Honkjazz The Musical Allotment - Part 24

Right then.

Lots to get through so pay attention, notebooks out, etc.

1) Our lovely plot.

I know that last time I wrote about this the plot had been going through a bit of a rough year. In a nutshell, weather and lethargy meant that it had suffered somewhat. You’ll be happy to hear that things have balanced up a bit. Over the last three months we’ve managed to fill every bed and it’s looking pretty good over there. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. Here’s a quick (not quick at all) rundown of what’s in where:

At the very top of the plot the awkward bit (‘Mullered Fruit Corner’) has finally started to settle down. In the past Bibs would let it go completely wild to the extent that you couldn’t see the raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes in there at all before spending a few weekends clearing it all back and moving everything around a bit so the whole process could start again. The last time this happened the raspberry canes were shifted about which had the effect of DEATH on them. I decided that something needed to be done. Everything was weeded and a small border was put around the lone surviving gooseberry bush. The rest of this paddock was taken up by some winter onions which really should have gone in when I bought them (October) and not when I found them under the front-passenger seat of my car (February). They were sprouting and had a mouldy look about them but I thought “myeh” and chucked them in the ground. This devil may care approach may result in my releasing a plethora of mould spores into the soil that render all future crops completely and utterly useless. Stay tuned, etc.

We’ve turned the back of this bed into a beautiful rockery.

Sorry, we’ve thrown all of the old bricks and any stones of lumps of wood and other cr*p into this corner and put some plant pots nearby.

Each of the five plant pots contains one twig-sized cutting from the gooseberry bush and they’re taking nicely. The cutting back has also given the gooseberry bush a massive lease of life and we’re going to try and manage it a bit more this year. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a berry to eat. Just one would be an improvement on last year. One berry!
Idiots.

There’s also a rhubarb plant which was put in a couple of years ago and happily sits there doing its own thing. Last year we failed to take any rhubarb from this beautiful creature as it rotted down into itself. Another one for the list of shame. We did learn to snap the seed pods off which was very annoying because we thought that this was a sign of a champion plant, stalk rocketing toward the sky at an alarming rate. But no, Bob/John walked over and with a grunted “you don’t want that” just snapped it off at the base. And now we know to do this ourselves.
Hopefully we'll get some rhubrab stalks to eat this year.
Just one would be an impro........

This bed also has the last few bulbs of garlic which were left over from our bumper crop last year dotted around the mouldy onion bed of poison.

The rest of this garlic overspill has been planted in one of the top beds. It’s going really well and I’ve staggered it by three weeks so we won’t get it all at once like we did last year. This bed also has broad beans which have nearly all sprouted and also houses the bay tree which once belonged to the King Of Devon (or something). I had noticed brown spots starting to develop on the bay leaves so I ripped every dodgy one off and all of a sudden there are loads of new buds all over the plant. This gardening lark is very interesting. More on that later.

The bed opposite contains more of those late onions. These ones weren’t going mouldy but were about three months late. They seem quite happy and some of look ace. Because they’d already started to sprout internally the green shoots were trapped in the skin causing a rather amusing concertina effect. There’s also a flat leaf parsley plant in this bed which is looking really healthy. All of the herbs that we planted last year got lost in the gooseberry/raspberry/weed bed so they’ve all been moved to the corner of a different bed and are all thriving now.

Good.

Down one level we have a bed that used to be full of cabbages. Until the frost and the bugs had at them. Six remain. The last survivors. The Dirty (Half) Dozen. Still standing.

And not growing at all beyond their pathetic proportions. They are useless and the new cabbage seeds that went into the ground about a month back have done nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Niente. Cabbages may well be relegated to the Blue Square South of our gardening world, joining carrots, squashes, cauliflower, tomatoes and sweetcorn in the pantheon of things that I can’t grow yet.

Opposite this bed is another late winter-onion bed, all of which are doing pretty well, which also houses a beautiful sage plant and a robust rosemary bush.

Down and over from this is a bed that has contains some radishes, leeks and more herbs. The leeks were planted last summer (along with a full bed opposite) and have probably reached their zenith. We’ll be crunching our way through these as of next week. The radishes are great and I can’t believe that we’ve not grown them before. They show in a matter of days and are great eaten straight from the ground as a mid-work snack. At the front of this bed sit some more re-housed herbs: dill, coriander and something else which escapes me know. All are healthy and happy.



