The other day on our travels we found three small fibre/recycled card pots and also some giant wooden lolly sticks (for use as plant labels) alongside some plastic plant pots which we didn’t pick up as we have enough of them. It’s funny what you find when you’re out. Keep ’em peeled as Shaw Taylor used to say!
This week while searching for some tracks for a forthcoming shortwave radio transmission we found the bandcamp site of Twink The Toy Piano Band from Boston, Massachusetts. As it says on the page about the creator Mike Langlie “He mixes toys and electronics for a quirky and catchy sound ranging from imaginary cartoon soundtracks to spooky lullabies to playroom mosh pits.” Brilliant, just brilliant. We implore you to explore Twink The Toy Piano Band here.
We always used any excuse for putting this track up but Twink’s tune made us think of this brilliant track from the Young Marble Giant’s Testcard EP. It’s nothing like it but puts us in mind of…
And talking of recommendations, thanks to Justin Patrick Moore for letting us know of this collaboration of the late Lee Perry and the heaviness of New Age Doom. This is nuts! More to explore.
We’ve been a bit busy in the garden making good use of the lovely weather we’ve been having hence no new posts until now. Today has started gloomy and we’re expected to have a couple of days of this until the weekend when it brightens up again which is great news.
We heard from our good friend across the pond Justin Patrick Moore who has started a new project, something that is brand new to us here at Weeds. It’s a hugelkultur bed. As it says online: “Hugelkultur is a centuries-old, traditional way of building a garden bed from rotten logs and plant debris. These mound shapes are created by marking out an area for a raised bed, clearing the land, and then heaping up woody material (that’s ideally already partially rotted) topped with compost and soil.” http://www.almanac.com
More info here on this different sort of raised bed that made us think initially of the Victorian hot beds. Best of luck with that Justin, do let us know how you get on with it as it sounds great and looks good too!
A couple of years ago a good friend gave us a couple of foxglove plants and they’ve multiplied and starting to come alive this year. Self seeded plants are sometimes a pain (in the case of spuds left in the ground or weeds) but these foxgloves are brilliant, even the one coming out of the brickwork on the garage.
The raised beds by the Dad Corner are starting to burst into life. The seed potatoes that were put in extra early are starting to grow and the overwintered garlic in the 2nd raised bed on the right are well on their way. Shame we didn’t have much luck with the shallots which just withered away. Remember we’re still in May and there’s reports of the odd unexpected frosts about so still keep an eye on the weather forecast for those cold nights and keep those old net curtains handy!
In the wild bit at the bottom which doesn’t get much light where’s there’s a row of spuds, cardoons and some wildflower mix from those beebombs and the odd assortment of cheap seed packets is started to look a bit “wild” instead of looking a bit untended. We’re trying to get it looking wild like the beds at the Horniman’s Gardens (below) which’ll take a few years and a bit of effort but it’s worth trying!
In a few hours tonight at 2300 UK time is the third transmission of KBIN on 9395 kHz via WRMI featuring amongst other interesting stuff a couple of mixes from our very own One Deck Pete.
The first “All up in the air” for KSOL at 10.30 mins in features Joe Meek, ARK, Rubin Steiner and AVEM. And for KDUB at 44.58 minutes in “A mix for KDUB for KBIN” featuring all sorts of dub goodness including the tune by Wayne Wade below. Tune in!
On Saturday morning while we were out and about on our travels we were told of an interesting garden in development around the back of a charity shop.
When we got to the said plot we were greeted with some nice raised beds surrounded by walls with a wooden frame and wire mesh that were covered in numerous empty plant pots all connected up to a clever irrigation system. Even the gate to get in had pots on the back of it, talk about vertical veg and not wasting any space!
No idea what they may be growing but we wonder if it’s micro-greens on a commercial basis. We did see some fruit bushes ready to go in too. Whoever is taking over this garden is taking it very seriously.
Also this weekend we had a right of mixture of weather. It was gorgeous yesterday with the sun out most of the day but today it was a few degrees colder and we even had a bit of drizzle. As it’s still cold at night we have a variety of different kinds of plant protection from jam jars, the tops of propagators and plastic mini-cloches plonked over some tomato and pepper seedlings. (Above) the mini veg patch at the bottom of the garden with the frost protection and the plastic mushroom bought from a bric-a-brac stall at a summer festival which is placed over a cut off washing line pole. Keep an eye on the temperatures at night as we’re still not out of the doldrums yet!
We took a walk in the garden this morning to check on everything especially stuff that was undercover in old jam jars and home made cloches as it’s been quite cold the last couple of nights. By the way if you ever need a last frost estimator you can check here but it’s only a guide. We do it the old fashioned way and check the weather forecast.
On the inspection we saw that the Egyptian Walking Onions were bursting into life and it looks like there’s a start of some topsets forming (above).
And these (above) are the first of the Mashua that has come up too which we got from the seed swap a few weeks ago. These Nasturtium type plants have edible tubers if you get the right conditions which we’ll doubt we’ll have in SE23 but who knows, stranger things have happened.
This oddity was found on a garden wall today whilst on a post work walk, a bag of seed spuds that had shoots all over and were well past their sell by date. Can seed potatoes be “over chitted”? Who knows but they weren’t binned. They went into the ground just in case we may get some life out of them. We’ll keep you posted on the outcome. What have we got to lose?
Big thanks to CatfaceMcMeowMeow for recommending this great tune from Mike L called Wade in the water. We’ve never heard of this before and it’s a bit of a chilled out cracker for a Friday night. Cheers for that as we’re always up for musical recommendations here at Weeds.
And talking of garden pond related tunes here’s a couple here. Any more garden pond/water feature tunes are welcomed, just pop them in the comments.
And talking of ponds, here’s a nice pic of our pal Gerry Hectic‘s water feature that is looking great! Talk about clear water! Pics of garden ponds are welcomed here too.
UPDATE: CatfaceMcMeowMeow has just sent us details of a mix from Mike L and it’s free to download. Thanks for that as it’s a great mix!
On Sunday 10th April 2022 at 11pm UK time (10pm UTC) on WRMI on 9395 kHz is the first of a set of transmissions called KBIN if you want to hear something a bit different this weekend. Expect several mixes including some for KMRT and WGTR (Golden Throats Radio). If you haven’t a shortwave radio use an online software defined radio like this one here and tune into 9395 kHz on the dial. There’s even 50% off for the first 50 listeners so get in early!
Have a look here for some previous programmes from the imaginary stations crew, and if you like a bit of dub…
We hope you had a good Easter and all is well in the garden now that the good weather is upon us. We’d still advise to take it easy putting tender plants outdoors as you never know what the weather will be like and it’s still only April. We’ve been hardening off the veg plants (pic below) by sticking them outdoors for most of the day to get them used to what it’s like out there in the real world.
The pond (top pic) has really woken up now with some frolicking frogs, the odd newt and goldfish sharing the space. The Lewisham pet shop bought water lily is starting to sprout and we welcome a new addition to the pond, some bare rooted stuck Watermint procured off ebay in an old chimney pot which was elsewhere and now submerged in its rightful place (above).
And we’ve gone right off the idea of the Dalek type compost bin as the old fashioned wood version is doing well and giving off some warmth from the grass clippings after a good old weekly mix using a garden fork.
And while we were writing this post we’ve been listening to the latest This is a music show as recorded by @DazDude4000. It’s a lot better quality this week. Enjoy the Bank Holiday!
Weeds up to me knees 