Speaker 1: Welcome to Gardening with Ben. You'll go to podcast for
all things green and growing in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Whether you're a.
Speaker 1: Seasoned gardener, a budding enthusiast, or just curious about cultivating
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Join me Ben as we explore practical tips, inspiring stories,
and the latest trends in gardening to make your outdoor
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and read the rewards. So grab your gloves, roll up
your sleeves, and let's get started on this year's gardening journey.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for
a midweek episode. It's Wednesday, or any time is certainly flying.
Hopefully we will be at the weekend pretty soon, and
hopefully we won't have any snow this weekend. Hopefully we
could actually get out in them guard and get out
in them allotments, get some fresh air and enjoy being
back in the garden or allotment again. I I managed
to get down this Sunday only for a bit, just
to feed the birds. But yeah, that's all I've been
up to down at the allotment this week.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, as.
Speaker 1: We're talking about all about sowing your onion seeds rather
than sets, and the benefits of them and whether they're
any better than sets or not. So if you've not
checked out that episode, go and listen to yesterday's episode
and catch up on that one. We're certainly trying different
types of podcasts now we're going to be talking about
different things to sew, when to sew them, and talk
about growing them as well. So I hope you're enjoying
these podcasts. Well, today we're going to talk about another
seed that you can sew now, which is perfect for
sewing down really as onions obviously need that headstart. And
the other one is peppers and chillis now usually on
the seed packet you'll see like so around February and
March time, but that's usually where it's a bit hotter.
So I grew peppers last year and I sewed them
in March, and it was too late. They were only
just fruiting around September time and they didn't come to much.
They didn't get big enough to be able to harvest
them or do anything with them. So starting them off
now get some growing faster and hopefully fruiting a lot
quicker than they did before. So hopefully we'll get some
good results this year. And there's many varieties of peppers
out there. You'll obviously get your big supermarket type peppers,
your red, yellow, orange, green peppers, and you'll also get
like smaller varieties of pepper capsicum I think they're called.
And obviously it'll get chilies as well. Chilies are pretty
easier to grow because obviously you don't need to grow
them to the big size of peppers. They just grow
to the little size of chilies, and usually you get
a lot more growing on the plant at the same time.
So we're going to be trying to grow a variety
of both of them this year. As I've not done
chilis for quite a long time, possibly about ten years,
so we're going to give chilies to try again this
year and try some not too spicy. I'm not a
spicy person, but I'm going to try some chilies see
if we can get some growing. And like I said,
now that I'm in a new flat, I can actually
cook in it, and yeah, I can actually give experiment
in trying to grow different stuff. So I'm going to
try growing some chilies again this year, and we're going
to grow some peppers. We're going to grow the standard
type variety, possibly the smaller varieties that are caps come ones.
We'll see how we get on with both of them.
So if you're sewing them now, obviously, one way of
doing it is actually going to the supermarket and buying
the variety that you want to grow, as it's full
of seeds, and it'll be cheaper than buy the packet
of seeds. Trust By, you'll get absolutely hundreds of seeds
inside of pepper. So sometimes it's cheaper to buy the
actual produce and get the seeds out of them and
have a look, scrape them out and dry them out,
and once you dried out then you can sew them.
Speaker 2: And they're pretty easy to sew. Usually I'll put a.
Speaker 1: Few in a plant pot and pick out a few,
some of the strongest ones and then pot them on
and et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is we're
growing peppers, obviously, we've got to remember they are a
hot country food, as they're usually growing in like Spain, Brazil,
places like that, so it needs hot weather, so you
can't necessarily like grow them outside. If you get a
lot of hot weather, maybe, but you need to think
about growing them either in a polytunnel, in a greenhouse,
in one of these makeshift greenhouses what are made out
of plastic, but obviously make sure that the greenhouse is
fastened down well because they do blow aways, so or
in a conservatory. But if you're growing them in a conservatory,
you've got to remember that they won't get pollinated because obviously.
