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 allotment. So sit back, grab a brew and enjoy
today's episode. Hey everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for another
brand new episode of the week. I hope you're all enjoying these episodes as
we're talking about quite a few different topics and subjects this week where I'm not
talking about my allotment for once. Well, i do talk about my allotment
as I'm talking about things that are happening, but it's not telling you what
I've been getting up to at the allotment because obviously I'm working this week.
So I've been talking about different topics of what I've been getting up to and
different questions that people like to ask and stuff. I've been trying it out
on my instagramming on my Facebook, and everybody's getting involved and I'm loving all
the replies that I've been getting. And the one that I posted last night
is what's the best gardening tip that you have ever been told? Now?
A lot of people do love to share the tips with one another, just
like me. I like to share my tips on what I learn from other
people or what I've learned from myself. So I hope that you get some
good tips from my podcast myself, and I hope that encourages you to try
a little bits as well. As gardening is always a learning curve. It
might work for one person and it might not work for you. That's the
way that gardening goes. Not everybody can do things perfectly. I wish we
could, and then we'd have no trouble and bountiless harvests all the time,
and it'd be perfect and easy. We wouldn't need these podcasts or these gardening
channels if we grew things nice and easy, but we do have as issues
now. The best gardening tip that I have ever been told was actually from
my dad, and we have a lot of trouble with squivels on our allotment
and mice and rats and things like that, as you do on anywhere.
And one time I'd planted all my sweet corn all looked absolutely delicious, it
were growing well, it were ready to pick, and I thought, I'm
going to pick that tomorrow. I'm going to come down pick it all tomorrow
and take it all home with me. Well I came down and every sweet
corn had been attacked, eaten, it had all been decimated, and I'd
lost a lot. I felt like crying because sweet corn is one of my
favorite things to grow on my allotment, which I've talked about before, and
it were all gone. And one year when I came down to the allotment,
I saw a squirrel running around with a corn in its mouth. It
was carrying it a full sized corner. For what it's a squirrel that's pinching
them. And my dad came up with an ingenious idea of using his plastic
bottles what he saves and cutting the bottom off and shoving it on top of
the corn. Obviously, once it's pollinated, once it's growing and it's getting
towards the ripening stage, because they won't eat them until they start ripening.
They like them when in the nice and ripe. So I put one of
those bottles on top of every sweet corn last year, and not one of
them got touched because they couldn't get to them. They couldn't get inside of
the bottles. Now the bottles just fit on nicely on top, and yeah,
all my sweet corn were protected and I had a fantastic crop last year.
Other people's got decimated, got eaten. I did tell him about the
tip, but whether they chose to try it or not that was the question.
But yeah, all my sweet corn survived and so did my dad's and
we had some fantastic sweet corns. So if you have issues with squirrels,
rats and mice down at your allotment, I give you that tip to use
from my dad to you all to have a nice growing sweet corn this year
on the allotment. And he's been saving all the bottles for me for this
year. Obviously, I've saved all the ones from last year, but I
am growing a lot more sweet corn this year, so I do a lot
more bottles as I do want to protect them all and hopefully have some decent
sweet corn. So yeah, there's loads of little tips out there for you
to try, and if you don't try all these tips, you will never
know if they actually work or not. But I'm hoping that I do get
some decent sweet corn down at the allotment this year, and hopefully all this
rain will help it grow, as it will boil it hot. On Monday,
absolutely gorgeous. I was some bathing down at the allotment. I couldn't
believe how hot it was, and then yesterday it absolutely chucked it down.
I was watching the weather report today and it said that we've had one hundred
and ten percent of our duelyigh web rain this year, so we've had double
the amount of what we should have had already. And wow, we certainly
got it yesterday. But I don't mind. I was working yesterday, so
it can rain all the time. When I'm working, I don't care.