The next one down from here was a bit of nightmare last year. We filled it up with the plugs from work and it was all very random with squashes, chard, herbs and lettuces fighting for attention. In the end we managed to eat most of the lettuces but the rest failed. Well, the squashes produced nothing and the chard was ignored. So that’s a massive fail on our side as well.

This year we’ve put all of the strawberries that have spawned from the five plants that were donated to us a couple of years ago and have been slowly spreading their tentricles across the Belfast sink area at the top of the plot. We dug about fifty of them out and after trimming the dead leaves and creepers planted them safely in their own bed. The corner of this bed housed a knackered raspberry cane which had sprouted up from the arse of thieving bird and was about to get clobbered by me when the lady who runs the local launderette (amusingly nicknamed Bubbles by us although we’ve never called her this to her face because we both know the weary look which would be cast our way due to it not being funny at all, we know this, we do) wandered over and practically ordered me to save it. So I did. It’s got its own paddock now and the roots are bursting through the ground in several places. As long as we get the security aspect right we might even get to eat one berry this year. You hear that? One berry!!



The last two plots continue our experiment in cultures. There’s a potato bed that has been planted out but not with shop-bought seed potatoes, oh no. Instead we’ve chucked some spuds that were knocking around in the bottom of our kitchen veg’ box, looking a bit rough with eyes up, skins withered. They were starting to rot so I’m hoping that this cavalier attitude doesn’t result in me releasing a dreadful plague of potato disease, rendering the land completely poisoned and desolate. Stay tuned!

This bed also has two of the chard plants which were rescued from last years disaster and they seem to be doing quite well. It’s nice to know we’ve got some plants that will come back year after year. We’ll be picking some leaves from one of these soon and hopefully that will only spur it on more as well as being nice to eat.

The last bed was finished last Sunday on a afternoon of glorious sunshine, tea and egg mayonnaise sandwiches (I mean egg mayonaise sandwiches and tea but you knew that right?).

This was the worst of all the beds. Last year it was a mad mixture of cabbages, squashes, brussel sprouts, more cabbages and cauliflower.

All of which failed with the exception of the sprouts. The bed was in chaos and soon became completely overgrown. So yesterday we completed the reinvigoration of the plot and our attitudes by turning this one into a runner bean bed. We’d used the Belfast sinks as seed beds to bring on our stock of beans from two years back along with some from work and they’d nearly all sprouted. Two bean teepees later (complete with some beautiful pig manure from our friends Harry & Sue in the trenches) and the bed is transformed. Hopefully the fact that the bean seeds had started to go mouldy shouldn’t matter too much. Hopefully this caution to the wind attitude won’t end up with a sea of fungus creeping up, around, over and into everything that isn’t fast enough to run.
Hopefully you'll stay tuned, etc.

So everything is in the ground.

And everything might die.

Everywhere........................

The plot looks good now. Last weekend saw the strimmer getting its second ever outing which helped fill the compost bin up nicely. It’ll need another bashing in the next few weeks such is the speed at which the grass and weeds are growing. The shed has had a good clean out as well.

It all coincides with a refreshed outlook only touched upon last time I wrote on here. We’ve started going for walks again, studying the hedgerow larder and edible seashore books that we own and our local greengrocer has started selling our chutneys for us. We’re sorting out our affairs both on the plot and off of it. Evidence onsite is in the tidier, planned out approach to mixed beds, the bordering off of the fruit bushes, relocating unhappy plants and finally casting an eye to security. We’ve always had a fairly laided-back approach to protecting our crops, thinking somehow that its OK to plant enough for ourselves and then some over for the bugs and the birds and the mice.

Well f*ck them!!!
YEAAAAAAH!!!
U-S-A!!!!U-S-A!!!!!

Sorry.

Now we plan to cage and net our berries to within an inch of their fruitful lives.

There’s also a plan to make a polytunnel. In fact I type with fingers covered in mud from a huge sheet of plastic that was being unloaded from a van on the farm where I work. Blow me down with a feather (!) if it’s not old plastic sheeting from a giant polytunnel in the fields. I’ve blagged myself a nice big chunk which will help construct our own bespoke tunnel over the next season or two.

I’m sure that there are a lot more things to talk about……………..