Speaker 2: We won't be getting bees in there.
Speaker 1: You won't be getting flies in there hopefully, so they
won't get getting pollinated as easies. So you may have
to help them with the pollination by getting a paintbrush
and pollinating each flower and stuff like that. So if
you wanted to grow them indoors, possibly pollinate them yourself.
But if you've got an i place like a greenhouse
or polyton or to grow them in, you could get
some great crops from them. And obviously we've got our
polyton also. I want to make use of the polyton
a bit more this year and hopefully grow some peppers
in there and hopefully grow some watermelons and other melons
in there as well. We're going to give them a
little try this year. So, like I said, if you
want to grow some peppers, go to the supermarket by
the pepper that you want to grow to scrape out
all the seeds, dry them out, put them on like
some kitchen roll or something. Let them dry for a week,
and then sew them into some soil, and obviously, like
I said, a few in each pot, cover them back
with soil, water them, and then cover them over with clingfilm.
Speaker 2: As that will work as a greenhouse. It will keep
them moist, it will keep them warmer.
Speaker 1: Peppers need about twenty five degrees to germinate, so there's
no points to come in a greenhouse hoping that they'll germinate.
Because that's why I started them off in March previously
because I didn't have a window sell in my own flat.
But now I've got a window sill at this one,
so I brought them home. It's obviously nice and warm
and toasted my flat. So they need about twenty five
degrees to germinate. So once you got them to germinate,
grow them to a decent size, then you can put
them into individual pots, grow them on and then possibly
around March time April time, take them back down to
your altman or into the greenhouse it won't have to
be heated, and continue growing them. And then obviously when
it gets to like June time, you can actually grow
them in the polytunnels and stuff like that. They won't
need to be heated because they'll have plenty of warm temperature.
Speaker 2: Fingers crossed. We didn't get much of a summer last year.
Hopefully we'll get a good one this year.
Speaker 1: Fingers cross we certainly need one, as we certainly didn't
have a very good summer or possibly one of the
reasons why the peppers didn't do very well at all.
So they're pretty easy to grow, and like I said,
if you're wanting to get good produce from them, and
if you are struggling with bees and insects around, just
pollinating yourself even if there is pollinators around, and you
possibly may get more produced by doing that. And obviously
the more you keep picking them, the more they'll keep producing,
especially with chilis. Keep picking them off and you'll get
more and more growing on them throughout the season and
they could be fruiting up till October if we have
decent weather, so they're very they'll produce absolutely loads chilies.
So it's well worth growing a couple of plants. By
saying a couple is don't grow growing like six because
you'll be inundated. To trust me, when I first grew
on previously, I had about eight plants because I didn't
know what we were doing and getting bags full of
bags full off every single week, and wow, I couldn't
get rid of them. But yeah, we'll be growing a
few plants down there. Knowing me, I'll still plant all
the seeds and probably get hundreds of plants growing at
the same time. But yeah, we're going to give them
a try this year, growing some peppers and some chilies. So,
like I said in yesterday's episode, obviously you can start
onions now, and you can start peppers now. If you
are starting them off on a window, so make sure
they don't get legged, make sure they get enough sunlight,
keep turning.
Speaker 2: Them around, and keep them water.
Speaker 1: Obviously, you don't want to be growing somewhere where they'll
stretch and grow legging. They'll not be any good and
then you have to start more seeds off and start
from scratch again. So yeah, if you want to try something,
get some peppers and chilies growing on a window sill
and let me know how you get on. Let me
know if you're going to be growing some peppers and
chilies in your garden this year. Like I said, pretty
easy to grow, and peppers aren't that easy, but the
chilies usually are easy. So I hope you've enjoyed today's episode.
As always, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep guarding
with everyone. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of
Gardening with Ben. I hope you've enjoyed our chat and
picked up some tips to help your garden and allotment pride.
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