Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: We will share all the tips and add advice.
Speaker 1: 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. It's Saturday. The weekend
is finally here.
Speaker 2: Hip it.
Speaker 1: Hooray, you may say, I certainly say it, and so
do you, because that means will be back down at
the Allotment today. And yeah, I'm glad that we managed
to do a full week's episodes.
Speaker 2: Are you impressed? I've managed to do.
Speaker 1: All the recordings and get them all out to you
every single day, so I'm hoping that you are all
enjoying that they're back again. And I know I've been
getting a lot of streams from the stats that I see,
which is absolutely fantastic. So yeah, thank you for everybody
that's sticking around and come back to listen to them
all again. Hopefully, Like I say, now, they're going to
be back full time every single day for you to
listen to. And if I miss a day, make sure
you message me and say, Ben, where's the podcasts you
promised us every single day you're telling fabs. But yes,
hopefully the podcasts are now back full time and you'll
have seen if you don't follow me on YouTube already,
the videos are coming out thick and fast for you
to watch as well on YouTube and again on Facebook
and Instagram. I share them to everywhere now so you
can find my videos popping up everywhere and hopefully I
am doing so if you do see them, make sure
you give them a like and a follow and leave
a comment as well if you see videos, because it
does help push them out if you give a comment
on it as well, so you're doing your little.
Speaker 2: Bit for me.
Speaker 1: So what are we doing this weekend down at the Allotment? Well,
fingers crossed the weather will be decent, as I've not
been down to the allotment all week as obviously I've
been at work and it's too dark when I finish
work now, so with not being down for a week,
so obviously the first job will be when I get
to the allotment will be to fill the bird feeders
back up, and fingers crossed they have been eating them all,
I'm guessing they will have done. Whether mister Squirrel's been
back eating them all, we'll have to see. But I've
got my wildlife camera up as well now, so hopefully
we'll have got some picktures of what's been eating them
and hopefully some footage for you to see, and hopefully
I'll be able to share it online for you all
to see of what I've done. So hopefully, like I said,
we'll get as bird feeders filled back up and the
birds will love me for that. We've got so many
bird feeders I could literally buy a load more as
well if I wanted to, but I'm staying away from
them at the moment. I've got some mighty as well.
I want to put them in the future, but we'll
see about that. And yeah, I've also got myven bird
box to get up. We've got that to get up,
so I might try and get that up this weekend
so that the rens can start nesting in it and
enjoying it. And what else will we be doing, Well,
we'll be checking up on all my produce, what I've
got growing. Obviously, I've got my onions in. Hopefully they'll
have started sprouting by now. They've been in a few weeks.
I saw one just starting to sprout. But I want
them all to start sprouting now. I want them all
to start popping through and showing the heads and faces
to me and saying, hello, we growing. I don't want
a doff set of onion sets if you get me.
So hopefully they've started growing, and hopefully a lot more
of my garlic will have started sprouting as well now,
and hopefully we'll be well under the way of growing them. Now.
My broad beans, what I started in my shed. I
don't know if I told you this, but mister ratti
or squirrel had been in there eating them all and
eating all the tops off them. Now I've grown in
seed trays to stop them from being eaten when I'm
growing them outside. But something's got in my shed and
eating them all while they're in the seed trays. So
it's not a win win situation. So yeah, we might
have to get some more broad beans to start and
try again over winter time. But we'll have a look
around and see what we can get and whether it's
worth off doing them or not. But I'd like to
I'd like to show you how well they are easy
to grow.
Speaker 2: Through the winter period.
Speaker 1: So I might have to order some more seeds and
get them growing, but we'll have a look around and
see what we can do. We might be able to
get these ones back alive. We'll see we might have
to just cover them over and they might start sprouting
from where they beat it, eating them off and start
them going again. We've also got our sweet peas to
sort out this weekend. I've been saying it every time
when I've been doing my tour video that they need
trimming back ready for getting them to bush out over
the next year. I start them off nice and early
so that they get nice and strong and they well
developed ready for planting out after the frost has gone
next year. So we need to trim all them back
and get them all tidied up and done. And again
I'm going to do a video about that about getting
them all sorted ready for next year, so make sure
you stay tuned for that video coming out on YouTube.
And I think this weekend it's going to be a
weekend of concentrating on sorting out all my paths on
my plot. As over the last few weeks I've been
sorting out on my beds. I've dug over all my beds. Now,
all my beds are cleared and weed free. They've got
roots and stuff in them, but hopefully we'll just keep
turning them over over winter period and keeping them weed
free that way, and pulling out any roots that we
find as we're digging them over and keeping them hoed
down as obviously, it only takes five minutes to hold
a bed down, and it can take half an hour
to weed a bed, So if you home every week,
then you'll keep on top of the weeds in theory,
so I might go around holing them all. I've also
got this wolf Garden tool which is absolutely brilliant. It's
like a little push along motivator to what clips into
the hand rail handle and you just push it and
it's brilliant and it's got a hole on the other
side it as well. It seems to pull out all
the roots as well. Which is absolutely fantastic. It's expensive,
it's like forty odd pounds for this head, but it's
well worth its money in gold, and it saves you
so much backache and muscle pain with pushing a whole around.
So I might do that and I'll film a video
of that for you as well for you to see.
