Seed Spuds and Maunsell Sea Forts

This device above may not the most sophisticated of gardening devices but that old window frame found on a skip many moons ago perched on some bricks is working well as a cold frame.

A few weeks ago we thought we’d chance it with a couple of seed spuds under it and today noticed that they are starting to show through. We put a liitle bit of soil around them (a mini version of earthing up so to speak) just in case a frost decides to show itself. Hopefully in a few weeks we should be in a frost free zone and we’ll take the protection off for good, but until then…

Soundtrack to this post: Big shout to Thomas from the excellent Explorations in Dub for sending us this track out of Poland called Streams of bubbling dub from Muflon Dub Soundsystem and a nice chilled bit of dub it is.

 

And through the Explorations in Dub blog here we found this great Maunsell Tower dub related track from Banco de Gaia called My Little Country (Rob Bong’s Roughs Tower Dub). Big shout to all the Sealand crew! We do love a seafort here and we are a bit partial to dub too so it’s a winning combination. Cheers again Thomas.

A mountain garden from across the pond

You know we love seeing other people’s gardens and a friend of ours Thomas sent in some great pictures of his space atop a mountain in western North Carolina, USA and we love it!

His vegetable beds are at an early stage of growth he told us but they still look impressive, we love those logs! “We’re still not beyond our last frost date, so the veggie garden is still very young. Indeed, we even had a few snow flakes last night.” Being up in the mountains the garden is 2-3 weeks behind the valley below.

He said “Keep your expectations low, this is basic gardening”, wow keep them low, how can we do that with all that lovely scenery! Thomas mentioned “We go for what I call a “National Park” look. The sort of landscaping we find here at national/state parks: basic, using natural materials, and almost exclusively native plants.” 

Thomas’s space puts us in mind of Zdenko Franjic (DJ Zdena)‘s garden in Zagreb, Croatia another lovely spot which we covered a few years ago (more on Zdenko‘s garden here.)

Thomas also included a photo of his wood shed (above) “I’ve been spending an incredible amount of time this year sawing down trees and splitting wood. What’s in the shed is a fraction of it. Kind of back-breaking, but somehow satisfying at the end of a day.” What a lovely looking wood shed. We live in a place called Forest Hill but sadly there’s no wood-chopping done around these parts but if there were, we’d want a wood shed like that.

“We have made a few paths through the woods around our house this year, too. We do so not only to have more hiking trails, but it also makes it easier to see our flowering plants like Trilliums.” Thanks a million Thomas for sharing your inspiring outdoor space, it don’t half look magical!
We’re always up for seeing other people’s gardens, plants on windowsills or balcony spaces so please send us your pics and we’ll gladly post them up on Weeds.