Oh yeah, the pub garden garden and music and how sorry we are for being very wasteful last year.

This will have to be a two-parter.

New Old Business

It's about time to start rescuing some of our old mixes and chucking them about a bit. You'll be able to download them all from this page. Here's one from the mists of time. It's a look at the wonderful Scottish label Fence Records. Enjoy :D



1) The Pictish Trail - I Don't Know Where To Begin
2) King Creosote - Who Did You Kill On The Way Up?
3) Pip Dylan - Withered Tree
4) HMS Ginafore & King Creosote - No Gesture Is Tender Enough
5) The Earlies - Wayward Song
6) The Pictish Trail - Secret Soundz No.5
7) The Pictish Trail - Connected To Light
8) Jon Hopkins - Wire
9) Pip Dylan - Lazy Boy
10) Rich Amino - You Were Always There
11) Rozi Plain - Cherry Tree
12) Romanhead - Overwintering
13) James Yorkston - Surfsong
14) King Creosote - Locked Together
15) wiQwar - Butterfly Man
16) OLO Worms - I Shot The Shrieff (Down The Tiny Steps remix)
17) FOUND - Let Fidelity Break
18) The Aliens - Rox
19) The Beta Band - Squares
20) Lone Pigeon - Boats
21) Clock feat. King Creosote - Hallelujah My Demise
22) HMS Ginafore & King Creosote - Aurora Boring Alias

honkjazz goes fm on Soundart Radio

Yes that right... last friday we played our first show on soundart radio.

It's a new frontier for us all and a very positive one at that.

The show is here for you to download and have a listen...

honkjazz on the purple radio...

Have a look here for part 1 of our latest show on purple radio.

We enjoyed it and hope you will too....

Honkjazz The Musical Allotment - Part 23

Hello My Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts.

It has been a while since I’ve written anything here and there are a few reasons for that, some pertinent and interesting, others neither.

Gardening is a funny thing and can feed off of your moods and general mental outlook to a huge degree. By this I mean that if you’re in a bit of mental slump because it rains every weekend and you can’t get to your plot then after a while the weeds take over and cycle worsens. The last thing you want to do is tackle your vegetable beds because you can’t see past the weeds and couch grass and thistles. So you stay away and the weeds get higher and the rains keep coming - cyclical slump innit. The crops that you have growing go unnoticed (the greatest crime) and your mood develops in line with nettles and thorns.

So you buy a strimmer.

And then its like Alan Titchmarsh re-making Rambo.

Suddenly you can see everything clearly. Weekend follows weekend, hours and hours of back-breaking work pile up as the weeds hit the compost heap and the earth is turned. A veg' plant scheme at work provides literally hundreds and hundreds of plugs - lettuces, herbs, kale, chard, broccoli, cabbage, moon cauli’, leeks, squashes and pumpkins. Everything is teeming with life and the sun is shining.

And then sun disappears and doesn’t come back. Rain and rain and rain and rain. Any weekend where the weather is favourable coincides with a cold or a bad back and although the weeds are no problem any more you just cannot crack the weather/time combination.

And then its Christmas.

But that’s not quite the whole picture.

As often in life there are hidden sub-plots and character arcs, award nominations for cinematography and on-set romances hitting the front pages of the celebrity gossip magazines that grace every salon and doctors surgery waiting room across the land.

Well, sort of.

Not really.

But there was another distraction and it came in the form of another vegetable garden. An opportunity came our way and we’ve grabbed it. It’s a sensitive situation and I’m not quite sure where it stands at the moment but it’s an interesting development for sure. A friend of ours had taken over a country pub in March and had started a large vegetable garden in the private garden at the back of the pub as soon as he’d moved in. Soon the logistics of balancing the full-time running of a pub/restaurant, looking after two small children and keeping a vegetable plot were made pain and clear. So when we took my folks there for a bite to eat and a pint in springtime the offer was made. We run the garden for a small hourly payment of some pennies and a couple of ales.

And that’s the first way in which Honkjazz branched out this year.

