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 to Gardening with Ben for a brand new
episode. And I think the weather actually listened to my podcast yesterday when I
said West summer, it's certainly here. Wow, been a boiling day to
day, absolutely sweating so much and plenty of sunscreen on while out in the
garden. And yeah, it got to about twenty one degrees. I know
if you're listening to this in a different country you might be used to that
weather, but that is good for the UK. And wow, has it
been hot. Absolutely glorious weather. And yeah, I spent a few hours
down at the allotment. Today didn't do an awful lot, but I did
plenty as I had hope to get done. And today's jobs have been quite
good. And I've started taking some cuttings from my futures and from my lavender
plants. I may have talked about this in yesterday's episode. I can't remember
what I told about, to be honest, but I have taken some cuttings
from my lavender and from my futures. Now my futures or only I only
purchased them this year, and they've grown so well, so I thought I'm
going to take some cuttings from them and give them a try. So I've
taken thirty cuttings from my futures and you might fit. Wow, thirty plants.
But yeah, if I could get all these growing, or as many
as possible, then I can have futures all the way down the side of
my borders and it'll look absolutely gorgeous. And that's the plan. Because futures
do spread, they fill out, they have plenty of flowers on, they
look absolutely beautiful and hopefully it attract plenty of bees to the allotment. So
I've taken thirty cuttings. So I brought them all home, ready to strip
the bottoms of the leaves off and stick them in some water and pray that
they'll take root. But this is the first time taking futures cuttings, so
fingers crossed. We can give it a try. We may have a look,
we may not have look. We'll find out. And that's the plan.
And we've also taken some cutting from my lavender plants as well, which
I planted this year. I purchased these from Tesco and they're about three pounds
fifty each and they again look absolutely beautiful, so I thought, why not,
we'll give it a try. It's free plants to end the day.
So it took absolutely loads of cuttings off them as well. And I'll watching
a YouTube video because yes, I do look out for tips and advice as
well, because again I don't know everything, and I'm quite new to taking
cuttings. And they were suggesting the idea of putting them in soil to take
root, but I thought, I want to try them water. So I
brought them home and I'm going to stick them in some water and see if
they take route, see if we get a good amount of lavender cuttings growing.
So next year I could have a load of futures and a load of
lavender growing in my allotment. But we'll have to see. We'll have to
see. It's trial by error, and every day is a learning day in
the gardening world, and that is certainly what I've been up to today.
So I've got all them cuttings. I've obviously taken my cuttings from my roses
by climbing roses yesterday. They're at the a lot, but they are in
soil, so we're keeping them watered, keeping them hydrated, and we'll see
if we get some climbing roses growing. You never know. I can give
it a try. We'll see how we get on. It's all look of
the drawer, and it's all fun. I wouldn't be bothered if I didn't
get any growing or anything like that. I'm just here to have fun and
enjoying myself, experiment and learn something new. Now, ideally I'd love to
take some hydreender cuttings, but my hydrangeres aren't that big yet. But I
might have a look again on YouTube seeing how to take hydranger cuttings, and
we may possibly give them a try, as they look absolutely gorgeous to a
nice pink color of really, I've got two and the two different pinks as
well, so that's nice because it obviously goes off the acid or alkali of
the soil, depending on which ones which, the color of the high grenda
often comes out. So obviously there's quite a bit of acid in my allotment.
That's why they've come out pinky red. And yeah, they look absolutely
gorgeous. So hopefully we might try and take some hydraender cuttings so then we'll
have lots and lots of free plants next year. The case I'll have once
I've planted them all up is to keep them alive until next year. That's
my biggest fear. I'm often starting these things, but I never actually see
who else is like that. They'll start like plants off and then they'll just
end up killing them all because they've given up or they've not been down to
the garden for a few days. So that's why I brought these cuttings home
to hopefully keep an eye on them at home and see how well they actually
get on and get started, because now is the perfect time to be going
of it taking cuttings, and I want to try and get some cuttings and
some other stuff as well and seeing if we can get other stuff growing.
It's worth a try and again, at the end of the day, you're
not losing anything. It's free and you've got lots of plants out of it.