Like I said, I'm trying to film as many videos
as possible because obviously I do these podcasts, but then
it's sometimes good to see visual stuff for you to
be able to see what I'm actually doing down there.
And I've enjoying doing these videos down at the allotment
now as I'm starting to do weekend blogs showing you
what I get up to over the full weekend. Then
I'll give you a tour of the plot at the
end of the weekend to show you what it's looking like,
what's growing, what's not growing. And it gives me a
chance as well when I do the weekly tour to
see what jobs I need to do. As I go
around like saying, oh, I'm going to do with this,
I'm going to do that, but I never get around
to do it. And one of the other jobs what
I keep saying that I need to do is I
need to dig my geraniums out and put them in
pots and put them in my shed for over winter,
because we're going to try and keep hold of them. Now,
if you leave your geraniums outside, the frost will kill
them and then you'll have to get new plants next year.
Whereas if you dig them up, put them in a
polytunnel or a greenhouse, or if you've got a window
sill inside. But I don't want to fetch them indoors
into my flat. But if you've got somewhere warmish, put
them up and look them at, look after them, pull
them back and trim them and they will grow back
next year and flower next year. Save you a lot
of money. So if you've got geraniums, dig them up
and move them indoors and see if if you can
keep them ready for next year. Save yourself some money.
As geraniums do cost quite a lot of money. And
I didn't realize how easy it is to grow them
from seed. I did that one of the years. I
grew a load of geraniums from seed, and it is
really easy to do. So we might have to do
that again this year. Trial some geraniums from seed and
show you how easy it is to grow them. I'm
going to do another video as well on how easy
it is to grow rhubarb from seed, as that is
really easy as well. But obviously we don't start them
growing until March time. So hopefully, like I said, this weekend,
I'm going to be clearing all my paths, tidying them
all up and straightening them up, and then next week
I'm possibly going to be looking at fixing all my
beds which have rotted or falling apart, and it'll be
a case of screwing them all back together again and
tidying them all up, and then we'll see what the
weather's like, because I want to repaint them all. I
want to spruce them all up, but if it's too damp,
the paint won't stick to the wood very well and
it might be best off doing it in January time.
So we'll have to wait and see what the weather's like,
because if I paint them all now and we have
a really bad winter like rains, snow and stuff, it'll
just wash it all off again. However much garden painting
it says that last year, it doesn't. It does wash
off eventually and it certainly does with my beds because
I seem to paint them every couple of years. So
we've got a multi paint and spruce up. And then
I've got a herb area at the top of my
plot as well, which I.
Speaker 2: Don't really use much.
Speaker 1: It's just there to fill a space in to use
an area up on my plots. It's very shaded where
that part of the plot is and I can't really
grow that much in there, so I've like made some
little brick beds. When I was tidying all the plot up,
I found loads and loads of bricks on my atment,
absolutely loads, and I'm made like brick little beds and.
Speaker 2: I put some herbs in each of those.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be tidying all that up as
well this weekend.
Speaker 2: That is the plan, to get all that area cleared, and.
Speaker 1: Then it'll be case just like sorting out all the
leaves that have dropped from all the trees and stuff
like that, putting them in my composting bin, tidying up.
It's just general tidiness at this time of year, and
I'm trying to get as much done possible on my
plot now ready for next year. As like I say,
I only get two days off a week now. Before
I used to work four on four off and have
four days off, so I used to get a lot done.
So it's a case of cramming it all into two
days and getting it all done. And who knows what
winter we're going to have. We could have an absolutely
terrible winter where we can't get out in the garden
for months and not be able to do anything. So
the more stuff that I can get done now in
preparation for next year, it will save me the whole
time in the world. And once I've could have done
all my allotment and if it's still decent, well even
if it's not decent, I'm going to be in my
shed getting all that ready for next year and tidying up.
Like I said in one of my other podcasts, last year,
I spent a lot of the winter rebuilding all my
shed as it had all collapsed. It rotted, roof pieces
were missing off it, so it needed a lot of
time and effort in getting it all back up to scratch.
And this year I'm going to renovate the inside of
it and repaint. I'm going to paint it all, get
some nice shelving down, make it presentable because I want
to start filming in there and sharing tips and advice
from in there, so hopefully we'll have a nice area
to filming as well in the shed, so I'm looking
forward to that as well. So yeah, I hope you've
enjoyed these podcasts. If you are new to this podcast,
give it a follow, give it a like, leave a comment.
If you can leave a comment, leave a review, because
again you can leave reviews on podcasts now and yeah
hit the belt so that you get notified when you
podcasts come up. Tomorrow's episode, we'll be talking about everything
that we have done at the allotment. Whether we've managed
to do some of these tasks or not. What we've
talked about in this episode, you will have to find out.
You'll have to wait of find out and see if
we manage to get them done. But thank you for
all your support. As always, it means the world to
me and I do love doing these podcasts and talking
to everybody. So until next time, everyone, remember keep smiling,
keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone, thank you
for joining me on this.
Speaker 2: Episode of Gardening with Ben.
Speaker 1: I hope you have found some useful tips and integration
for your own gardening and a lotment journey. If you've
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Ben for daily gardening tips and to days happy gardening.
And until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and
keep gardening with them,