Honkjazz - The Musical Allotment Part 21

Its been an odd year garden-wise. I'll finish off the rundown of what did what to whom in what spot where etc etc in a bit. But first a quick word :- 

rifle.

This years gardening was a quite different style to last years. Last year we had just taken on this plot and had no experience of working with earth at all. This year we were the boys with everything to prove. This year we had no excuse. This year we would be judged!

Was that as dramatic as I hope it was?

Well a poorly lady gardener and a wedding to plan kind of schtimied the course of Every Weekend And A Few In-Between gardening sessions that we fell into so eagerly last year.

The living past crept back to present, never left......... just waiting for the right vibrations to start and the wrong to stop.

Taller.

Upwards and outwards.

Will take it back.

We shall grow untited.

And then our shears broke.

I know.

I thought I'd put that pause in there so you can take in that behemoth information. Its OK - it works out in the end.

We bought some shears.

They broke after 4 seconds. 

snip snip snip snip what?!?!?!?!?!?

Weeds and shrubs grew back in their fertile birthplace. Innocent lands for so long, wrenched from root and tendril, ploughed of history and robbed of bucolic prides.

How about that, was that as dramatic as I'd wanted? Sorry.

Anyways, the upshot was that we just couldn't get our shizzle together. As the weeds grew around and in the vegetable beds, higher and higher, they kind of sapped my energy along with the nitrites of this good Devon soil.

It wasn't until we employed the friendly (I mean a bit moody) services of a fellow allotment holder (who scares me a bit but has a strimmer) to use his strimmer (I told you!) to sort our plot out that things changed.

And then my friends, it was a corker. The mood throughout the autumn had been one of pessimistic navel-gazing. But now I could see it, we had a different game. With contributions from the wonderful and always intriguing Herb and Bibs the plot was transformed. The new look and some newly-found enthusiasm has led to a very positive approach and mindset from me. Beds have been stripped of every single weed. Borders are being kept in check. Last years dead crops are being torn from the earth. The unforgiving shine of metal spike crashes through the earth with barely disguised passion of purpose. Bare hands are plunged into the land and clods are crushed with loving muscle and sinew. The air and light dance through....

Wait, what? ......... I did it again didn't I?

Sorry.

So the plot is in good shape. We've got a couple of empty beds, some full beds weeded, the soil is prepared, new things have been planted (onion, broad bean and garlic), the freecycle cold-frame has been reconstructed and filled with the first of many pre-plant-out crops (cauliflowers) and we're still taking food to our tables. I feel ashamed to have bad-mouthed our efforts this year. 

We've done alright for scran and its still a lot of fun.

And the drama!! You wouldn't believe it!

BB

Fire + Children = Pizza

Honkjazz - The Musical Allotment Part 20c

Onions
In our house they're called FUNIONS! We don't actually know what funions are. So we planted some Japanese winter onions (that concept blew my father's mind, man) that the lovely Jute gave us in December (I think). There was another variety but I can't remember what they were called.
(pssst Jute, what were the onions called?)
We weren't too sure what they were going to do having only ever planted normal onions (whatever "normal" means - its probably a media-imposed cultural trend or stereotype that people subscribe to to try and feel and like they "fit in" which only leads to the tastemakers sneering down upon them for following suit in the first place and they end up being derided by the very people that they crave to belong to but they'll bury that shame far away in a place where it can simmer and smoulder, simmer and smoulder and they'll look down on people even less confident than them, people who don't even have the confidence to try and follow others, people who refuse to follow others and people who just don't care about following others and deep down they'll end up feeling like they've betrayed their true self by following other people's ideas of what we should look like and speak like and what we should do and eat and listen to and how we should dance and where we should go and how we should behave towards different people but really all they've ever wanted to do is dance! Thats right, dance. All they ever wanted was the greasepaint and the spotlight, the music and the crowds, the leg-warmers and the geeky American-Italian keyboard players. World, get ready because HERE I COME!.....................................)

Sorry, sorry.