And if you've got free cuttings, you can obviously give them friends and
family as well for them to have in their garden, and you could say
you contributed to it as well. So we've done all that. We've also
been sorting out some of my tomato plants what are growing outside. They're growing
pretty well and pretty fast now. I'm impressed with how well they're actually coming
on. These are what I started from seed from Tescos tomatoes mixed variety box
off tomatoes, yellow, orange and red. I started some of those seeds
off and then I planted them all outside. I did this last year and
got a fantastic crop. Obviously not as big a crop as what you're getting
Greenou polytunnel. But the reason why I grew them outside is because of the
heat wave of the year before last and it killed all my plants off in
the polytunnel as it was too hot and there were water restrictions and stuff like
that, so I planted them in the soil and I had good success.
Last year. I got a great crop, enough just for me. So
we're doing that again this year, and there's plenty of flowers growing on them.
We'd be putting the canes in, fastening them up, sorting them all
out, and hopefully we'll get some decent tomatoes to eat. I've also brought
my beetroot home as well, what I harvested the other day, so I
need to YouTube that again. YouTube to see how to cook beetroot in my
airfire. So hopefully we'll be alive tomorrow if we've not killed the stuff.
But we'll give it a try. We'll give it a shot and see how
well we'll get on with cooking some beetroot. It doesn't look that too too
hard in the air fire, but we'll let you know how we get on,
and I may post a photo of what it actually looks like once it
comes out of the air fire. And I need to go and get some
foil wrap them in. That's one thing that I have read up on,
so we need to get some foil for that. We've also been sorting out
some of our climbing beans, as I'd not put up some supports for them.
I didn't think they get that tall, but they have got tolls,
so we put some netting up for them to climb up and for them to
sort themselves out and hopefully get some beans growing on them. And one guess
what I've noticed today on my runner beans. I've actually got some beans growing
on them already. They were hiding. I didn't think they'd be ready yet
because like it's only July time, and I thought, surely they're usually ready
around August September time. But no, We've got lots of runner beans coming
already, so looking forward to having them on a Sunday dinner with some white
sauce on. So I'm pleased with how well the runner beans are coming on.
We've obviously still got loads and loads of piece to come. We've got
potatoes left to harvest, so we've still got lots and lots of crops coming.
And my lettis is starting to get to the end of itself now,
so we need to harvest as much as that and get it all out of
the ground and hopefully get some more in as well, get some more lettuce
growing in his place, and obviously I gave it a massive water in as
well today. As I'm working for the next four days, hopefully there'll be
a podcast every single day. I'm hoping to plan to record some for you
to listen to. Now. These will be talking about tips and advice rather
than what I'm getting up to my allotment because I won't have been to my
allotment for the next four days, so I'm praying that it rains on the
days when I'm actually working. Never know, usually it rains on my days
off, but I'm hoping it rains on my days when i'm working. But
yeah, I gave my allotment a really good water in today. I've watered
all my cucumbers what's inside my polytunnel, so hopefully they'll be all right for
the next few days. Obviously I should really go down and water the cucumbers
in the polytunnel. Even if it rains, it obviously won't rain inside the
polytunnel, so we need to have a look possibly going down and checking on
them later in the week. So hopefully i'll be back down at my allotment
on Saturday, when we'll be back harvesting doing more work and hopefully throwing some
more seeds as well. I didn't get a chance to go to the shops
to get some seeds, so I'm hoping to get down there and get some
seeds ready for the weekend and hopefully get some planting done. But we've got
lots and lots of stuff growing. I looked at my blackberries today. My
blackberries are forming, they're getting already. We've got absolutely loads on my phone
less BlackBerry plan. It's doing so well. I'm impressed with how well it's
growing. And my loganberries are throwing out lots of new canes ready for next
year. Remember with logan berries will grow on the cane what grew the previous
year, so all the canes what are growing this year, with homet all
the side shoots, they'll have logan berries on next year. So yeah,
hopefully we'll get a fantastic crop. And I'm starting to train them all as
well and tie them all up as they're growing everywhere, because I don't want
them growing along the ground. I want them off of the ground. So
we've been tying them all up, keeping on tracker, keeping them supported and
hopefully they'll survive until next year and we'll get some decent crops. So yeah,
it has been a pretty good day down at the allotment. So I'm
going to keep you posted on these futures and these lavender plants. Hopefully they
won't die and hopefully we can get them to grow some stuff on them,
some roots on them. I haven't got no rooting powder, so I'm doing
it without routing powder. So we're going to try it with ood natural owl
water from the council tap. So we'll give that a try and we'll keep
you updated and posted how well they get on. So if you're not following
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