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. Hey everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben. I
just want to say a massive thank you to everybody that listened to yesterday's episode.
The feedback that I've got from it is absolutely fantastic. Everybody was saying
how crisp it sounds, how a lot clearer it sounds, and even like
the new intro as well. So I hope you're enjoying the new crisp podcasts
brought to you from Gardening with Ben. So what have we been up to
today? Well, it's Bank holiday Monday, everyone, It's a day when
we get a day off, well, hopefully most people get a day off.
And yeah, I put a post on this morning saying happy Bank holiday.
What's everybody up to today? And I had a lot of replies back
to saying that it was raining where they are, and thankfully up north in
Sheffield, it's been absolutely gorgeous. It's been sun is shining and yeah it's
been boiling hot today someday en weather in fact. But we've been busy with
our allotment and I've been doing quite a bit today. I've potted up all
my cucumber plants into bigger pots. Some of them had been nibbled and lost
the leaves and there were just a stem left on them. But fingers crossed
they might grow back, but we'll see. We'll see how well they get
on. But I've planted them up anyway we can give them a chance.
If not, I'm sure we'll hopefully get some from the plants that are healthy
eight and growing. So we've potted all them up into big pots. They're
in my polytunnel. I'm not growing them outdoors. I'm going tob my polytunnel
because the cucumbers do like hot weather and it gets really hot in my polytunnel,
so fingers crossed we get some great crops from them, and hopefully they'll
produce up to October. That's when they usually die back for the year,
so if we look after them, we can get crops all the way up
to October. But obviously we won't get any cucumbers for a couple of months
now while they're growing into big plants. So we've also planted some peppers as
well. We've potted all them up and again they're in my polytunnel. I've
never had much look from pepper plants, so we'll give them a try.
We'll see how well they get on and one of these that if it fails,
I'll just keep trying it every year until I manage to get some even
though yes, it is a waste of time and money if they don't ever
grow, but it's the fun of it and I enjoy it. So hopefully
we'll get some peppers growing in my polytunnel. We've also been busy out in
the garden today as I've got an issue with bind weed, and bind weed
is absolutely atrocious. It just grows everywhere and the more you dig it up,
the more the roots end up breaking and you get more and more plants,
you have to literally get out every single bit of route, which will
never happen on the plot. But we've got a lot out. But we're
still getting it down the edges of my plot, and it's starting to look
like a jungle bind weed grows so fast it's unbelievable how fast it grows.
So I've been trimming it all back and trying to get my roses back because
it tangled its whole itself all around my rose plants, and trying to untangle
it from a forawny rose is so difficult as you're trying to unwind it,
and it's not really like you can use gloves because you need to unpeel it
from the stems and stuff like that. And I was being so careful not
to damage the roses what are growing on it, but hopefully we'll get some
nice looking roses on it. So we've been doing that as well. We've
also planted some more sunflowers. Yesterday, when I went shopping for my new
stuff for doing my podcasts on, I went out and bought some more seeds
and I bought some sunflower seeds, and this time I planted them straight in
the ground. I'd already started some offing pots which I've already planted out,
but I've put some straight into the ground. I did this previously another year
and the grew absolutely fantastic. They're absolutely beautiful. We'll keep using those pictures
to these to this day and how beautiful they are grown. And obviously we're
growing them outdoors straight in the ground. They're a lot stronger sometimes and they
can withstand, so hopefully we get some great pictures from the sunflowers, because
you can't be a lovely looking sunflower. And the bees absolutely love them.
They absolutely gorgeous for the bees. And at the moment, I've just posted
a video on my social media of the aliums on the plot. The bees
are going absolutely crazy over them at the moment. There's so many bees hanging
around, flying on them, crawling on them, getting all the nectar and
the pollen, and yeah, they're absolutely loving them at the moment. The
bes, the aliums, i mean, are one of the best things that
I've got growing on my plot. Yeah, you don't get many bulbs in
a pack when and they can be quite expensive, but they're so valuable for
the bees and they absolutely adore, just crawling all over them, attracted to
him so much, and as you can see from the video, they're just
swarming in the bees that are out there. So we've been doing that.
What else have we been up to today? But yeah, we've not done
awful Well, we have done a lot, but it doesn't seem like an
awful lot because sometimes it just takes too long to get stuff done. And
on one of these that starts a job, sits down for a few minutes
and carries on and sits back down again. And I just enjoy being out
in the sunshine and just enjoy being out with the nature. But it's coming
on good. My plot. There's a lot of work still left to do
on it, and it's a struggle keeping up with all the bind weed.
And sometimes it can be dis sartening because you put a lot of time and
effort in and then like you're not there for a few days and you come
back and all the weeds have grown back again. You're like, oh,
not again, not again. But if we didn't have the week to dig
up, we wouldn't enjoy it, I don't think as much, because you'd
just be sat there all the time. You wouldn't be getting the exercise,
you wouldn't be getting the enjoyment, you wouldn't be getting your hands dirty,
you'd just be sat there observing. But I love gardening. It brings so
much pleasure to me. But hopefully, fingers crossed, we're going to be
back down at the plot tomorrow, hopefully getting some more seeds planted, which
I'll keep you updated on. I'm not going to tell you what seeds I'm
going to be planting until tomorrow, but hopefully we'll get some more seeds planting.
Like I say, these podcasts are going to be back up and running
again for you. I'm hoping to bring out a video later today on my
YouTube channel and my TikTok and my Instagram, so make sure you stay tuned
for that. I am trying to bring back content for you all to watch
as that is one thing that I used to do. I used to do
lots of videos and stuff like that, so hopefully the videos will be making
a return. I'm just trying to get used to this new laptop. It's
a struggle. It's a Chromebook and I'm not used to using a Chromebook.
So yeah, hopefully we'll get used to it and we'll get some videos out
there for you again, because I do know that you all enjoy love seeing
the content and seeing my plot as well. So thank you for listening to
today's gardening podcast. I hope you've all had a fantastic bank holiday and that
you've managed to get some sunshine. That is the main thing. I hope
you've managed to get some sunshine today. So until next time, everyone,
remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with everyone. Thank
you for joining me on this episode of Gardening with Ben. I hope you
have found some useful tips and instegration show for your own gardening and a lot
more journey. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to follow and
subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode. And if you
have a moment, I'd love for you to leave a review and share the
podcast with fellow of gardening enthusiasts. Your support helps us growers community and continue
bringing you great content. You can also follow us on social media on every
platform, or Gardening with Ben for daily gardening tips and days. Happy gardening,
and until next time, remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and
keep gardening with Ben.