Guy Fawkes loved the reggae, loved the reggae

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On this Guys Fawkes night, a big shout goes out to our good friend Marc B for sending us the musical recommendation above, an NTS show from Dan Jagger Ball on Mixcloud. There’s some wonderful stuff on it including the first tune from the great Roy Shirley with the wonderful Music is the key on the Amalgamated label here.

On hearing Roy Shirley, we remembered a TV show in the Aquarius series from 1976 about British reggae (below) which we taped thanks to Max Betamax when it was reshown in the mid 1980’s. The great Roy Shirley is in it (with Rico on trombone) alongside other reggae greats including Aswad, The Cimarrons, Sir Coxson, Matumbi, Tito Simon, Ijahman Levi with an stripped down version of Jah Heavy Load, Geoffrey Chung, a star jumper or two and also Nicky Thomas who gives a sterling performance of What love is at 20 mins in at Chalk Farm studios (next door to The Belmont that must have seen a few reggae artists having a pint there) and ends with a clip from Count Suckle‘s legendary Q club in Paddington.

It’s a show well worth watching if you love a bit of time travelling and good music. Reggae, you can’t beat it!

You’ve got me danglin’ on a string, please don’t let me drop

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A few years ago, our music/gardening friend Phil Harmony from Berlin told us that he brought his chilli plants indoors over the winter as they’re perennials and can live for several years. That was quite a revelation to us.

This year, we’ve revived the tradition and now there’s a thriving chilli plant on the kitchen windowsill, alongside some peppers and pelargoniums and even though it’s looking a bit crowded there, they all seem to look healthy and there’s new flowers coming so that’s a good sign.

The other year we had a bit of a surplus of chillies. We tried drying them out on a plate and then putting them in a jar, but they shrivelled up and looked anything but appetising. Every time someone reached into the jar for one it felt more like they were brewing some sort of magic concoction that needed “a leg of toad, a wing of bat…” The jar got chucked out in the end.

This year, we’ve gone for the “dangling-them-from-a-string” approach instead, and it seems to work! They’ve started ripening turning from green to yellow and hopefully they’ll dry properly without looking too odd to use. We can’t remember the variety but they are pretty hot and just one seems to be ample to put in a dish. Any tips for keeping chillies out there?

Strange seeds and funky things

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This week we bought some seeds from the great Real Seeds. They offer a fantastic selection of unusual varieties, from chillies and herbs to edible flowers. The last time we ordered from them was a couple of years ago, back when we were still getting used to growing with peat-free compost and lost quite a few seedlings but we’re trying again. We ordered some walking onion bulblets and seeds of lemon drop hot citrus pepper, prairie fire mini-bush chilli pepper, Korean mint and marvel of Peru (AKA the four o’clock plant).

As per sowing instructions for the walking onions, we opened the packet and stuck the bulblets in a pot of compost straight away. Technically, you only buy one bulblet but they generously include extras in case of poor germination, we received four! Along with every order, they send clear growing and seed-saving instructions, and even recipes where relevant. Real Seeds really has its heart in the right place. Their passion for sustainable growing and seed saving makes them well worth supporting so have a butcher’s here.

While browsing their site, we spotted a recommendation for the excellent Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom. We managed to pick up a second-hand copy this week for under a fiver and it’s an absolute bargain!

Comprehensive ain’t the word, this book covers it all: tools and equipment, choosing and preparing your growing site, composting, soil structure, seed sowing and planting, clever space-saving ideas, and even a full vegetable directory packed with growing tips and advice. It’s one of those books you’ll keep going back to time and again for reference and well worth getting your hands on.

Have a great weekend and hope you can get out and do a bit in the garden!

Autumn colours in north London

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Thanks to Debby H up in north London for this picture above. “The garden plants may be coming to an end for this year, but I think the colours are lovely in the sunshine. Here’s a picture of my golden rod and peony plants, with the french lavender in the middle.” That bed looks great and there’s still a good bit of colour on show.

Let’s see weather permitting, if we can still get some pics from our gardens to stick on the blog well into the autumn, pictures please. Great stuff Debby!

Making mates in the garden

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We had a good load of things to do today but managed to get around an hour in the garden tidying up a bed near the house, pulling some old tomato plants out of the raised beds at the side and trimming a jasmine.

It was a bit cold but good to be out there doing something. Things we can tidy up now will be less things we have to do come the spring. We even made a mate in a Robin who was sitting very close to us for about half an hour (main pic).

We still have a Quick Fire chilli plant outside but sadly can’t find anywhere for it to be put inside over the winter so improvised with the terrarium we found in the street about ten years ago which is now on its last legs (above) but worth trying. And (below) a very odd shaped unripe tomato found on a plant that was being ripped out one of the raised beds that looks like a jelly baby to us! Anyone else been in the garden this weekend? one deck pete (at) gee mail dot com.

We’ve got your number

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Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending over this musical recommendation in an ambient downbeat style called The haunted testcard tapes by Alpha Seven. Haunted Testcard is a lovely bit of electronica and a great one to drift off to. By the way the cover of the LP is great too!

There’s another testcard connection as Pete Roberts of Alpha Seven was also a member of Testcard F, remember them?

 

The next we’ve chosen (above) is a numbers stations related tune and you know we love one of them here. There’s quite a few on Bandcamp if you tap in “Numbers Stations” under the search. Some are of an industrial or harsh experimental nature which all have their place but it is nice to hear something in a more chilled out style. The track even has some morse in there as well. Double radio-related bonus. Cheers for the musical tip Justin.

