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 a lotment. So sit back, grab a brew and enjoy
today's episode. Hey everyone, and welcome to Gardening with Ben, and we're
back for another brand new episode. Well today it's Sunday. It's euros A
final day. Who will be the winner? England or Spain? I don't
really know. I've not really watched much of it. I only watched the
penalties the other night. But yeah, good luck to everybody that's supporting the
football tonight. So have you managed to get much done on your allotments and
in the gardens this weekend? Well, we've got quite a bit done and
I'm quite impressed with how much we have got done. And if you've not
checked out our latest YouTube video, it's a tour of our allotment so that
you can actually see what my allotment is looking like. If you're watching this,
I mean listening, not watching it. If you're listening to this,
you can have a tour of my allotment. See what's growing, see what's
not growing, and see my beautiful lily as well, what's come out in
huge shape. It's looking absolutely gorgeous. All of the heads are looking like
they're going to be out pretty soon. But I fastened it up today so
that it doesn't bend over or get snapped or caught on as I'm walking past
it. So I'm looking for to getting that capture of when the lily is
fully open. And we had another one of us purple poppies open as well
today, which I'm absolutely happy with as I'll be able to save another seedhead
once that flower drops off. And yeah, hopefully we're going to be having
quite a few purple poppies next year in our allotment. Fingers crossed if it
all goes to plan. So yeah, I've been posting quite a few YouTube
videos at the moment, so that you can stay up today and sharing some
tips and advice on what I'm learning and what I'm doing down at the plot
today. And one of the things that I've done down at the allotment today
is I've taken some cuttings off my salvia. As my parents came down to
have a look around my allotment, my mum said, I need to snip
the tops off so that it bushes out more and it doesn't get too much
high on it. So that's what we've done. We've snipped all the tops
off and I've taken cuttings off the top of it. So I'm hoping fingers
cross they do take and we get a load more salvia growing for next year,
because the ones that I've got growing look absolutely beautiful. And if we
get more salvia growing, that'll be perfect. It'll be another plant what I've
got what will come back year after you. As I'm trying to get more
and more perennials on my allotment as obviously i'm doing my futures, I'm doing
my lavender. I've taken some rose cuttings. I'm hopefully going to be taking
some hydrangdeer cuttings as well. This week, so stay tuned for that video
as well. But yeah, I've taken some salvia cuttings. Now put together
a short little video of what I've done so that you can watch it on
my YouTube channel once it's up. And yeah, hopefully I think we took
about ten cuttings, so hopefully we'll get ten plants from it. And I'm
going to be taking some cuttings from my other Salvier's what are growing, but
you need to take them on the non flower shoots, so we're waiting for
them to die back a bit and we'll take some cuttings later on in the
season. It says around August to September online when it's best to take cuttings
of salvia, so we're going to hopefully be getting some cuttings from them pretty
soon. We've also been busy sorting out some of my tomatoes that were growing
outside, as I've not really looked after them yet and I've not really been
sorting them out. I've not been taking off the side shoots, which I
should have done, and I've snipped off all the bottom leaves so that some
of them were starting to die and stuff like that. So snipped off all
the bottom leaves so it can put the energy into growing the tomatoes. As
we're getting a lot of flowers on them, we're just not getting made to
marts growing on them at the moment. Obviously we've not had decent weather outside
for them to take set and to get growing pretty fast. Obviously we've had
all the rain to help make them grow, but we've just not had the
tomates forming yet. A few have got a few small tomates on them,
so we we've trimmed them all off, tidy them all up. We've also
put some string up so that we can fastening to them so that they're not
all bent over and so they're all looking nice and neat. Now we've weeded
around them so that they can get all the nutrition from the soil. I'm
hoping to get some more chicken pellets this week so that we can give them
a feed. And yeah, hopefully we're going to get some tomatoes. We're
not going to get as many as what we've grow inside a polytonal greenhouse because
obviously we've not had the heat outside for them to grow too well. But
hopefully we will get some decent ones growing. So we've been busy doing that
We've also been busy going around pruning the flowers off my roses so that you
can concentrate in growing some more flowers on them. As the flowers on a
lot of them had started to die off and started to fade now, so
we're putting slipping them all back so that we can get some more flowers growing
on them, because that's what you need to do. Keep going around dead
heading there. More times are dead, the more times the flowers will hopefully
bloom on it. We've also done that for the sweet peas as well.
