Music to water the garden to

 

Here’s one from Niju with Back to past and it’s a lovely bit of slo-mo that would sound great coming out of towers of stereo speakers placed at the bottom of the garden and turned up high at 8.30pm when you’re watering the garden. We know it’s wrong watering at that time what with the slugs and snails attracted to moisture in the evening but sometimes it’s the only time you can do it!

And a big shout to everyone who caught Culture ft Kenyatta Hill at The Fox & Firkin in Lewisham on Sunday alongside the great Ijahman Levi. We were supposed to go but illness put paid to that. Supposedly a great time was had by all!

Non-blunt business

tools for change

Big thanks to Fliss C for letting us know of the Tools For Change campaign. A few years back they helped her community garden project with reconditioned tools repaired by Wandsworth prisoners. So if you have any unwanted blunted hand tools (“no power tools, workshop tools or secateurs please”) bring them in to a Wyevale garden centre between 9 May – 9 June 2016 and receive 10% off new ones! Cos’ it’s for a good cause!

Find out more at www.wyevalegardencentres.co.uk/toolsforchange

They’re under starters orders

I’ve got a collection of leggy tomato plants waiting to go in the garden until after the risk of frost has gone, like I have every year. After starting them off on the kitchen windowsill a couple of months ago, I put them in the plastic mini-greenhouse outside with the front open during the day to harden them off. This weekend I stuck one of them under the terrarium outside and also sowed  a mixture of seeds beside it. There’s onions and garlic on their way in the bed behind and in the raised bed furthest away have seed potatoes under a good deal of earthed up soil. Seed bed of the weekThe bed at the bottom of the garden which I was going to keep veg-free this year has now a row of leek seedlings which I sowed indoors on xmas eve last year and a couple of courgette seeds which went in over the weekend under jam jars for extra protection. The rest is a mixture of flowers, a purple sprouting broccoli gone to flower, rocket and strawberries. It won’t be long now until “they’re off” and we can’t wait!back bed of the week

Can you wake up now, please?

London Gardens A-z

The London Garden Book A-Z – Abigail Willis – Metro

I popped into Charing Cross library last week and between playing “spot the sleeping person” and the “where’s the spare chair?”, I came across this great book in the gardening section.

It’s an interesting read about gardens around the capital circa 2012. It’s been well researched and features everything from Kew, The Barbican Conservatory, beekeeping on top of The Royal Festival Hall to lesser known gardens like Roots and Shoots (where I did an introduction to beekeeping course with the LBKA a few years ago), The Food From The Sky growing project on top of a supermarket in Crouch End (sadly no more), Mark from Vertical Veg (who’s also well into his music), the Horniman Museum and Gardens (up the road from us who have a great annual plant sale) and even a traffic island in E9 that went to pot but now been planted out in a guerrilla gardening style, a great Zen garden in Acton and a whole lot more. Even Shannon’s our local garden centre is mentioned in it. What more do you want?

A great book documenting gardens in the capital from the big to the small!

And talking of the capital…