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. We're
your host Gardening with Ben. And yeah, it's Saturday, the weekend is
here. And to be honest, it wasn't as hot today this morning as
it was yesterday. It was absolutely roasting yesterday, but today I were pretty
cool. I didn't have my t shirt off, which is something of a
good site. But yeah, it's been quite a cool day today. But
I did have to do a lot of water in today as obviously it was
a hot day yesterday, so we needed to get all the plants watered and
get them soaked. And the main thing that I did water was my cucumbers
that I planted yesterday, and I was going around checking them all making sure
that slugs were going firm or eating them or starting to destroy them and touch
wood. They are pretty safe at the moment, and I'm going to be
keeping my eyes peeled on them because I don't want the slugs to get them.
We're going to try growing them outside for the first time ever, and
hopefully we'll get some good crops. So it's a bit of a trial never
this year on my cucumbers outside. I've got some growing inside, so we'll
definitely get some cucumbers. But we're going to try some outside this year so
that we can see how well they do whether it's worth off growing them outside
or growing them indoors. Let me know if you have ever grown cucumbers outdoors
before market more variety. It's a variety that I'm growing, So give me
a message and let me know if you grow any outdoors. So what else
have we been up to today? Well, I did actually have pretty much
a chill day down at the allotment today. I didn't do an awful lot
as to be honest, I started the gym the other day and it's destroyed
me. I did some like trystep exercise US and I couldn't move my arms
this morning. They're absolutely killed, bearing in mind had not been for two
days. They absolutely killed. I ended up having some paracetamol just to get
rid of some of the pain. But as I'm recording this, it seems
okay at the moment, So hopefully I'll be back to normal and I'll be
back at the gym again. Hopefully it won't put me off. But we've
now got an Apple Watch as well, so that we can keep track of
all my exercise and try and encourage me to get fit again. And obviously,
like I say, gardening does keep you fait, keeps you going,
keeps you motivated, keeps you moving around. And hopefully I will see the
difference and progress, and hopefully now summer's coming, we'll be having all the
healthy food as well, picked from as a lotment. Now. I was
looking today and my loganberries are getting ready. They're starting to turn ripe.
Now, if you've never tried loganberries before, loganberries are a longer version of
a raspberry, and they're a bit more harier than a raspberry, but they
are absolutely delicious. I always remember as a kid my mum used to make
loganberry jam because we had a big loganberry bush in the garden. And the
best thing about logan berries is there's no fawns on the canes. They pamless,
and you can they just go mad, go wild, and you'll get
absolutely loads and loads of fruit on it. So fingers crossed over the next
few years will have a lot a lot of the logan berries growing and some
delicious fruit, because you can never have enough fruit. The fruit that I
grow from my allotment pays for the allotment in itself. Like my allotment a
year is about one hundred and twenty pounds a year, which to some of
you it will sound a lot, but that does include the water, and
it is quite a big plot. And I'll easily pay one hundred and twenty
pounds for having a piece of land that I can go and relax on and
enjoy the up and space on and grow my own vegetables on. It's not
about me saving money and growing my own veget It's about my mental health and
getting outside and being out in the fresh air and enjoying it and being back
at nature. But yeah, the logan marriers are getting ready. We've also
been busy planting as well today. If you remember yesterday we talked about how
we planted all our peas out. Yesterday, we planted all our cucumbers out
yesterday. We planted our sweet corn the other day. So we've planted some
more beetroot today. Some of my beetroot that I had growing has been getting
eaten and destroyed, so we've got a lot more beatroot planted today. And
I've planted these all in the gaps between all the plants, just to fill
the spaces up because my allotments quite limited for light. There's some trees at
the top of my plot, so it doesn't get much like at the top,
so I'm limited for space, so I need to use every bit of
space that I can. And obviously, putting those beetroot in the middle of
the plants and stuff like that, it'll stop the weeds from growing because hopefully
the leaves will fill out and they'll stop anything else from growing. So hopefully
we'll get a lot of beetroot growing. And yeah, we've got a lettuce
ready. We've had some lettuce off absolutely delicious, crispy head on it.
