Gardening connects us all

Here’s the recent Imaginary Stations episode from RTM FM which was broadcast last Thursday. It’s called the Scented Garden, a nod to John Peel’s Perfumed Garden show and also gardening related, both well up our street here at Weeds. There’s some great stuff from DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore as per and also a mix called “A tribute to council gardeners everywhere” from One Deck Pete at 2 mins in. Here’s the tracklistings:
Dudley Perkins – Flowers (Instrumental)
Hugh Masekela – Grazing in the Grass
Beyond The Wizzard’s Sleeve – Winter In June
Dennis Brown – How can I leave

Talking of the great John Peel here’s a piece from 11 years ago about said Disc Jockey for DJ Frederick’s (he of the Imaginary Stations show) excellent fanzine Paper Radio which is all about that great connecting force, those radio waves. Have a butcher’s here. And whilst we’re there:

A song for a wet and windy Tuesday

How the weather has changed since Easter Sunday. We had a nice afternoon of sunshine but after the sun went in, out came the cold and it’s mainly been rain off and on since. Never mind the bad weather though, the tune above from Godspeed called Nightcrawling will lift the spirits and sometime in the near future will be bouncing off the ionosphere from the transmitters of WRMI over the shortwaves.

They went WEST

Here’s Sunday night’s WRMI Imaginary Station’s WEST show which features tunes of a West nature. At 2.40 minutes in is One Deck Pete’s “We’re going up West” mix. Here’s the tracklistings:
Phil Western – 5 6 7 8
Quantic (Ft Louis Towers) – Westbound Train
Ennio Morricone – Sixty Seconds to What
Western Standard Time Ska Orchestra – Tunnel Vision Dub
The Flaming Ember – Westbound #9

Go west and enjoy!

Punk rock? That’s shallot

As it was a glorious day yesterday we spent much of it tinkering about in the garden (above). Notice the hessian shopping bags (mid-centre left) hanging on the found-in-the-street tree-like coat stand. Those bags will be filled with Lidl’s best peat-free compost and contain potato plants in a few weeks time. Dada gardening at its best.

The shallots we put in a couple of weeks ago “under glass” (which is just an old window frame found in the street balanced on some house bricks) are off to a flying start. We’ve tried growing shallots before but they rotted even before they got this far so we must be doing something right this time.

We tided up the side bed by the Dad corner (below) and replanted a couple of penstemons we bought off QVC a year and a bit ago and also made some sort of bug hotel (there isn’t a roof on it so is that more of a bug campsite then?) Those giant garlic bulbs are now coming on a treat as well.

Also we cleared a little area by the pond (below) and added a mini veg bed. We stuck some large wire mesh (originally some shelves from our old mini-plastic green houses) over the top of it to deter the cats, putting in a line of old house bricks in helps visually section the area off too. It gets a bit of shade so we’re thinking the lettuce seeds we put should be okay as in full sun they tend to go to seed. Let’s see.

Hopefully we’ve another couple of days worth of gardening to do over Easter if this lovely weather holds out. Have a good Bank Holiday weekend!

Listening to last week’s On The Wire which has a deep dubby bias while we write this post. Well worth listening to as per. Big shout to Steve, Fenny and Jim.

This Easter go West

This Easter Sunday 9th April Imaginary Stations will be going in a Westerly direction at 2200 UTC on 9395 kHz via WRMI. In one word they’ll be going WEST, there’ll be some Westbound trains, themes from Westerns and even some spoken word from Adam West. So get your compass out, tune in your shortwave radio and enjoy everything Westward Ho! from 2200 UTC on Easter Sunday.

At 2.42 into the show One Deck Pete will be presenting a 15 minute mini-mix called in true Pete “Alright treacle?” Beale style “We’re going up West”. Tune in for an Easter Western treat!

A tune for a frosty morning

It was a lovely day yesterday, the sun was out and it looked like spring had finally sprung but the lack of cloud last night gave us a bit of frost this morning. As Shaw Taylor used to say about watching the weather forecast especially after putting plants in “Keep ’em peeled”. And here’s a nice tune…

It’s a bit early doors but…

We bought some seed potatoes a couple of months ago and they’ve been happily sprouting (AKA chitting) in the back room by the window. As we mention every year, the late great Joe Maiden used to say that Good Friday was traditionally the day to put your seed potatoes in. What with Easter falling early some years it may be better hanging on a couple of weeks when the risk of frost has disappeared but as usual we’re contradicting ourselves.

We’ve grown spuds for a few years but we’re so fed up of scratching about under the surface of the plant looking for early potatoes, leaving a few in when we’ve harvested it and having a few “volunteer” plants grow the next season combined with general impatience we decided we may change the way we grow spuds. We also saw Monty Don on the telly the other week chatting about growing spuds in buckets and tubs so a “lightbulb” moment occured.

This morning we simply stuck a seed potato in a small bucket which was half full with some general purpose peat free compost freshly aquired from Lewisham Lidl. We buried the spud about an inch deep and stuck an old plastic mini cloche over the top. As soon as the shoots come to the surface we’ll put an inch worth of compost over the top and will repeat the process until we’ve filled the bucket. This way at the end of the growing season we will just knock the whole plant out of the bucket with all of the spuds intact. No fuss, no bother. If only life was that simple.

International Herb

Suprise Chefs – Rosemary Hemphill – Big Crown Records

Thanks again to The Rhythm Doctor for pointing us in the right direction of another great tune, this time within a week of the last one! The Suprise Chefs bring us some bright vibes with a great track called Rosemary Hemphill which he played on his show (below) on IDA Radio (Tallinn) last Monday at 50 minutes in.

While the track was playing he decided to google Rosemary Hemphill and to his suprise what he found was another music/gardening connection (and as you know there’s a fair few of them about!)

Turns out Rosemary Hemphill is an “Australian writer of cooking and gardening books, who has long been recognised as one of Australia’s leading herb and spice experts.” She was born at “sunrise” on “April Fool’s Day” in 1922, in Broome, western Australia and in her childhood spent some time at her grandparents in Bromley, UK who had a big herb garden which was a big influence on her. More on the great lady here. She’ll be 101 tomorrow. Happy Birthday!

The big question is are the Suprise Chefs keen gardeners then?

Can you get a better view than that?

Big shout to Rich R for getting in touch with us after a good few years with pictures of his garden in the Lake District. We don’t think you can get a better view than that from a back garden. We all moan about the winter but there’ll be no more moaning if the pic below was the view from your front door.

We get a bit frustrated here with the Ladywell Fields Heron, Lewisham Parakeets and the south London sliced-bread snaffling Fox posse but up there they have proper wildlife to contend with: badgers, deer and rabbits which eat everything veg wise if they were to grow it. So Rich grows wild fruit and strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and a bit of marjoram. The back garden is literally on the side of a mountain, made up of 5 terraces and rises to about 500 ft. How good is that?

It’s a good looking garden Rich and the carpet of bluebells look great and we’re loving it here, more pictures please as the season cracks on!

Tune of a Thursday lunchtime

Cheers to our good mate Gerry Hectic for sending this deeply dubby recommendation (above). It’s from Aspartate and it’s called Apart (Version). All we know about it is produced by someone called Mark Bailey and it’s on the D.Construction label out of Germany and their Bandcamp is here.

And talking of chilled out dub, here’s another lovely example. It’s by Dub Addiction and it’s called Ecological Dub (Calm Down Remix). It will be featured on a lounging mix on the shortwaves very very soon.