The Dartmoor garden has been a difficult trick to perform because there are politics involved that we don’t have on the homestead. As the boss is a friend of ours we don’t want to take the Michael in terms of payment. Although the garden needed two days of solid hard work to clear the weeds that had sprung up to waist height since the first planting out we couldn’t really do that without causing consternation as our friend probably doesn’t want to be spending a small fortune on hired labour for a veg’ garden that he doesn’t really care that much about. I think that it may have been part of the whole country living ideal thing rather a genuine passion. You know? Just moved into a beautiful thatched pub in the country - we'd better grow our own veg' to complete the picture! So we could only work this land in three or four hour sessions each week and as you all know to break the back of a plot you need to hit it hard for about ten days. Each week we’d wander over and carry on weeding around the potatoes, runner beans, sweet peas, onions, lettuces and cabbages and also try and always leave something new in the ground when we left. We haven’t been there for over a month now and we have a sinking feeling that our friend may have lost interest in paying someone for something that he has to wait a long time for. A self-confessed organic-nihilist (“ I couldn’t care less how my veg is grown”) who is far happier heading to the local Tescoverlord that getting their hands mucky, he’s not responded to my recent texts announcing the arrival of the winter onions. I’m going to turn up there this weekend and see what happens. Gut instinct says its a fail.

This is a project that I really want to work for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s such a beautiful pub in a stunning Dartmoor village location and it’s always such a joy to work on. Secondly, there’s an awful lot of land to use and we’ve been promised half of it for our own use (although I suspect that he may be thinking of that as a form of payment rather than the cash which has been forthcoming so far). The third reason involves the kernel of a business idea which would be based around this garden acting as a portfolio piece.

So its all a bit confusing at the moment. Our own plot has suffered a bit because of this new garden but the balance has been impossible to correct this autumn as the weather has been so dreadful round our way. This weekend should see me get the winter onions in both plots and I’ll also be able to gauge his interest properly.

I’ll be writing our annual appraisal at the weekend so they’ll be photographs included in that but at least you know the whole story now.

Or do you?..........................

Honkjazz has branched out again but in a musical form. We now play records as a trio with the addition of our good friend and excellent purveyor of soulful electronica and downbeat lovelies, Sondek. Get stuck in.

for your latest fix of honkjazz radio shizzle....

go here right now

http://chewbubblegum.wordpress.com/

Honkjazz The Musical Allotment - Part 22

Well hello now. Inspired by the insightful and witty comments the last post generated I thought it about time to say hello again and fill you in on some of the news.

Hello.

A lot has been happening what with it being spring and all. It was very hard to resist the lure of the early planting frenzy that some gardeners may give in to but we know what the weather is like in Devon so we waited it out. Just as well as there were a couple of very late frosts here which would have done us no favors. 

I'm struggling to remember what went in first (it is very early o a Sunday morning). Let's see - oh yes, well the garlic and winter onions were (and still are) going mad, especially the garlic. We didn't lose that many in the torrential rain at the end of last year so that was lovely. Unlike the broad beans which suffered heavy casualties. Still, we've got about nine pants left and Blunts has planted some more now to give a good staggered crop. I'm not sure that the ones who survived are anywhere near as big as they should be but we'll take what we get and be thankful.

Or else!!!

Nothing really, or else nothing. 

Whatever.

Sorry.

So that was that. Bibby's fruit mullered corner had completely over grown and was a disaster. Except for the strawberry plants that we put in the ground. Although we didn't get a single fruit (no netting = fat animals) the plants went fortheth  and multiplied. From the original four or fiver plants we got about forty new ones. So we've given away twenty odd and planted the rest into the Belfast sinks. Once we covered them with some of the old window panes they have thrived. Excellet.

The strawberry rescue operation was part of a campaign to reclaim the fruit corner and Bibs has done brilliantly. It's all be dug over and fenced off and once the rubbish fruit plants (raspberry and gooseberry) have been rescued from their battle with the weeds at the fence we'll plant them in the newly transmogrified bed. We've also got some lettuce plants along the fence here. They were being thrown away on the farm where I work so I rescued lots of them and we now have loads of green and red battavia, some Russian red kale, green kale, coriander plants and some other lettuce plants of unknown origin. These have been planted in all of the areas where things had died in the cold and rain so all of the available space is now taken up.

Which is nice.

Talking of herbs there was another freebie going at work in the shape of a box of mixed herb plantlets. I had those as quick as a flash and they now line the inside of the fence in the fruit corner. I can't wait to take some pictures because it's really lovely there now.