I talked about it last week how I took some flowers off the sweet peas
for my mum. I literally took all the flowers off them. They weren't
no flowers offt on them, and today when I went down there were loads
more flowers on. So again, the more you keep taking the flowers off
the sweet peas, the more they'll keep going. If you leave the flowers
on in the good seed, they'll stop producing the flowers because they think that
it's got to the end of the season. So keep picking them flowers off.
So that's what I've done today, picked them all off and given them
to my mom so that she's got them. So yeah, we've been pretty
busy down there. Hopefully tomorrow's plan will be fingers well, fingers crossed.
It goes to plan is I'm going to start sawing all my seeds for July,
as I want to start a load more this month, like my peas.
I want to start some pansas. I can't even remember what I purchased,
to be honest. I went to the and I bought a massive bag
full of seeds, so I'm going to be putting together a video of that
as well, and I also do a podcast talking about what seeds I'm going
to be planting this month, so make sure you stay tuned for that episode
as well. But it's all coming together pretty well. It could have been
better if we'd had the hot weather this year, I think, and we'd
have got more produced growing and more corjets and stuff like that, because we
don't seem to be getting many corjacks growing, which is a shame, as
I wanted to try out my chipper to air fry my corjats. Hopefully we'll
get a few groin, but we'll keep an eye out for them. But
yeah, I've been looking at my blackberries as well. Today absolutely loads growing
on the bush. And that's what I mean, like some things have done
really well for the rain water we've had, but then some things aren't doing
so well, so it benefits some plants, but not all the plants.
And again, we've not had to water today because as soon as it got
to about dinner time, it started to rain again. So we've not had
to water my allotment for at least two weeks now, which is fantastic for
this time we're not having to water it, but obviously we do need the
sunshine. So I'm hoping to get down there at the allotment nice and early
tomorrow because I want to get all these seeds planted. Planting seeds takes forever.
I don't know if it's like you, it takes you a long time,
but it takes me forever to plant the seeds, especially peas, because
I start all my peas off in trays and I have to place all the
peas in lines so that they're all nice and neat so that when they grow
through, they're all looking fantastic when they grow. So yeah, we're going
to be starting as peas off tomorrow. These are later croping peas they call
Kelvin Wonder and I purchased them from the range from the Wilco's branded ones,
so fingers crossed they go well as obviously that Early Onwards grew fantastic. We've
still got another set of those in what we planted last month, but it's
too late to be planting the Early Onwards ones now, so it's a Kelvin
Wonder ones that we're trying this month. And I bought I think about six
packets altogether because I wanted to replace the ones that I'd pulled out, well
not pulled out, I'd snipped mo all off this week, so I wanted
to replace all them so that I've got to lead more peace because we've done
fantastic. I can't complain all about my piece. This year, best year
ever for my peace, and even my neighbor was looking at him and he
was overwhelmed with how many had picked off this year. So hopefully it's going
to be a very productive day tomorrow and we can get all the seeds planted.
We just need to go out and get some compost, which is the
most expensive part buying all the compost. But we're going to get the compost
and we'll get all the seeds, hopefully so on tomorrow. So in tomorrow's
podcast you'll be able to find out everything what I've got up to. We've
saw in my seeds, and I'll be sharing with you all the seeds which
I have planted and telling you which ones can still be planted at this time
of year. And i'd just go off it off for seed packets a lot
of the time, as obviously I do my podcast talking about what seeds you
can still plan. But when I went in the range, I just looked
on the seed packets checked which ones you can still sow in July. So
I've checked them all and those are the ones that I'm going to try.
Whether they grow or not, that is the question. It all depends on
this English weather that we've got at the moment. You never know, we
might have an Indian summer. It might be absolutely roasting in September. One
can only dream a bit like the score tonight, we can only dream that
we win the Euros tonight. So I hope we've all had a fantastic weekend.
Again, the podcast tomorrow will be at a later time because I'll be
talking about what I've got up to down at the plot. So I hope
you have a great rest of your Sunday. Everybody enjoy it tonight, make
sure you have a couple of beers and share the England team on. Until
next time, remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with
Bet. Everyone. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Gardening with
Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips and instgiration for your own
gardening and a lotment journey. If you have 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 gardening enthusiasts. Your support helps us grow
this community and continue bringing you great content. You can also follow us on
social media on every platform for all Gardening with Ben for daily gardening tips and
to days happy gardening. And until next time, remember, keep smiling,
keep shining, and keep gardening with them.