one of our cheapskate frost protection schemes in situ in the bed at the bottom of the garden. We’ve got a couple of split bin bags down to keep the weeds out and the soil warm, an old vase, some glacé cherry containers and an old plastic cloche we found in the street years ago. They may be not look pretty but they will hopefully work to keep that damn frost out!

Thank goodness, there wasn’t a frost last night. Now the SE23 weather forecast has changed a bit, tonight is still supposedly going to be 5°C, tomorrow 9°C and from Friday night to Sunday night there’s lows of 3°C during the wee hours. So the protection will be back on for the next few nights and of course be taken off during the day if it heats up a little like when the sun came out today for a couple of hours.

We’ve seen online all sorts of frost protection from old clothes, net curtains to random bits of fabric draped over bamboo canes in a teepee. It’s not about what it looks like more about if it’ll work or not and what you have at hand, punk rock style.

And here’s a nice chilled tune made by a punk rocker so it says on Bandcamp, it’s from “Dan Rincon, longtime drummer of the prolific psych-punk band OSEES’” and the tune is called MotorRhythm, Wooden and it’s a good one if like us, you like a bit of out there downbeat.

A bit of improvisation

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The weather doesn’t look that great tonight, what with a forecast low of 4 degrees C. That’s the trouble with this time of year, we get a little bit of sunshine over a weekend and we think that the garden is under starters orders.

We’re a bit paranoid here, so we went out earlier and put what jam jars and a couple of plastic cloches that we had over some plants. We even improvised using those little plastic containers that glacé cherries come in, put over some small seed potato shoots. Let’s see how we get on with these tonight. Tomorrow isn’t looking good at 3 degrees C either so we reckon we’ll be putting them back on tomorrow too. It’s better to be safe than sorry as they say.

And just to add to the drama while we were out the back we were treated to a short hail storm. That’s all you need when you’re running about the garden at dusk covering random plants with glacé cherry containers and jam jars, what must the neighbours be thinking?

From our north London correspondent

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A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of how her garden is getting on now that we are on the cusp of spring. The bluebells (above) look great and the strawberrries (below) are now starting to flower.

We don’t use nets on our strawberries here as we only have a few plants dotted about but it is a great thing to keep the birds and other fruit eating pests off them. Apart from a little big of slug damage to a dahlia in her garden, things are looking are looking good. Great to hear that the peonies in the garden are doing well too. We’ve got one that was overshadowed by a shrub nearby so we gave the offending shrub a good haircut and because of having more light getting to it, the peony is doing much better now.

There’s some good stuff happening indoors as well which is very interesting. The cosmos seedlings we featured here a fortnight ago are coming on a treat!

If you remember, Debby just used the whole dead heads from last year’s plant that were just scattered and covered with compost and the seeds weren’t initially separated. They are looking great! Saving your own plant’s seeds are a great way of gardening on an economical tip.

Also Debby told us “The rudbeckia has germinated although it is still tiny” and “the 12 tomatoes are gradually growing very slowly”. Our tomatoes are the same and have even thought to start another batch off as they are so slow. Usually at this time of year we have a few very leggy tomato plants ready to go out but then again we didn’t start them just after Christmas as we usually are tempted to do.

Thanks for the pictures Debby and we look forward to seeing how things progres

Weather-wise, not a bad weekend

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The weather forecast was correct for the weekend, it was nice on Saturday and today wasn’t as hot but still not too bad. Our flymo has been on the blink of late, so until we when we get around to giving it a look and/or until we get a new one we’re going for a Suedehead look lawn-wise for the time being.

We’re still not taking any risks putting those tender plants out, the spuds are coming up and we’ve got sweet peas in the cold frame but weather-wise you never know what’s around the corner and give it a couple of weeks we should be out of the possible frost zone, fingers crossed.

Our friends in Kyiv

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A big thanks as always to our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some more excellent pictures. The first is his Dill seedlings (above) that look like they’re doing very well.