Over the last couple of months I've also dug the beds over and filled a couple with pig manure ahead of the potatoes going in (this week). Bibs and I set up a bed for the peas, using the chicken wire fencing from last year. Improvements mean we'll be planting on both sides of the fence instead of just one this time. Blunts has also planted peas on the first fence only. We'll do the second fence in a week or so and the third fence a few weeks after that.

See? A completely different type of staggering is going on at the allotment this year.

We've got to clear the old swede/brussel sprout bed and we'll be putting some cabbages in there. The brussel plants are still in the ground as everyone else seems to have left theirs so we'll follow suit and see what happens.

Lastly would be the runner beans which went in a couple of weeks ago. They've nearly all shot up (helped by a buried trench of pig manure under each row) and are looking lovely. We'll get the cane supports up this week so they've got a frame to hoist themselves around on. They've each been allocated a sponsor so I'll keep you posted on who's bean plant is growing fastest and which one gives the best prizes.

The icing on the muddy cake was a trip to the dump to sling out all of the rubbish and knackered window frames and stuff. That made me very happy indeed!

I'll take some photos once Big Al' has popped over in the week with his petrol strimmer and tidied the place up a bit.

Until then.........

Honkjazz - The Musical Allotment Huzzah!!

Hello my lovelies. Are you well? Been taking care on that slippy ice? Good.

As you may have seen from the previous post, honkjazz has a new friend. The decision has been taken to sort this dump out a bit! We're planning to slowly move the video player and podcast players over to the new site and hopefully leave this place to handle the allotment side of things. We'll still keep a radio show on a little player here so you can listen to our musical endeavors whilst perusing the gardening stuff at the same time. The links page will change as well in keeping with the overhaul. Festivals (unless they're food ones :D), record shops, record companies, etc will all move over to Chew Bubblegum. Instead we'll link you to farmers markets, fishing hotspots, amazing restaurants, agricultural agencies and excellent farm shops. Kapiche?

Good. We think it will make everything a lot more simple on the eye. We might even use this as a chance to redecorate. Also I've

 changed the name of partner in crime No.1 to keep in line with his super-duper DJ career. His name was never Herbert Westchester, that's just ridiculous! He's called Blunts. Potential confusion averted. Lots of changes eh?

Hopefully it will all coincide with a change in fortunes for the plot itself. The weather has been so awful since October that we've not been able to do anything there at all. Even when it has stopped raining for just one day the soil has been so waterlogged that any efforts are useless. The last batch of onions, garlic and broad beans were planted during one of these brief respites from the pluvial onslaught and consequently all have completely failed to sprout from their waterlogged beginnings except the garlic. Strangely this has flourished so thats at least one victory for team Honkjazz. The rain did stop before Christmas. Just in time for a three week freeze which, coupled with the snow that followed rendered the plot inaccessible. The weather has cleared up a bit (although we did have a slight flutter of snow last night) and the rain isn't a constant factor so I'm really hoping to get to the plot tomorrow. There's not really a lot to do there in truth. The last third of the old broccoli

bed has to be dug over and there's some very light weeding to be done on the other beds. I'd like to get some of H&S' amazing pig poo on top of the beds as well. Feed the earth and you shall be fed in return. Or something.

The last twenty or so swede are distributed across three beds so we should be picking those off over the next month or two as we start to plan the next campaign of growing. The very last of the brussel sprouts need to be hoiked out as well. 

Then we'll have seven empty beds to play with. This year I'd like to plant more peas as they were one of my favorite successes last summer. The harvest would have been much bigger if Bibby and I hadn't snaffled so many straight from the plants. "Like little vegetable sweets!!" is how Bibby gleefully described them and I couldn't agree more. Runner beans should come back as well after last years absence. We didn't plant them out due to losing the crop of seeds taken from the year before. I swore blind that Bibs had put them in a mixed bean vegematarian casserole or some type of dinner that makes you want to wear sandals and make clothes out of hemp and drive a car powered by the gastric emissions of your children Tao, Cloud and Tweed. This was

 when she was still a vegematarian (of fourteen years no less!) and before the magic of living in Devon had sparked the primal urge to kill animals and eat their flesh!!!! (she came home with some delicious black pudding the other day and we celebrated our one year anniversary with bloody rump steaks - result). Anyways, it turned out that I'd put them in the loft out of harms way. So who's the chucklehead now huh? 

Oh.

