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.
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. Well. I hope that you're
excited for the weekend, because it's nearly here, it's Thursday already.
We're certainly excited for our weekend. And yeah, in today's podcast,
we're going to talk about how to transform your allotment
in a month. And yes, that can be a big topic,
but we can try and condense it into about ten minutes,
because that's how long we'd like to keep us podcasts.
We don't like them too long, that is for sure.
We just like it's a nice short little episode. I
hope you're enjoying all these topics that we're talking about
at the moment. We found a new way to find
new topics to talk about, and yeah, I'm talking about
different ones every single day, but today we're going to
be talking about how to transform your allotment within one month. Now,
December is the perfect time to transform your allotment if
you're planning on doing a lot of work on it,
or if you've got a new allotment, It's an ideal
time and perfect time to get started and get cracking
with the plot. As obviously, like last the other weekend
we had the store, so it was unfortunate that we
couldn't do anything on the allotment that weekend. But this
weekend it was eleven degrees. It was decent weather, ideal
perfect gardening weather. You won't think of a sort of
weather at this time of year. It weren't raining, it
were decent, it were good. But yeah, hopefully we will
get plenty more done this month. And the way that
you can like transform your allotment within a month is
break it down into manageable sizes and into manageable tasks
as well. What I do is that I've got, Like
I've got my fruit area, and I've got my strawberry patch,
and I've got all my growing beds. Now i've got
twenty one growing beds, eighteen or twenty one growing beds.
So what I do is I divide them beds up
per weekend if yet me and I tick them off
once I've done and cleared them and tidy them and
worked them, so then you can think I've done all
that work. I've cleared them all, and they're all ready
for the new year, ready for springtime, ready for growing.
All you're producing. And I like to break things down
into manageable pieces, because if I try and do everything
in one day or one weekend, it becomes too much
of a chore and it certainly ties me out. Like
I'll go down to my allotment at eight o'clock in
the morning and I'll come home at one o'clock in
the afternoon. I don't spend all day down there yet
Obviously when it gets to summer, I'll possibly be down
there much longer and earlier, as I do love it
when it's sunny in the morning, like you can wake
up and go to I've been down at the allotment
at six o'clock in the morning and stayed till about
four o'clock. It's certainly better when we've got the longer
days to get work done. And it's about thinking what
tasks you've got to do on your allotment and what
jobs you've got to do. And it helps with me
doing these podcasts at the beginning of each month and
I'll say, all these tasks need doing this month, all
these jobs need doing this month, tick them off as
you complete them and do them, and then obviously you
can do your other tasks as well. If you're not
listening to that podcast, it's usually the beginning of the month,
right the first or the second, and you can find
out all the jobs which need doing at your allotment
and garden in December, and I'll do the same in January.
I do it every single month and talk about what
you can plan as well and what you can start sewing,
and also what jobs need doing, so I talk about
all them and then as I've completed them tasks, then
I'll move on and do other tasks around my allotment.
And I have got like a long scale job list
like wishers. What I'd love to wish to do, and
then I've got the jobs which are sufficient enough just
to get my plot looking tidy, earn decent, ready for
the year ahead. And on that job list, I've got
that I want to build an actual fruit frame around
my plot, because at the moment it's just all my
logan berries are tied up to poles, the same with
my grapes are tied onto poles and stuff like that.
But I want to put some wooden beams in and
drill holes from them and put wires through them and
connect them all up that way, and yeah, knowing my luck,
they'll probably fall down again, but and smash something, knowing
my lup. But that is what I plan on doing.
It's the same with my shed that I thought. I'm
getting all my allotment tided and cleared first, and then
I can concentrate for the next few months doing work
inside my shed, doing all the improvements and sorting out
all the shelving and getting all that done. That'll be
most of December and January's jobs. It's not a crucial
job which needs doing. It's just a luxury job if
you get me of what needs doing. So if you're
wanting to transform your allotment. Within a month, write down
all the jobs which need doing on your plot, and
just divide it up by the two days. If you
only get weekends off like me, like Saturday Sunday, divide
it up. That's like eight days. Divide it up into
eight days of what needs doing, and you'll certainly succeed
and get it done. And this is going to be
my problem throughout the year now because i used to
work for and far off and now I've only got
two days to cram four days worth for working too,
if you get me, so, I'm going to be pushing
myself to try and get these jobs done. And obviously
now I'm creating more and more content with videos, et cetera.
That takes up long enough just to record videos. But
I do love doing these videos and I love recording
them for you, and obviously the welcoming that I get
from them everybody in jo So if you're wanting to
transform your allotment, make that list, tick them off as
you do them, and sure enough you will have more
and more things to add onto your list as you're
going along, and why you're going around the plot, you'll
find different things that you're doing or if it's bad
winter weather, and if we get storm, you'll certainly have
more things to add onto your list because we certainly
get some storm damage. And yeah, it's not always brilliant
down there, but the list of an allotment is always
ongoing and there's always jobs to be done. And if
you don't think you're going to be able to get
your allotment dug over or cleared in time, ready for
when all the weeds start growing and everything, just have
a look online on Facebook, Marketplace or something like that
and try and buy some top holing just to cover
it over our black membrane, because membrane is better than
top holing because it does like the water through and
it keeps it oyster as well, and it's just suppressed
as the weeds from growing back. If you get me, so,
have a look around, cover it over, and just uncover
it when you're ready for using it. Like I wish,
to be honest that I'd got a piece of black
membran the size of every single bed and then i'd
just cover every bed over in the winter and take
it off in maytime when it's time to plant out,
and they'd be perfectly ready. If you get me, So
that might be one thing that I might invest in
the future because it is expensive black membrane, it's not
the cheapest anymore. But yeah, it's about working them jobs,
one job at a time, and dividing them up and
getting it sorted and getting it done and making the
most of it. Whenever you've got decent weather, and I
always say, like, obviously not today, because I've done my plot.
If it's decent weather, work outside in your allotment. If
it's bad weather, there's always jobs to be done in
your shed, in your greenhouse, there's always jobs to be
done there as well. So I hope that you managed
to transform your allotments within a month. Let me know
if it encourages you, if it motivates you to get
you started and get your cracking for the year ahead.
And next year is going to be a challenge, but
we're going to smash it. We're going to smash it together.
And I'm going to obviously keep sharing my allotment journey
with you all here on the podcast and on my Instagram.
I share lots of photos of what I'm getting up to,
and obviously in my weekly tour video what I do
on YouTube as well for you to see my progress
throughout the year. One thing that I might think of
doing next year is standing in the same spot every
weekend and taking a photo of the plot week after
week and then compile it all at the end of
the year to show what transformation is over a year
of my plot. So I might actually try that next year.
So stay tuned for that video and we'll see how
we get on. So 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
your own gardening and a lotment journey. If you have
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And until next time, remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and
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