It's an iceberg varriety that I grow. I've always had good luck with growing
iceberg lettuces. I've never had any issue whatsoever. I just make sure they
netted over to start off with to stop the pigeons eating them and attacking them.
But I've never had any issues growing iceberg lettuces. I always have a
good success with them. So we've got some more of them started off growing,
so hopefully we'll be planting some of those out later so that we'll get
a second crop throughout the year and get more growing as we come on.
So we're back at work tomorrow for the next four days, so we're not
going to be down at the allotment, but hopefully we're going to record plenty
of episodes for you to keep you going and keep it all ticking over for
you, because I'm enjoying doing all these podcast episodes. At the moment,
we're getting quite a lot out and the views of the podcast is brilliant.
There's loads of people listening every single day to them, so I appreciate every
one of you that does listen. So what's next week's plan when we're about
down at the allotment. Hopefully we're going to be picking those loganberries, we'll
be picking some strawberries. I did notice as well, my blueberries are starting
to ripen, so we're going to be having some blueberries off soon, so
they'll be delicious to have and enjoy down at the allotment. And obviously,
I say I've got a meal plan at the moment what I'm having, and
part of it is to have some Greek yogurt at night with some fruit of
my choicing. So obviously I'll be using the loganberries, I'll be using the
blueberries, strawberries, everything that is ready around this time a year, I'll
be popping into that Greek yogurt at night. So got lots going off,
and hopefully the peas will start to swallop. So we need some more rain
to come. That's what we need. Yes, it is sunshine, but
we do need some mein and we need it to water them and make them
swell. I'm always one of these that I don't mind if it's boiling hot
sunny during the daytime, but just chuck it down at night. Please just
water my allotment. It needs it because there's only so much watering that you
can do down at the allotment. I don't know if you like me,
but I absolutely hate watering. It's not something that I enjoy doing whatsoever.
So hopefully we do get some main too, but I don't think it's likely.
It's forecast to stay warm pretty much all week. I think this is
going to be like a little heat wave in a sense, even though it's
like twenty one twenty two degrees. I call it a heat wave because it's
gonna be nice. On one, we're not used to this, whether are
we in England, So any sunshine is nice and hopefully it'll get things growing
on pretty well. And I should be getting around to picking my hat potatoes
soon. They should be starting to get ready. I planted them like on
Good Friday, so they should be ready. But I usually pick them when
they start to die back. When the plants start to die off and go
yellow, that's when I usually know that they're ready to harvest. And they're
still green and healthy. They've not had no flowers on them yet, so
I'm leaving them as they are and just keep watering them and keep them growing
because hopefully then i'll have lots and lots of potatoes in there, but it's
one of those old little magic tricks into it, like you don't know what's
in there until you find out. It's like a surprise. Whereas all other
vegetables what you grow and you can actually see what it looks like. With
potatoes, you've got no chance of knowing what they look like until you empty
them, so you don't want to empty them too early and not be ready.
So it's a case of waiting it out and seeing what we get from
our potato crop this year, and I'm hoping we've got a decent crop.
I do like homegrown potatoes are absolutely delicious to gorgeous, melting your mouth and
absolutely phenomenal. So I think that's everything that we've been up to down at
the allotment today. I've chopped back my aliums as well. They've died off
now, so we've chopped all them back, clear them out of the way,
and we've got some nice flowers growing down there at the moment. I've
got some fabulous futures that are coming out at the moment. They're absolutely gorgeous,
and obviously these are your first year plants, so they're not that big
plants at the moment, so hopefully next year they'll look even better and even
bigger, and they're displays will start to look absolutely beautiful. So that has
been our podcast episodes for today, a nice, short little episode for you
to enjoy. So if you've not followed this podcast, do give it a
follow, give it a subscribe. If you've not checked out my YouTube channel,
go and check it out. There's plenty of videos on there to watch.
Until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep guardening
with Ben. Everyone. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Gardening
with Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips and inspiration for your
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