Today some frost and on Sunday a radio transmission

This morning was the coldest it’s been here in a while with some heavy frost on the grass and the bed at the bottom of the garden stayed frozen solid all day even though there was some nice sunshine for a good part of the day which warmed up the other parts of the garden.

Typically a couple of days ago we took the foxgloves from the kitchen window as we didn’t want them to get used to the warmth of the house. We put them outside, half of them under a glass cloche and the other half under the protection of a raised bed with some plastic over the top (on the left of the above picture). These home-made mini greenhouses do keep in the heat from any warmth generated by the sun during the day but will they do their job in this kind of cold? Every year we seem to do this, we see the sun and think it’s spring. We’ll keep you posted!

This weekend by the powers of shortwave and WRMI we have the Imaginary Stations 45th Parallel Midwinter Broadcast which will feature a good bit of circular latitude fun and some fine tunes throughout. Tune in with your shortwave radio to 9395 kHz at 2300 UTC on Sunday 12th February 2023. At 20 mins in they’ll be a mix from One Deck Pete featuring Borealism, Boca 45, mndbd, Jah Wobble and the Mad Professor.

Monday night serious listening

Thanks to our good friend Marc B for letting us know today about this great show featuring the late great Penny Reel which starts with a couple of old doo-wop tunes with their reggae counterparts and then into some very choice tunes, a show well worth listening to!

There’s another show up on Weeds, posted not long after his passing which featured Penny with Paul Bradshaw here. Below is one of the tunes he played on it, The Lord’s Army by Hy Mann that we’d previously never heard of. The tune sounded like it may have been recorded at the same session as a personal favourite of ours Follow You by M (Martell?) Robinson. This music lark never fails to disappoint, opening a can of worms also comes to mind.

STOP PRESS And talking of opening cans of worms, as if by magic we have been directed to a Jamaican born singer called Martel Robinson who used to sing in working mens clubs in Coventry and Birmingham and release records under M Robinson. Same chap? We do hope so!

STOP PRESS JULY 2023: Also known as Ray Martell!

https://www.discogs.com/artist/2205400-Martel-Robinson

Garlic update, garlic update

We took the protection off the raised bed this afternoon so we could pop the foxgloves in pots in there. No idea if the cold nights will knock them for six but we’ll take a chance. When we took the frame off we were chuffed with what we saw of the giant garlic. They’re starting to make a break for it.

Seed Swap in SE15

This Sunday coming February 12th 2023 is the annual Seed Swap at Glengall Wharf Garden, Peckham SE15 6NF. Last year we picked up a great assortment of seeds including some Texsel Greens (Ethiopian Mustard), some nice tomato varieties and lots of poppy seeds and hopefully will do the same ths year. The eventbrite link is here.

Bring your duplicate packs of free seeds from the gardening magazines or bring your surplus seeds down to SE15 6NF from 11am – 2pm.

Is it spring yet?

The sun is out today and cue a million of us gardeners getting all excited. It may be a false start to the season but who knows, we can see buds forming on some of the shrubs, the mint we transferred a few weeks ago into a pot (above) is looking healthy and it isn’t a bad thing to get out in the garden now and do a bit of tidying which will save you a bit of time when spring does finally spring.

DJ Spycatcher

Last night the latest edition of Imaginary Stations KSPY took to the ionosphere thanks to WRMI. Thanks to all agents who tuned in to the spy-laden broadcast via the shortwaves but if you didn’t, the studio audio is now up on mixcloud (below).

At 7 minutes in is a mix from One Deck Pete.
Here’s the tracks:
Zeb – The Spy from Cairo – Qanun in Dub
Top Secret…shhh – Winding the time
Edwin Starr – Agent Double O Soul
Secret Nuclear – Coded messages
Ax Martz – Mensaje en codigo (Coded Message)
Nat King Cole – The Blue Danube (Excerpt)

Enjoy the hour of all things KSPY but please don’t forgot to look over your shoulder as you never know who’s watching.

On a seed swapping tip

We’ve just heard of a great seed swap from Incredible Edible in Lambeth next month at The Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road SE1 7LB on Saturday 18th February 2023 from 12-3pm. Get those spare seeds in a packet and get on down there and see what’s available to swap.

Know of any good Seed Swaps in the London area? If so do get in contact and we will post up the details as we love a seed swap here.

If you’re missing the sunshine…

Summer seems a million miles away but thanks to our good friend Paul Greenstein once of SE22, here’s a taste of the sun. Paul’s been based in Melbourne, Australia for some years now (we’ve featured his garden a few of times here and here) and here’s some recent pics.

Here’s a fine example of the Bramley Apple he put in his garden as he said “You can’t get decent cooking apples over here!” and here’s the fruits in all their glory (above).

The Artichoke (above) is looking fine under the Sunflower and it looks like it’s appreciating the shade. And (below) look at the Sunflower!

And he keeps Bees too and he tells us he may be getting a nice harvest of honey this year. Brilliant Paul, the garden is making us think of summer even more and it’s looking great!

And below is some of Paul’s musical output. This was his contribution to the Cities and Memory Shortwave Transmissions project last year called Another Universe. Like he says on the C&M site “Like the narrators, I have a fondness for all things space, astrophysics and the big questions like: is the Universe going to end, what are black holes, and why does Surf Guitar sound dangerous?”

Love the garden Paul and send us more pictures of the Bees please!