Tag Archives: Lewisham pet shop

Don’t step on the cracks

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A trip down the garden path tonight produced this trio of pics. Above: The fiver’s worth of water lily we bought from the Lewisham pet shop (whose website’s by-line is “For all your reptile needs”) a few years ago has gone mad this summer. We counted nearly 7 flowers on it the other day. The fish are using it as shade during the sunny periods and the tadpoles as mini swimming pools. The pond need a bit of thinning out this weekend as it would be nice to give the inhabitants more room. We now get our fish food via ebay, and you get double or treble of the volume of food for the price compared to what you get in those supermarket tubs.

The pink flowers shown above don’t look like much and as a plant it’s a bit on the scrappy side but disregard that and grow night scented stock for it’s evening smell!

And somewhere in the middle of the tomatoes and broad beans growing against the garage wall and the dahlias is the Thompson & Morgan trial spaghetti squash. We reckon it’ll outgrow the space in no time!

And finally a dubbed out one for the warm night we’ll be getting tonight (where it’ll be hard to sleep even with the windows are open!), it’s from Masis called Unearthed Dub  and it’s the Frenk Dublin mix. Tune!

Eats, shoots and leaves

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I heard two great gardening tips this week. The first was from Penny Golightly (of the great Golightly Gardens website) who mentioned the free tomato seed offer from Heinz. It’s only a limited thing but have a look at their Facebook page here and see if you’re lucky!

Also on last week’s Gardening with Tim & Joe show on BBC Radio Leeds, Joe Maiden mentioned rather than buying a pack of seeds especially for pea shoots from the major seed sellers (around £2.50), go to the supermarket and buy a packet of dried peas which are the same thing and a whole lot cheaper!Bulbs in the greenI had a day off Thursday and managed to do a little bit of gardening before the rain came and it was so nice to be back out there. I cleared the bed next to the pond (Pic above – fish courtesy of Lewisham pet shop, bought a few years ago and they’ve multiplied a bit since then. God knows how they survive in a rusty old water tank!)

The reason I was out there was I bought a load of bluebells a fortnight ago which were bought “in the green” (as I missed the proper bulb planting time in the autumn) so when the postlady delivered them on Thursday morning they were live (with roots and shoots and all) so they had to go in. Let’s hope the birds or the squirrels don’t pull them up!

onions under glassThings are on the move, the onion sets, garlic and parsley under the top half of the old kitchen door are starting to show signs of life and the tomato and pepper seeds I stuck in a few weeks ago indoors are on their way. It won’t be long now, roll on the warm weather!

Tray of seedlings

It’s alright this gardening lark, innit?

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A mad day to say the least. The weather was first rate and conditions that inspired a day of gardening and then later, chilling in the back garden. My petrol mower was chugging away at 11am with no complaints (the guy across the road had his going at the ungodly hour of 9am on a Sunday morning without the police being called, the power of sunshine eh?)

Today I dug up the spuds that started off in the home-made cold frame which were later served up for dinner. Not as many for the two plants as I thought (earlies aren’t supposed to be massive harvesters) but enough roast spuds for a sunday dinner for a family of four. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but quality far out-weighed the quantity. Comments on the produce from the family were along the lines of “these potatoes taste like real potatoes”, too right! There’s still the rest of the bag of seed potatoes-worth of plants to go, so there’s a good few more roasters to enjoy.

There’s even a second flower on the water lilly in the pond, and for the last couple of years we’ve been cursing the bloke in Lewisham’s premier pet shop as all we’ve got is the odd leaf or two. Shame! The above pic shows the water lily that cost us a fiver about 2 years ago, a few oxygenating pond plants I got off ebay for about £3 which is spreading like wildfire and two of the goldfish of the 13 my wife got for the price as 11 (£7ish) at the Lewisham pet shop after she listened intently to the bloke chat on about his own pond. Bargain!