Welcome to Gardening with Ben, the podcast where we dig into the soil of
our gardens and the depths of our green funds. I'm your host, Ben,
here to guide you through the joints of gardening, from sowing seeds to
reaping bountiful harvests. Each episode will explore tips, tricks, and tales from
the garden and allotment, sharing insights from ourself and stories from our own back
garden adventures. Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just getting your hands dirty for
the first time, there's something here for everyone, So grab your brew and
gardening gloves and let's get growing with Gardening with Ben. Hello, and welcome
back to Gardening with Ben for another podcast of this week. Well today it
is Friday, the weekend is nearly here. And yeah, hopefully the snow
has gone by the time this podcast clout. As we were talking in yesterday's
podcast, the snow has been falling. But I've recorded this straight after the
other one. I don't know if the snow's gone yet, but I'll be
in bed because I've been on night shift, so I'm recording these podcasts in
advance. Oh yeah, just keep you up to day and keep you with
something to listen to, because now that I've got back into doing them again,
I'm getting the messages from people saying, oh, I love listening to
your podcast, thank you for bringing them back, and everything like that.
So I do appreciate that people have been giving me good feedback on them.
And if you've not left a review or rating on these podcasts, please do.
It should be either on Spotify or Apple. You should be able to
leave a review. And the more people that do it, the more people
that will listen to them. So it does help me get out there.
But thank you for everyone that does support me so far. So yeah,
what are we up to today? Well, we're going to be talking about
we're gonna have our weekly catch up each week. I like to do a
weekly catch up of what we've been getting up to on the allotment recently.
So what have we been up to on our allotment this week? Well,
this week it's been absolutely really busy down on my plot because I've been trying
to get I'm trying to work as hard as I can and get things ready
for the springtime because, like I said, the last year in my allotment,
it was absolutely rubbish. It was the worst year of my allotment life
down out of the sixteen seventeen years that I've had my allotment, it was
the worst time. But this one's going to be the best one. I
can feel it. So I'm trying to put as much effort into getting my
allotment looking absolutely fantastic for this year, for the gardening year. And it's
taking a lot of work because I've not really improved my plot a lot over
the last five years. Each I like to do a little improvement to my
plot, make it look a bit better, spend a bit of money on
it, and improve it. But I've had so many things to improve this
year, I've ended up improving them all in one year. Like obviously,
I've rebuilt all my shed and got all that rebuilt and refixed and stripped out
all the inside of it, put on new shelving and really gutted it out
and started from scratch with the shed. Then my polytunnel got ripped from the
wind and everything like that, so I had to fix all that and seal
it all. Then I put wood chip around all my rhubarb but my fruit
trees, so that all looks nice now. And yeah, it's looking really
fantastic, and so I'm moving on to my main part of the plot,
and that's why I do all my growing and all my vegetables, and yeah,
I'm trying to improve all that. And a lot of the beds hered
deteriorated over the last few years. It'd rotted, so they'd all come apart,
and all the posts what they were fastening to and all rotted. So
I've had to repair all them. So I've rebuilt all my beds, and
it's about like I've got about sixteen beds in total, so I've rebuilt all
them. And some of the paths were wider and thinner each other, and
I've made them all wide enough to fit paving slabs down them, so that
if I ever get any paving slabs, I can just shove the paving slabs
straight into the path if you get me, and make it proper out of
paving slabs. Each year, I keep finding some of our paving slabs,
and people keep giving back, so we keep filling those paths in. Eventually
it'll all be paved. I'm not paying for the paving slabs because it's so
expensive now to buy it's unbelievable so any of that I get for free,
I will use on my plot. And yeah, all my paths are all
looking good. And I've used black membrane in the past for the past to
keep the weeds out and stuff, but it it starts to get a bit
ripped in, a bit ragged and horrible after a while. So what I've
done is I've wood chipped all the paths, which obviously will rock down after
a couple of years, but it's all wood chipped and it'll keep all the
weeds down and it's easy to walk on. It's not slippery like mud like
the other paths were. So they're all looking fantastic now. And the figure
is with wood chip. Like I say, it'll rot down, but I
can just keep adding some to it every single year. Just keep adding to
the wood chip paths and it'll keep the weeds down and it'll keep it looking
nice and posh. And wow, it does look posh at the moment.