The potatoes have served us well the last two years so I'm guessing that we'll work those again. Perhaps this year we can buy a few less as we ended up with a bit of a glut and its an emotional wrench of a crime to throw homegrown food on the compost heap, one which I'd rather not have to repeat. The tomatoes that I collected from a freecycler were a unanimous failure - possibly due to the complete 100% lack of food that we gave them. Like a high maintenance girlfriend or human child they need food to live! Who knew?

Otherwise there's potential in parsnips, hope for herbs and possibilities for pumpkins. That sounded very Hugh Fearnley-Eatsitall didn't it?

And speaking of the River Cottage lifestyle guru, I'd like to touch on another aspect of this food malarky - foraging.

Two books from the River Cottage lot have really given Bibs and I a push in the direction of free food from the hedgerows and the seashores. One is a cookbook that contains more advice on growing vegetables, keeping livestock, foraging for mushrooms and fishing the rivers, coastlines and seas of our land than it does recipes. The other is a book by John Wright, his advisor in all matters relating to foraging. This one sticks to the beaches and harbors of England and has given us a fully fledged desire to start collecting the edible plants and shellfish that populate the coastlines of Devon and Cornwall. The nearest beach is only a fifteen minute drive away and if we can spend an afternoon splashing around the rock-pools and tidelines and come home with a bucket of prawns, mussels and cockles then we'd be daft to ignore the culinary benefits which couple the mighty pull of the ocean which surely affects all of us on some level. A lumpy sentence but one which expresses exactly how I feel. 

So neeer!!

 A couple of visits to nearby Brixham have produced a desperate want to start fishing from the beaches and breakwaters as well. Slapton beach is home to some pretty big fishing competitions so I'm hopeful of that as an indicator of an abundant ocean larder. There are many beautiful coastal towns with a harbor wall that we can park up on and there are plenty of rocky beaches that are perfect for a flask of tea, some sandwiches and a spot of mackrel-bashing. So the next of you to visit our neck of the woods c

ould be treated to a homemade AND self-caught fish pie! We're very excited about this as ever since we stumbled on a carpet of wild garlic in some nearby woods we've being wanting to get out and about with a book and a bag and a roving eye for plants, herbs, fruit and seafood that we can harvest with no damage to the environment or our purse-strings and only positive benefits in terms of taste and freshness.

 We'll also be safe in the knowledge that this food is completely organic and having cut out the middlemen of growers, distribution chains and shops will have had no detrimental effects on the environment. Everyone wins. Especially us.

On another note, some of you may have noticed a distinct lake of puzzle books as of late. This is explained by my employment situation. Having left the puzzle book world in October and spending two months on the sofa (Dr Quinn Medicine Woman is

very addictive and also an excellent barometer of just how long you've been unemployed - following plot lines across more than three episodes? Back to work with you right away!!) I started working for a company called Riverford Organic Vegetables in December. So now you're likely to get some grade-out vegetables instead of puzzle books, although they may not fare too well in transit to Oklahoma or New Orleans.

Working with fruit and vegetables all day long is an absolute joy, both from a sensual and an ethical viewpoint. The smells and sights, tastes and touches of our produce is just too amazing to describe. You've all smelt a fresh leek in your time I'm sure. Try smelling two tonnes of them. The smell hits you like a hammer. A very lovely vegetable hammer. I'm guessing I'll never have to use that sentence ever again.

And the ethics that this company live by are outstanding. Their efforts to reduce carbon footprints, re-use and recycle as much packaging as possible and support co-operatives of growers and farmers in the UK, Europe, Africa and South America are exemplory.

 Admittedly I'm working in a warehouse. It just happens to filled with delicious organic produce instead of nuts and bolts or tupperware or computer components and situated on a beatuful farm in the heart of south Devon's breathtaking countryside.

Which is nice.

So it seems like everything is going pretty swimmingly at the moment.

Whats that? You want some pictures?

Oh all right, here's a couple of highlights from 2009.

 

honkjazz has a friend...

right!!! after a lengthy break from all things blog like to enable a replenishment of our collective minds (little time and it's winter) a brother or sister has appeared where all things musical in the world of honkjazz will appear including mixes, shows off the purple radio and possibly the odd review, poem or interesting link.

There isn't much there yet but you can download the honkjazz office party (on the right hand side) if january really is proving to be that tough...

link - chewbubblegum

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!!