Wlad also wrote of the other plants he started off as well “The garlic also remained small for a long time, but then simply dried out” and his potato plant is growing but seems to have stood still for a while (pics above).

It’s funny as we’re having problems on some of the seedlings on our windowsill too, we’ve got some chilli and tomato seedlings and they are not doing much else after growing their seed leaves and one set of a normal leaf. There looks like there’s some sort of greenfly about but they don’t seem to be bothering any of the other sunflower seedlings or sweet peas. Any ideas?

As for his Wlad’s good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD) his banana is doing very well! It looks well healthy and so does his date palm (above). Great stuff!

We always think of Sergiy’s plant when we pass the banana plant that is in a front garden in SE23. We have no idea if bananas are supposed to survive the british weather but this one seems to! Cheers again to Wlad and Sergiy for the pics and we look forward to seeing more.

A fine Friday morning tune (even though the weather isn’t)

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It’s supposedly going to be a sunny weekend so we may be going out in the garden and even sticking those indoor sowed vegetable plants out to harden them off so they get used to the weather they’ll be eventually facing outside. Take them out when it starts to warm up in the morning and bring them in when it starts getting cold.

To cheer us up we’re listening to a wonderful tune called Promised Land from The Nairobi Sisters (Terrie Nairobi and Judy Mowatt). It’s a different slice of reggae and it’s the version which is the tune (the one on the Gayfeet pressing is in our opinion a slighty better mix to the Flames release as there’s more of the killer hand drums). We only found out recently the tunes has been sampled by a few people including A Tribe Called Quest for “Whateva Will Be”. A tune for a Friday!

The Flames release is now available again thanks to the excellent Death Is Not The End bandcamp that has a wealth of great stuff to search through.

We’ll throw in the scratches for free

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We love a seven inch single here at Weeds and were going through some old mixes and found this one called One Deck Pete presents The Skybird Singles Club. It’s from a shortwave broadcast of Radio Skybird from August 2023 and thought it would be good to post it up here. We hope there’s a couple you haven’t heard before. Here’s the tracklistings:

Rotary Connection – Like a rolling stone
Weekend – The view from her room
Earl Curry – One whole year baby
Felice Taylor – I feel love comin’ on
Toby Nelson – You don’t need me

Spring has spung?

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We’re supposed going to be seeing highs of 19°C today in SE23 with a bit of a high wind and drizzle, madness! Looking around the garden this morning (to the beautiful audio background of swearing scaffolders working on the estate behind the bottom of our garden), it looks like sprung may have really sprung this time. Those seed spuds we put under the bin bags the other week (above) are starting to sprout (we had to lift the plastic to find the sprouts at first and give them some guidance) and there’s progress in the ones under the window frame even from a couple of days ago (below).

And meanwhile in Portland, Maine …

Thanks to our good radio/music friend Justin Patrick Moore for passing on a photo from his cousin Joseph taken in Portland on Thursday. Crazy weather indeed!

And here’s another in our series of Maunsell Seafort influenced music, a tune from Magic Panda out of Norfolk.

Watch your eyes

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Sadly we in Europe won’t be able to see the forthcoming eclipse next Monday but here’s the next best thing, KSOL – The Eclipse Edition from The Imaginary Stations crew. It’s a show that will bring you an eclipse experience without looking up skywards.

Treat yourself to some path of totality classics from DJ Frederick, Justin Patrick Moore over the hour and at 16.04 minutes in is a 15 minute mix from One Deck Pete with “Can you seen Baily’s Beads?”.
Tracklistings:
A Man called Adam – Moon
Cosmos – Summer in space (Mark’s Harmonic 33 mix)
Cedric Im Brooks – Blackness of Darkness
Cornell Campbell – Stars
Do remember to wear eye protection when you listen to this show!

Here’s the great trailer for KSOL:

And a treat from the great DJ Algoriddim on the Stars rhythm: