Hello, and welcome to Gardening with Ben. You'll go to a podcast for
all things green and growing. I'm Ben, your allotment guide and here to
help you cultivate your garden and your passion for plants. Whether you're a seasoned
gardener or just starting out, this podcast is for you. Each episode will
dig into tips, tricks, and techniques to make your garden and allotment thrive
from planting, sewing, and growing. We will share all the tips and
add advice. We will also have regular episodes talking about what we have been
up to on the Alltment. So sit back, grab a brew and enjoy
today's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for a
brand new episode on a brand new week. Well it's now Monday, the
weekend has finished, Live has finished, and my legs have finally just recovered.
They are back to normal, back to full strength. And yeah,
we hopefully will be back in the garden as well soon as we're currently on
night shifts at the moment, so we're not getting chances to go down.
We might pop down just to do a bit of watering, but we're not
getting chances to do any actual work down there as usually I'm pretty drained when
I'm on the night shifts. So what have we been up to? Well,
it's a brand new week and hopefully we've got a few planned for this
week down at the Allotment. This episode is our weekly catch up one where
we talk about what being up to and what's been happening down at the Allotment.
Well, as you know, I went to BBC Gardener's World Life and
the videos are up on my YouTube channel now of my experience there and also
what I actually purchased there as well well, So have a look at that
you'll be able to see what items are purchased. I did talk about it
in these episodes, but I show the actual items that I purchased in the
video so you can actually see them and see what I'm planting. And I
managed to get all them planted. I planted them in one of my flower
beds. I've not shown whereabouts planted are at the moment, but that'll be
my tour video which we'll be coming up next week from the Allotment. So
yeah, we have been pretty busy down at the lot. But we've picked
us first lettuce this week that was absolutely delicious and crunchy with an iceberg lettuce.
I always liked to grow the iceberg lettices. They always seem to grow
well on my allotment. I've never had any issues with growing them. They
get a decent size and they don't get eaten much, to be honest.
And when I was looking inside, I didn't find any slugs or anything like
that hiding away. Only a few little tiny ones, but nothing too major.
So yeah, we had some decent iceberg lettuces, and hopefully we'll be
able to pick some mare soom because we've had that much rain at the moment,
so hopefully it'll make them swell and build that big heart inside. What
provides a delicious lettuce to crunchy lettice. You can obviously eat all the leaves
on the outside and everything like that, but it's the crunchy lettuce inside which
is absolutely delicious. Well, hopefully been planting out some more plants as well,
what I've been growing in my greenhouse. That's the plan for this week.
We've obviously got a load more peas growing, We've got a load more
climbing beans growing what we can plant out. So we've even got some more
lettuce growing, to be honest, But that's not quite ready to plant out
yet. We've also got a load more beetroot to plant out, so hopefully
we'll be able to fill some gaps in. And we've got a load more
sweet corn to plant out. So I'm hoping to dig up my garlic this
week, as my garlic has probably stop growing now it's about ready to pick,
so hopefully we'll get some decent garlic. Cough. We'll hang them up
in my polytunnel to dry out for the next few weeks. And yeah,
we'll be cooking with some garlics, so if anyone's got any garlic recipes,
let me know, because I'm not a very good chef, so it's good
to find out what people cook with garlic, so let me know. So
hopefully we're gonna be digging them up. And hopefully we're going to be picking
some more strawberries this week, as they're just starting to ripe, and we
picked off as first one the other day, absolutely delicious, so hopefully we're
gonna be picking some more of those. I've netted all my blueberries up as
I are starting to turn blue, and I don't want the birds to eat
them all. They've already eaten all my gooseberries. The blackbirds they've eaten all
my gooseberries. My gooseberries have all gone, so I've got no goozberries this
year, so I need to remember to net them next year from the pesky
blackbirds. So yeah, hopefully we're gonna get some nice blueberries as well this
year. So we've got that to do. We've got a sweet corns plant
out, which I just said as I absolutely love sweet corn. Sweet corn
is absolutely delicious. And then I've got fifty cucumber plants growing. All my
seeds germinated what I planted for them. Recently, I've got a few growing
in my polyton on. At the moment, I've probably got about five plants,
but I planted some marks I fought five is not enough. Usually I
grow about ten to fifteen plants so that I get a decent amount of cucumbers
through the summer on a regular basis, rather than just like one every so
often. I like to have a few plants. So I'm tempted to try
and plant all fifty plants just to have a laugh to see how many I
actually grow. It'll be quite interesting whether I try growing some outside. I
might do that as well this year. Try growing some cucumbers outside in the
UK to see how well they grow. But after all the rubbish weather what
we've had at the moment, I don't think it's worth it you. I
don't think it will be getting much great outside this year at all. Or
talking to somebody at the BBC Gardener's Worldlife from the National Allotment Society and they
were saying, what sort of year have you had with your crops so far
this year? I said, very slow, extremely slow. Yes, the
rain is fantastic for making things grow, but we need the sunshine and the
warmth as well to make things grow, and it's been pretty cold at the
moment. I'll tell you that for sure. It's not been ideal gardening weather
this year. If there's a shortage of things on things growing in the UK
this year, I wouldn't not believe it as it has been absolutely terrible.
So I got them to do and we'll be getting to that time picking as
potatoes soon. They must be nearly ready. That's the thing when you're growing
potatoes. You never know when they're ready because they're obviously under the ground and
you don't want to disturb them just in case they're not ready, So usually
I don't usually start picking them until my plants start dying off, and they're
still green and healthy at the moment, so I'm going to leave them until
they start dying off, and then I'll know that they're definitely ready. So
I'm going to keep giving them some water and keep getting them growing. Obviously,
I've been sharing my videos as well recently that I like to look after
my pumpkins and my corse jets by feeding them once a week with some organic
feed I just put into my watering can and I give them a drink of
that every week because that will help things grow and helthings swell. Because we
want a nice large pumpkin this year. Hopefully we'll get one, but we
can give it a try. But yeah, we've got a few pumpkins growing
all ready, so I'm pleased with how well they're coming along. So hopefully
we can get another decent sized one to grow, and then things are just
growing really really well. Down at my allotment, I'd say it is bad
weather. My plum tree is not very good at all. It's dying off,
it's not looking health. But I'm going to prune that back in the
next couple of days. I think it's you prune your plum trees in the
summertime, which I know you might think what you're meant to prune them in
the winter. No, plum trees, you prune them in the summer because
it can affect them and you can get silver leaf from it if you're pune
them in the winter. And this is probably what it's got. It's probably
got silver leaf because I did give it a little trim in the winter as
it was getting too big. So we'll have to have a look at maybe
pruning it and having a look at that and getting it salted. So what
else my pears, My pears are doing fantastic. We've got so many pairs
on my pear tree. We've also got a lot of eating apples as well
on my apple trees. We've got a few cooking apple trees, not too
many. As I did prune that back a lot this year. I'm not
going to prune it back, I don't think this winter. I'm just gonna
leave it and hopefully get some cooking apples growing on it. But we'll see
how well it's doing. It's grown a lot this year, it certainly has.
It's done really well, so we're getting some good fruit on as we're
getting loads of raspberries coming. My BlackBerry canes are growing absolutely out of this
world, and they're phoneless as well, so you don't spike yourself every time
you try and pick a BlackBerry. As flowers are doing absolutely beautiful. They're
looking gorgeous. As sunflowers are getting nice and tall again. I feed them
every week to give them that boost to get them nice and big, so
hopefully we'll get some decent zius ones. And like I've said in my podcast
episodes, the ideal to save as canes once to some flower heads die off,
so you can use them for supports for growing your pumpkins, up,
your runner beans or peas up anything. The ideal they really really strong.
So yeah, my allotment is coming on absolutely fantastic, and hopefully we'll be
sharing lots of Mork videos and advice on what we get up to down there
coming up. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please do give us a
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for listening everyone. Until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining,
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