So the winter onions grew well but they weren't huge so come March time when they started to wilt at the top (a sign that they're taking up every last bit of onionyness) I thought it was time to start pulling them out. My reasoning was thus: they were small and didn't have much of a bulb on them so I guessed that they must be more like a spring onion. And whats nice with the spring onion is that you eat the green bits as well. The green bits which were starting to wilt and brown. So we grabbed the biggest ones and ate them all up. And they were good. And these are short sentences. I sound like a robot. Or an idiot. Does not compute.
Throughout the Spring (© Mother Nature Inc.) we grabbed the onions out as they grew bigger. Only the ones we'd been leaving because they were too small kept growing and growing and by June we realised that I'D BEEN AN IDIOT. THEY WOULD HAVE GROWN INTO LOVELY BIG ONIONS. YOU LOVELY BIG IDIOT.
So that was my lesson learned. Still, they did taste very nice indeed.

And onto the spring onions. As mentioned earlier we planted them in between the carrots to ward off the carrot fly. Next year I'll try planting them in between the carrots and the sky to ward of the stupid rain! We planted the variety BLANK in the month of BLANK (seriously I can do that all day) and unlike last year, when not a single one came up, this lot have done alright. They're still going now and we've been grabbing them here and there for our salads and stir-frys. Very tasty indeed.
And what a load of old hot air that was. A lesson for us all I think.

(Honkjazz - The Musical will enter preproduction and casting from October 2009-January 2010)

Honkjazz - The Musical Allotment Part 20b

And onwards in mega-post recap!

Carrots

This one served us well last year despite sewing them far two thickly from the off. This meant that we couldn't thin them out for fear of attracting carrot fly. But they came and represented big style! A really good crop with a few monsters amidst the curly and the odd (seriously, why hasn't anyone mass-grown curly carrots yet? Kids would love them! OK, I'd love them, whatever). Pulling the carrots out of the ground last year supplied one of my all-time highlights of the Honkjazz experience - the smell of a carrot when its just popped out of the soil. Amazing, really amazing. Try saying that without sounding like you wear clothes made out of mung beans and wash your hair with your own urine.

This year we made sure to sow them nice and thin and put rows of spring onions in between to bamboozle the carrot flies. We planted the BLANK variety in the month of BLANK and hoped for the best.

Which just wasn't good enough.
The carrots this year have been poor, the vegetation is quite small and is starting to yellow although we've no idea what's going on under the soil so I guess we'll have to reserve judgement.
Oh too late.
Carrots you have been sentenced to FAILURE!

Note: I planted another bed and a half of Autumn King carrots yesterday so hopefully we'll have a bit less rain (just a little bit, just like, ONE WHOLE DAY TO PASS PLEASE THANK YOU) and eventually a nice crop. Carrots, redeem yourselves in the eyes of your God (thats us).

Honkjazz - The Allotment Part 20a

Hello Children.

I trust you've all been behaving yourselves in our absence? Didn't think so. No rhubarb jam for you.

As with the last post the dates of our gardening activities have been lost in the mists of time (fog of ale) but so much has been going on that it would be silly to try one huge rambling post (because we've never done that before).

So instead of that I'm going to try and put together a few mini-posts concentrating on one thing at a time. The photographs will be randomly selected from that last six months or so if at all and the varieties of vegetable and planting dates will be left blank for Herb to fill in because I don't know about those sort of things. It'll be like Blankety Blank. But without the chequepen and book. Is that alright?

Potatoes

The spuds this year have been a bit of an oddity. Not the things themselves, just the growing process. We planted the early, second early and main varieties (which were BLANK, BLANK and BLANK) all at the same time in the month of BLANK (I'm loving this already). The growth-rate of the spuds seemed a bit slow and the plants were quite small compared to last year leading Herb to think that he'd panted them too close together. However, when I visited my Papa's vegetable garden he was complaining about his plants being too big! The thinking was that all of the growth would be in the plants above the ground and not in the crop under it. We'll find out when he hoiks his spuds out later on this year.

Which leads to the Odd Factor (reality talent show idea no. 21) - the main crop plants have died back as well as the early and second earlys. They should have another six to eight weeks left before they die back so we're a bit flummoxed as to why they've bolted early. I shoved the fork under a rotting plant a tilted the soil up last week to check and there are big ol' spuds under the ground so its not a disaster, just a conundrum. Anyone?
Whatever - we've been taking the potatoes out of the ground in stages this year just because there's no way we can eat that many potatoes (we struggled with three beds last year - this year we have four) and last weekend I grabbed the last of the second earlys leaving just the mains underground. They'll probably have to come out soon though as the rain has been constant for weeks now and I'm a bit worried that they'll rot.
The harvest has been good and the pink potatoes are very cool and magical (especially for faerie Pwincesses). The haul is never as much as I imagine it will be which is silly really - each plant has had at least six to twelve spuds underneath it which is pretty good I reckon. But there's always a part of me that expects the ground to be packed with spuds, every square inch of it!!! Thousands of them!!!!
Anyways - we've probably pulled about five or six carrier bags full as of yet and we've been using them in curries, boiling, mashing, frying them, whatever we can as fast as we can. And they're a good size for throwing at kids on their bicycles as well.
Next up - broad beans!

Mixes From Us To You

Ok - I've had a bit of a re-jig and sorted out links to all of the themed mixes that Blunts (Herb) and I do for Purple Radio. So now you can use the links to download the mixes and if you really, really like them and want to know the tracklistings then you can go to our respective purple radio pages on the forum. I'll even give you a link to them.
(talks loudly and slowly)

Here is the mix page for Blunts.
Here is the mix page for me.
And here is the mix page for honkjazz.

The mix player will feature whatever the hell we feel like putting up on there so make sure to have a listen from time to time as it will be changing.
That is all.
Thank you and goodbye :D
BB

Me.... at an Exhibition??

Oh Yes - stumbled across this yesterday at the Local arty, music, get togethery place. Found it very interesting and also extremely unsettling but i can't put my finger on why?

Fence Records

Over on the right there is now a link to listen to or download Brazil's rather nicely done show from purple radio. Tis all about the fence records collective and it's worthy of your time if i do say so myself.....

Honkjazz - The Allotment Part 19

March 29th, April 5th, 12th & 18th

Well now, haven't we been away from a long time! You may be forgiven for thinking that we've done nothing at all. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. In fact we've entered a wonderful era in the evolution of the honkjazz allotment. Not only is everything starting to burst into life but we've also got crops ready to pick and cut from last autumn and we've been rearranging the lay of the land as well. A new team member of many names (starts on zero Team Lazer Plant Points but is swiftly heading for a good months haul) is making herself very useful indeed and has become official photographer of the month. It means that you'll be seeing more photographs like this:

Its a big, fwuwwy cadipwia!!!
And its sat on one of our raspberry canes. So you see, this photograph did serve a purpose other than making you go "ooooooh". We're currently unsure about the survival rate of the raspberry canes. Five out of the eight are showing no signs of life whatsoever but I'm quietly confident that they will come back again. Just you wait.

So what else has been going on? Details are hazy regarding what has been done on what day but here is the General Rub (reggae name no. 32):

We've started (and nearly completed) the restructuring of the top left corner of the plot. It used to have a dedicated bed just for the raspberries but we came to realise that it was a bit of a waste. So instead we've moved them back so they're flush against the fence and enlarged their old bed. Not sure what we might put in there to grow. There are lots of options and I think that Herb has a better idea of whats happening than Bibby or myself. BobJohn gave us two lovely gooseberry cuttings which Bibs has planted along the top fence to form a DEATH-DEFYING WALL OF FRUIT!!!!!

Here they are, look:

So that corner is all good. I'll attempt to put the last of the fencing back around the new plot (because Snip did it all wonky) this weekend and then ask Herbert what he wants to plant. Another plot ready - nicely slicely.

The other top corner has had a bit of restructuring but sadly there are no photographs of this. Tsssk. Over the last few weeks I've been moving the Belfast sinks into a more tidy arrangement, filled them with earth to plant sproutlings into before transplanting them into the ground, moved the shonky, old trolly thing and put stuff on it and done some other stuff as well. Sounds amazing right?

We've also put this funny plant chimney thing up there as well. My work colleague Sheridan has kindly donated some strawberry plants so I've put them in the chimney which my sister bought me years and years ago and had been sat in my folks garden full of dead herb plants. I'm hoping that its a combination of gravity and the newness of their home thats causing the plants to wilt. Once the roots bed down a bit I'm pretty sure that they'll be alright.
Also, this photograph makes it look quite threatening and alien. Which is nice.

And the wonderful David and his wife whose name I can never remember came over a couple of weekends ago to collect the mystery shrub. It was decided that as much as it was lovely and colourful it was taking up space that could be used to feed our hungry, gaping mouths. So a bit of pub business was done and David and Mystery Wife wandered along to collect it (Sniplet had spent days trying to dig the thing out - respeckatah to her for that) and in return donated a cutting from a one hundred year old bay tree. It belonged to the King Of Devon or something and David is very proud of it. The leaves were so large that I first assumed he was winding us up in the hope that we'd all go home and crumble bits of rhododendron bush into our cooking dinners but no, the honkiest bay leaves I've ever smelt. Thank you David and...................................Pauline? No. Sharon? No. Argh, fuggadabaddit.

Other structural developments - I've made a new bit at the very bottom of the plot after moving the compost bin and tidying up a load of cr*p revealed enough space for a big-ass bed. So thats been dug over, weeded, de-stoned, twisty-spikey-thinged and bordered. Then I put a bunch of swede seeds in the ground at either end (not expecting them all to grow, all one thousand of them) and a few brussel sprout seeds as well. So I come back a week later and there are flipping hundreds of swedes sprouting up.

"This'll never do" I says to eeself and spent a good two hours gently plucking the delicate, little things from the earth and putting them into pots and trays.

There's still hundreds of them in the ground but at least we'll be able to give them away a bit more easily now. Look, here I am saying "This'll never do" to eeself and gently plucking the delicate, little things from the earth to put into pots and trays.

Planted some more brussel sprout seeds in pots (just to hedge some bets) and now the Belfast sink area is awash with little pots of seeds all growing away. Its ace! There's also a couple of pots of flowers knocking around (you can tell that a girl! has been here) so its tidier, prettier and it smells nice too.

What.

Ever.

H over ordered on the potatoes this year so we've filled loads of pots down each side of the plot just to use some spuds up before they just rot away. Sad really, there's still loads of them in the shed which it looks like we might end up throwing on the compost (the potatoes not the shed) unless Acorn's Big Idea comes to fruition - see below a bit. And aren't these photographs lovely (if not a little head-spinning)?

Those potted potatoes haven't sprung to life yet but they did go into soil about three weeks after the earlies, second earlies and main crop potatoes did. I'm not sure what types Herb chose this year, I don't concern myself with that sciencey bit so I'll leave it up to him to tell you whats gone in and when.

Heres a photograph of some potatoes that are growing in some dirt that is on out plot (see the level of language we're working on here?).

I spent another good hour just breaking up the big clods of soil that littered our four potatoe beds. Some of the beds have the utmost care taken over the soil preparation, making sure that its as fine as possible, not a stone in site, all weeds lovingly cleared away. And then some of our plots are covered in huge chunks of earth.

Must Try Harder.

Or Not.

Must Have A Sit Down And Think About It.

At least it was quite theraputic to be busting up the soil like that. I do likes to get my paws grubby.

So thats the fruit corners and potatoes covered, what else?

Broccoli Godamnit, that's what!

Check out this badass RageCage of anti-pigeon technology.

These plants took to the soil very well and as soon as they started to really go for it the leaves were just getting hammered by catapillars and pigeons. One Cage Of Avian Humility later and the heads of broccoli started to appear in their loads of. Should have listened to Jute a lot sooner. Thanks Matey :D

Here are some close up shots of the two types of broccoli.

We've started to eat this now as well. Flippin

delovely it is, we had

some the other night, steamed it we did, ate it with a potato, red pepper and spring onion (from the plot) fritata. Flippin lovely it was. Lovely. It was. It was lovely. We need to move quick on this stuff as well because its starting to flower which I think renders it useless to the kitchen. Luckily its super tasty so it shouldn't be hanging around for too long.

Hopefully by harvesting the topmost bits we'll encourage growth outwards from the bottom. In fact this bed could probably do with a major thinning out as there are lots of plants that are struggling in the lower depths of the shadows so we might have these to give away soon. This also links to Snip's Big Idea of having some kind of trading post where people can either advertise or leave surpluss plants and seeds. I think this is a great yarn and would require nothing more than a small trestle table and for people to be considerate of others when taking things they want. Maybe we'll suggest it a meeting or something. Maybe we'll just do it ourselves and be like anarchist gardeners! Really peaceful, quiet anarchist gardeners who don't like smashing things up (especially not little trestle tables).

So what else?

There's those old broad beans innit?

(Look at this photograph. Really! If Kazoo wants to retain her position as plot photographer she really must try and take some pictures AFTER I've spent the day cutting the grass and weeding the beds so they look all nice and tidy for the shoot.

...................sigh................

minus 5 Power Bonus Team Lazer Points for you young lady :)


Look, they've gone and got flowers on them and everything! I moved some of these around a bit the other week, spacing them out into lines and putting sticks in. They have responded wonderfully as you can see from the close upness:

We've been trying to figure out what we can grow this year and it seems to be more of a puzzle to crack than last year. I think thats mainly because we didn't know whether we could even grow anything or not then. Now we know that we can its nice to take more care in chosing crops and planning everything out. July will be a big month for us as the early potatoes, peas and broad beans will all have been harvested (hopefully). That means that there'll be about four plots to play with. Onions, runner beans, carrots and parsnips are all in the running.

There is a bed at the top of the plot that has some nice action going on. It was full of Japanese winter onions but they didn't seem to be doing very well, not showing any bulbous oniony bits on the bottom (again with the knowledge!). So a few weeks ago we started hoiking them out and eating them as you would a spring onion. And they were super tasty as well, really strong. The reason for the early hoiking was that they'd started to pull the goodnesses (or whatever the hell it is plants do/like) out of the leaves and I figured that if they were more of a spring onion then we shouldn't really be wasting these delicious leaves. Right? Well, maybe. They have started to balloon out a bit at the bottom so maybe we were a little hasty. Anyhow, I condensed the remaining onions into one end of the plot and filled the rest of the space with some carrots and spring onions (I'm positive) and we aslo pinched a little bit of space for three lettuce plants that Herb's grandfather kindly donated.

The carrots have started showing one week later so I'm very happy with that one. As soon as the last of the Japanese onions are gone we can fill the remainder of the plot up with more carrots.

Another interesting little bed is in the middle of the plot. It holds the garlic which I tried to grow in one of the sinks last year but it didn't do very well. But the bulbs remained in the sink well after all of the foliage had died away so I chucked them in the ground to see what would happen. The answer is this:

They've been going strong for a while now. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Also in this plot are some more lettuces from Herb's Grandfather and a few rows of peas that we only planted a few weeks ago. They've shot out of the ground in the last seven days due to some rather helpful weather - day of rain, day of sun, day of rain, day of sun. Its been great and the weekends seem to be hogging just a bit more of the sun for us to go out and play in. Here are some photographs of that plot for you to look at with your eyeballs:

Over there you can see the peas I was just writing about a minute ago yeah?

And down there are the lettuces I had just mentioned. I'm very happy with those because by this time last year we'd lost half of the planted lettuces to whatever it was that killed them. There are a few more lettuces hidden away at the back of the broccoli plot with the winter greens.

So I think thats everything covered photowise. Its been an amazing three weeks as we've watched it all start to bloom and build. Even more so for Scamp who wasn't with us last year despite putting in some hard ground work right at the start! So for her to be witnessing the growing plants is a wonder. And she likes catapillars.

There has been a good seachange in attitude as well. As we were just kind of flailing around last year we were allowed to make mistakes and just see what would happen. Now we're a bit keener of eye and deadlier of hand (not sure either) as we sculpt the land. We've started to analyse how we space everything out and try to find ways of maximising the small bit of land that we are privileged enough to have. So year by year things will improve. We'll put together a back-dated calender so we can see what was planted and harvested when. And we'll write up a nice list of successes and failures and try to figure out what we did right or wrong. Thats all good.

Here is a picture of a plant near a fence.

Cheers

BB

Niiiiiice.

By way of thanking Herb/Blunts for posting my Lee 'Scratch' Perry mix in the post below (a big sucess in Oklahoma) I'll return the favor by pointing at his marvellous jazz club mix from the other day.

You can download it here! So go on. Clicky linky. Do it. Now. Thank you. OK. Relax.

BB Does Kimble...

Over on the right there is the delightful show that BB put together on purple radio a while back - it's all lee scratch perry or linked to the great man. So, get your lug holes round 60 minutes of dubtastic shizzle!!

It happened on a thursday...

