A weekend fit for gardening or what? Here in the UK it was! Yesterday while thousands of others were sunning themselves crammed onto Brighton beach I was weeding in the back close to the house listening to the excellent slow-mo electonica of Andrew Weatherall on the red bull music academy site recorded in one of the pods of the London eye last year. Lovely stuff!

Things are starting to roll now in the garden and not forgetting the windowsill! There’s three pots of “cut and come again” cos lettuce mix ready to eat soon. The seeds cost me £2.35 and just add to that the price of a pot of compost, it’s cheap as chips to grow it yourself. As it was “leaf day” yesterday too, I took the chance with the weather and sowed outdoors two sorts of lettuce; artic king and little gem plus some spinach in a part of the garden that throughout the day will get some dappled shade which will stop the plants from bolting and going to seed early. If there’s any sign of frost I’ll stick some fleece or an old net curtain over the seedlings.

Today I did another couple of jobs in the garden, including making a very simple raised bed out of a couple of scaffolding boards given to us by the Portugese man with a van (an excellent bloke who does removals and house clearances at a decent rate, contact number on request!) who sometimes uses our garage combined with three end pieces found in a skip last weekend. Those with a couple of screws and voilà, a raised bed! Now I’ve got to give them a lick of weather protector when I do the fence next month and find some compost to fill them with.

I’m also in the process of “hardening off” some `sweet peas (I’ve jam jars on them at night which I take off during the daytime to get them used to the weather conditions outdoors as they were started off on the windowsill). I couldn’t find any bamboo canes to put in to support the plants when they grow taller, so used the prunings off the apple trees from early this year as a substitute. I knew there was a reason I kept them!

The Andrew Weatherall mix is here: http://redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/4555/