It looks a lot better than it did. If you've not followed me on
Instagram, go and have a look on Instagram and you'll be able to have
a look at my plot. My profile is gardening with Ben, So make
sure you go and have a look at that. We've got eleven thousand followers
now and we've got the Bluetick verifications, so you know it is actually me.
So we've got that all sort of. So all the paths are done.
The next job will be to get all the beds painted. I like
to paint them a nice green every single year. You don't have to paint
your beds, but I like to do it to try and stop the beds
from rotten as fast, and it makes it look a lot nicer. Once
we're all painted, it makes it all look fresh for the year ahead.
So we'll be going out and getting some wood paint soon. I'm not going
to probably paint them until March time when the weather's got a bit better,
because it does wash off after a while. It doesn't stay really green that
long, so we need the weather to improve before I start painting on them.
And I actually really hate painting, so it's not a job that I'm
looking forward to doing. But we'll get them done. We'll get them done
eventually. So we've got all the beds to paint. We've also got all
the fencing to fix down the side of the plot. But that's my last
job, as it's not as important as getting all my plot ready, but
we'll somed be moving on to that fencing. Because all my plot is nearly
finished. It's all nearly ready for this year. I can't believe how much
I've done. And then obviously I need to dig over all my beds,
get them are prepared, and we've add some food into the beds to make
them more richer and more better. But yeah, so hopefully we're going to
have some great looking vegetables growing in there this year and some flowers. Obviously
I'll be having a lot of sunflowers on my plot this year, so stay
tuned for that. So we've done all that. I've also fixed a couple
of beds near my entrance where some of my speaking pulps workers. Again they'd
rotted. But I've got that much wood on my plot it's unbelievable. So
I'm making use of all the wood that I've got rather than burn it or
throw it away, just to improve it all and make it look better.
So I've been doing all that. What else have we been doing down at
the plot? I don't think I've really been doing a lot more because we've
been getting this main plot area already for this year. Hopefully next week the
weather will be better and the snow will have gone and it will be a
bit warmer again. Hopefully. Mind you, we've not had bad days over
the last few days. It has been pretty warm, so hopefully it'll be
nice next week. And yeah, I want to finish off doing my main
plot area getting the best. I've got a couple more beds to build,
some more rubbish to clear. I've cleared that much rubbish off my plot this
year. I don't know where I've accumulated it all from clear, I must
have got rid of about thirty big bag falls of rubbish off my plot.
It's just amazing how much you cubulate and how much crap you get down there.
Trust Me, if you've got a lotment you will know the same feeling.
But we've got rid of absolutely loads of rubbish, so we've got all
that sort and once I finished my plot, hopefully fingers Crossed will be on
to sorting out the fencing afterwards, so we might get onto that next week.
We'll see, We'll see. We've only got three days off next week
because when I swap from nights to day, so I only get three days
off, so I'll probably be concentrating just on my plot area, and then
I might do my fencing the week after, so I'll have to stay tuned
for that. The fencing work's going to be a lot of hard work compared
to doing the plot as I'm never good at putting fencing up. I put
fencing up a week after it'll I fell down again. I'm no good at
they trust me, I like doing it. I'm just rubbish it it.
I like giving things a go. I'm just really rubbish at the IY.
Maybe I need to go on a little course on how to do they,
So if anyone wants to send beyond one, please feel free to. But
yeah, also thank you for everybody that looked at my Amazon wish list as
well. If you've not checked it out. It is in the description of
a few little extra bits that I'm hoping to get from my plot. I've
been getting a bit of trouble down there with kids going in my shed and
stuff like that, so I've put a couple of those wildlife cameras in there,
just hopefully to catch them and send the footage to the police. But
yeah, hopefully we'll get some of the stuff on the wish list. I
know quite a few people have said, how can we help towards your allotment,
So I've set up that wish list and pop some things in it.
But yeah, hopefully we'll have another podcast tomorrow. Obviously, tomorrow's Saturday,
so hopefully you can get lots and lots of stuff done down at the allotment
and hopefully it's decent weather for it. So have a great day everyone.
Remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone,
And that wraps up another episode of Gardening with Ben. Thank you for
joining me in this journey. Remember, every seed plan hunted is a step
towards a greener world, and every day is a chance to grow something beautiful.
Keep nurturing your gardens and your souls. Until next time, I'm Gardening
with Ben, reminding you to let your garden be your sanctuary. Happy gardening,
and see you in the next episode. Remember, keep smiling, keep
shining, and keep Gardening with Ben.