Then I don't have to go down the water. I just have to worry
about all them slugs going around eating everything. But that's the only issue when
it starts raining. So hopefully when I go back to the allotment on Saturday,
it will have shot up again and more than likely all the weeds will
have grown back as well. If anybody's got any good tips for getting rid
of weeds, let me know. I think only the best thing is using
you getting down there and getting them out yourself. I don't think anyone's come
up with a genius idea for weeds yet, unfortunately, but yeah, we've
got stuff like that. Another thing what I'm starting to do is I'm starting
to share daily tips on my podcast and on my Instagram and Facebook, and
I hope that you're all enjoying these little tips and advice. And one of
the tips that I shared this morning on my Instagram was to save your flower
heads from your flowers. I know I don't tend to do this, and
I need to really start doing it as obviously it'll save money, it'll save
time and save going out and buying the seeds. And this year was I
grew some poppies from seed. Now, these are ornamental poppies. They're not
the red ones that you see like in the street growing out in the curbside,
or the California the Icelandic ones that are yellow and original and things like
that. These are actual ornamental ones where they look really isolated. Purples and
stuff like that. So we've got there growing on the a lotment. Now
one of them has just lost all its petals. I've still got quite a
few to come out, but one of them has just lost its petals,
and I can see the seed head there ready, So once it's died off
and it's ready for drying out, then I'll chop it off and take all
the seeds and save them all for next year. I could obviously scatter them
this year the ground and let them grow ready for next year, but I
think I'm going to save all the seeds and grow them in my shed again
like I did this year, and do it that way, as I want
to grow them and put them where I want them rather than just sprinkle them
everywhere. If you get me and between now and next year, I'll probably
dig them over and pull them out, thinking that the weeds grow, so
I want to grow them in my greenhouse and hopefully get them started. But
the same girls for like sweet peas. If you're growing sweet peas, obviously
the more you pick the sweet peas, the more the will continue growing and
getting more flowers on, whereas if you don't pick them, they go to
seed, So it's worth off just letting a few plants go to seed and
getting the sweet peas seeds off it, because it's a lot lot cheaper than
buying the seeds from the shop sweet Peace seeds that cost a fortune, and
you hardly get any seeds in the packet as well. For some bazar reason.
You'd think it quite cheap for sweet Peace seeds with how easy the seed
pods form on those sweet peas, but no, they're quite expensive. So
if you're wanting to grow sweet Peace next year, save some seeds for next
year, same girls for like runner beans for your peas. If you're wanting
to save money, you use the seeds that you've grown this year. And
I need to start doing that mark. And obviously, like I mentioned the
other day about taking cuttings off plants as well, Like even if you go
to visit a friend's house or something and you think, oh, that's a
nice plant, just ask them say I take a few cuttings off it.
They're probably not mind, and then start them off and then you can plant
them in your garden and you've got a plant for free. And that's the
best way to do it. And obviously you can't do it in certain places.
You can't go around your look up botanical gardens and take cuttings off some
of the nice roses and stuff like that. You can't do that. But
if you're at a friend's house or visiting someone, just ask them if you
can take a little cutting off and get some plants growing. And that's certainly
what I'm doing obviously with my futures, with my verses, I've done my
verses as well, and I've also done some lavender. I said, I
keep you up to date with how well they're getting on. Well, the
plants the cuttings haven't died yet, so that's a good side. They're all
still alive here in my flat. That's why I wanted to bring them all
home to my flat and start them all off in like pots of water so
that I can actually keep an eye and rather than leave them all at the
allotment in actual soil compost and keeping them watered down there. That's the issue
obviously. When I'm working for four days, I don't go down to the
allotment. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we are going to get absolutely loads
of lavender plants and future plants for next year. So I will keep you
updated on the progress of that, and fingers crossed. In a couple of
weeks, I might be planting them all up into plant pots if they've all
got roots on them, So we'll have to wait and see about. It's
the first time that I've done like all the cuttings myself and got I'm all
growing, so hopefully we can actually succeed and do this because I'll be happy
with myself. I still need to look about how to take cuttings for hydrangers.
That's one of the jobs that I do need to do. So hopefully
we'll have some hydranger plants growing as well as they're gorgeous as well, or
mine that have grown on the allotment of come out pink, which means that
it's an acid soil rather than an alkali because if they're blue, that means
it's alkali soil. So the hydrangers tend to change color to what the soil
actually is. So you could go to US Garden Center and buy a blue
hydranger thinking, oh, I've got a nice blue hydroendria, but then it
might turn pink because the soil is as acidic rather than alkali. So yeah,
that has been our little podcast for tonight, so please do go over
to my st post or my Facebook post comment what the best tips are that
you have learned in your garden in time, and I'll hopefully talk about some
of them on my podcast tomorrow. As I'm wanting to get more interactive with
my podcast, I'm wanting to hear what people are saying and get back to
you on the podcast and talk about it yourself as well. So I hope
you've enjoyed this podcast. I've recorded this on Wednesday evening, so I don't
know if England have won yet or not, or if you're through to the
finals, but we'll see so by the time you listen to this, we'll
know the fate of England tomorrow. So yeah, I hope you're enjoying the
podcast. Remember to do give it a like, please give me a follow
if you're not following me, and remember to share it out as well on
your Instagram store as well. That would really help. All you have to
do is click the share and click on stories and it'll post it to your
Instagram Stories. The more people get listening into this podcast, the better,
So thanks for listening. Until next time, 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 inspiration for
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