The shed now has a worktop. I know that these kind of things don't happen very often but to make sure this event was recorded for future generations i have included a photo...

Much against the honkjazz ethos (!!!???) i had to buy some brackets and fix the worktop with a certain degree of security. I can confirm this will never happen again and want to assure BB in particular that this level of workmanship is very much a one off....

Also the first early seed potatos are on the kitchen table and progressing nicely towards there ultimate fate (planted in the ground)

Until next time....

Stuff To Do

The huge day of progress has really inspired me with ideas for the plot as of late. A glut of seeds have forced my eyes to survey our little scrap of land a bit more carefully if we're going to fit everything in. Last year was a bit of a folly as Herb and I tried to discover whether we could even make things grow and that.
We can.
So this year we can look at things a bit more seriously.
Here are the jobs which need to be done as soon as possible:

1) Dig out a new bed (probably for the brussel sprouts)
2) De-stone and weed the brocolli bed.
3) Extend the borders of any plots that need it.
4) Plant spring greens in any gaps or spaces.
5) Break up the soil in the carrot bed ahead of planting so its all lovely and fine.
6) Dig up the shrub of mystery and extend the fruit bed into the empty space.
7) Establish the herb garden in the Belfast sinks and any other containers we can use.
8) Plant out surplus potatoes in buckets, barrels and boxes to save plot space.
9) Sit down and have a cup of tea.
10) Consider joining the plots together and losing the side-paths in favor of one long pathway down the middle of the two uber plots.

ummmm, thats about it for now :D

Honkjazz On Purple Radio - Last Wednesday Show Evah!!!

Yep tis true we've played our last show on a wednesday evening (which is over on the right for your listening delictation). Our new slot will be the 2nd saturday of each month which means we return to the virtual airwaves on the 14th March 9pm - 11pm so be sure to tune in.

Honkjazz - The Allotment Part 18

Its so crazy (so crazy) to see this as the first proper post of the year. 2009 is already seven weeks old and we've done nothing? Nothing?!?!?! Well almost. It may sund like a convenient excuse but the weather here has been pretty raw of late. Now I know that some of you may live in more hearty climes (my sister will always scoff when we mention temperature as she lives in Canada and they've recently experienced -30 conditiions - flippin 'ell Tucker!!!) but if its raining then its raining and as the old boys here say "if it sticks to yer boots, go home" so thats the maxim we've sat on the sofa to.
But on the plus side we've managed to get a shed for free (more on that later) and we've planned the next season out and we've ordered the seeds as well. So its not all been wasted time.
And this weekend just gone saw the first solid sunshine for ages. The first run of three days without rain in months. And the first weekend without plans.
Herbert couldn't make it as he had some wedding rubbish to attend to (priorities man, priorities!!!) so Snip and I trundled down to the plot for mid-day, haversack brimming with sandwiches (cheese and auntie's homemade picalilly), flasks of tea, ready rolled cigarettes and the radio for the football.
And we were faced with such a multitude of tasks to complete, finding a starting point was quite tricky. Herbert had already told me that the seeds had been delivered so we wanted to try and clear some space for him to get planting in the following week. The first job we did was to combine the onions which had been planted in one and a half beds together to save space. In the main bed there were a few onions which hadn't taken so Snip sorted them out and weeded the bed whilst I carefully dug up the few onions that had shown any promise in the second bed which she then planted all together.
The free bed was then prepared for the oncoming early potatoes with a good weeding, turning over, breaking up and adding of well rotted pig manure. A good start.
The same thing had to be done with the broad beans (they had also been planted over one and a half beds) so Snip got stuck into that and I prepared another spare plot for the potatoes. Snip then started to weed and de-stone another spare plot so I turned my attention to the new shed.
Up until now all of our tools had been hidden under an old piece of carpet. They had only cost a couple of pounds each from the recycling centre so it wasn't a big deal but getting the shed was a great start just to store our stuff inside. I emptied everything out of the shed and started repacking it in a sensible order (leaving space for the beers, tea-making facilities and newspapers). There was a lot of stuff that had been kept in big buckets that had become waterlogged when the buckets filled up with rain so this was all emptied out and sorted through and anything valuable to us left out in the sun. While the shed was empty I took the opportunity to nail a cross-beam on the wall and the put screws into that so all of the hand-tools can be hung up (which is ace and was fun if not a little bit will-the-shed-fall-down-if-I-hit-it-with-the-hammer-again).
While I was in the spring-cleaning mood I decided to turn my attention to the composting area (opposite the shed). I'd been wanting to move the compost bin for ages so I cleared out the space which had held the manure supply and managed to work the home-made bin over the top of the compost heap and into the corner. This also gave me the chance to put the compost back in reverse therefore giving it a good mix-up in the process. All of the pots and bits of junk that had accumulated around the bin were sorted out and everything was starting to look nice and tidy. Sandwiches and tea were served and appart from having to listen to Liverpool FC on the radio it really was a beautiful day.
After lunch we decided to finish the shed renovations so we cracked open the creosote and started painting the shed in the noxious but beautifully scented brown stuff. After this we de-stoned, weeded and dug over the old runner bean bed which will be used for carrots. Snip also cleared the stones, weeds and dead foliage from the brocolli bed and just as the light was fading I marked out a new plot which will beused for cauliflowers.