And by the way if you want to get into a saturday spy mode, pretend you are secret agent 001 and fancy listening to some numbers stations have a look here and see if there’s a transmission coming up.

Don’t worry you don’t need a shortwave radio hidden in a bar of soap or disguised as a loaf of Hovis to listen in, just click the link ( in blue under “Next station in so and so minutes”) and it will bring you to a online SDR (software defined radio) all ready tuned in and ready to decode. Make sure you have a biro and a rough book at the ready.

Rose thorns as gramophone needles. Isn’t it?

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Thanks a million to the one and only Rhythm Doctor for playing One Deck Pete’s “Put a sock in it” mix (originally for Imaginary Station’s KTAB) 11.30 mins in on his “Mojo” It’s a mix up of some fine funk, jazzy stuff, latin, soul, ska and whathaveyou. More on the show here.

Tracklistings:
Jimmy James – Come to me Softly
Off a Jamaican 7″ single on WIRL from 1962 from the man Jimmy James as in Jimmy James and the Vagabonds “I’ll go where the music takes me” fame.

Kouta Katsutaro – Asu ha otachika
Off the wonderful set simply entitled “Kouta Katsutaro” on Death Is Not The End’s Bandcamp (here).

King Stitt/Tommy Mc Cook – Sauvitt
As sampled by One Deck & Popular on “Son of Stitt” (here) and a version of Mongo Santamaria‘s Suavito (here).

Alick Nkhata – Kalindawalo Ni Mfumu
This track is something else! A sort of Rock n Roll stomper, with some lovely harmonies and some horns courtesy of a Coventry Salvation Army brass band sound-alike and someone tinkling those ivories very skillfuly towards the end. It don’t get much better than this. On an LP called Radio Lusaka off the mighty Mississippi Records Bandcamp here.

Marty Robinson – Follow you
From a very battered Coxsone Dodd white 7″ blank and later released on his Port-O-Jam label. M (Martell/Marty) Robinson may have lived in the Coventry/Birmingham area for a bit too. More about the artist here.

(Don’t) build me up buttercup

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Big thanks to the horticultural team at Thompson & Morgan for their helpful advice following Jesse Yuen’s post the other day (here) about ongoing problems with Bermuda Buttercups (Oxalis pes-caprae*). It’s looks like a chemical weedkiller (which Jesse is not going to use) can’t rid a garden of them.

“Bermuda Buttercups are a plant that you may have to learn to garden with rather than against. Pulling up plants always leaves tiny bulbils behind that grow into new plants, it can also result in the spread of bulbils to new areas. These bulbils act as storage organs which are very persistent, lying dormant beneath cardboard or mulch for months, possibly years, so that as soon as the ground is exposed to light they re-emerge. Constant hoeing will help to deplete the bulbils, but again – it will take years for this to have any effect.”

“Even If you decide to use chemical weedkillers, timing of application is critical and you may have to do it more than once. You need to catch the plants just at the point before or on flowering. This is when the bulbils are exhausted of food whilst young bulbils are too small to survive. Not all plants will be at exactly the same stage so repeated applications for several years are required.”

Thanks again to all at Thompson & Morgan for imparting their knowledge about the plant that is giving our good dub gardening friend Jesse a headache at the moment.

*The specific epithet pes-caprae means ‘goat’s-foot’, possibly in reference to the shape of the leaf. (wikipedia)

 

 

Looking down on us all

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Inspired after seeing Peter B’s sunflowers in the last post here’s one of ours, the giant version off ebay that is still hanging in there. Thanks to some gardening wire and an assortment of garden canes it still stands. Just.

And here’s a couple of helianthus related tunes. The first is opening needle progress with Sunflower and the second Metamatics with the rather apt Giant Sunflowers Swaying In The Wind. Trouble is when that giant sunflower (above) sways, the canes come away and the damn thing droops!

 

 

Gardening connects us all (Woolwich edition)

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Thanks a million to an old friend Peter B for getting in touch and for sending some pictures of his allotment in Woolwich. Top picture, as he writes “The sunflowers are holding up well – apart from the ones in the back garden which are beheaded by squirrels.”

We understand 100% Peter as they are popular with the wildlife here in our garden. A long while ago a parakeet was robbing the seeds even though we were standing underneath it (see post here) then half an hour later two squirrels were chancing their arms too (see post here). Even a living scarecrow can’t stop them!

We found these pictures above interesting, as Peter mentioned “The cardoon shots are from the allotment – the stems are wrapped in cardboard for a month apparently to help blanch them. It’s supposed to make them taste better – the ones I tried earlier this year are bitter tasting even after extended cooking.” He added “They are an Italian favourite, a parmigiana made with cardoons as opposed to aubergines is to die for or so I’m told by a colleague at work.” We have a cardoon growing here at Weeds HQ but just for decoration purposes as we have never even tasted them before.

As he goes on to say “The cardoons are an experiment – I planted these a bit late this year and I didn’t space them far enough apart so they’re smaller than they might be – they grow to about 2 metres if spaced a metre apart.”

And finally “Tomatoes – I just like the look of them right at the end….”. Excellent stuff Peter, great for getting in touch again and ta for the photographs. Do send us an update next year!