So all in all it was an amazing day of progress, spring cleaning, DIY, pre-planting prep' work and football on theradio. The plot looks brilliant and theres a definite sense of clarity about everything now. And as soon as I find my lead I'll get some photographs up for you to see :D

It's Snowing In Devon!

And here are the pictures to prove it...

Wednesdays Show Up For Your Listening Pleasure

Yep just over to your right is the latest show from honkjazz on purple radio. I have to say it was a pretty mixed bag but then thats what you've come to expect....

An historic Week In More Ways Than One.....

So America got a new leader in Mr Obama and the honkjazz allotment got it's shed. I'll let you decide which one holds more hope for the future of mankind.....
Here's some photo's of the momentus occasion although the camera on my phone is tat...

CONGRATUMALATIONS!!!

So yesterday was the first birthday of the Honkjazz Allotment. One year old. And how did we celebrate this mammoth landmark? We spent the weekend collecting, repairing and putting up a shed, thats how! S'right, after harping on about getting a shed all year we finally made the big jump and pushed on out there. "Out there" being the end of the village high street and "big jump" being collected for free. I'll ask Snip to get down there this week with a camera because I know you're all gasping to see this wonder of the world. She did take a photo of the team on completion of the shedness so maybe Herb will put that up soon to mark the occasion. Massive thanks to the amazing Mr Simon. His energy, common sense, uncommon sense and ability to curse were limitless and we owe him a lot of beers for his brilliant efforts.
And I got to ride in the back of a van!!!! (squeee)
So, photographs pending.
This really heralds the new year in well for us. I'll put together a post listing the truimphs and failures, lessons learned, star buys, tastiest treats, etc. Like the Oscars but with all of the back-stage drama, tears and tantrums thrown in. And onions. Lots of onions (perhaps thats why they all cry so much?).
We can also reveal our masterplan for the year and let me tell you its a ripsnorterbanger. The tension is palpabale!!
So lots to come in the next couple of weeks. And don't forget the radio show. We'll be starting an Allotment Tune Of The Month section and I might play a couple of my own tracks as well. Linky is on this page somewhere, not sure where.
Laters potaters.
BB
x

Extra New Years Treat.. a bit late....

Yep we really are spoiling you and to ensure that you all feel loved as we move into 2009 - we have put up part 1 of New Years Eve Mega Monster 6 hour Mash that Honkjazz ably smashed all over www.purple-radio.co.uk (be warned there is one f word during a clip from the legend that is Bill Hicks, so if there are minors listening then tell em to get back down the pit!!). Parts 2 & 3 may make it up before the end of 09 but it did get messy so the editing could take a while....... anyhew enjoy it there's some rather loverly tunes in there.....somewhere...

Into The Future

And a Merry New Year to you to!
We both hope that you had a wonderful festive break and a battysmasher of a New Years Eve. For me Christmas was spent in a whirlwind of family visiting, country walks, pub visits and fine foods. New Years Eve was spent over at Honkjazz Towers broadcasting on Purple Radio and we had a blast. The show was supposed to be two hours long but we went and doned a six hour show just because we could!!! So what better way to greet you all in 2009 than with a short burst from the sharpest comic mind in Britain. Huzzah!
BB