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 Alltment. 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
this week. Well, if you've not listened to my previous episodes,
we talked about everything that we've got up to down
at the Allotment on Saturday Sunday, We've braved the rain,
We've gone down to the allotment and we have got
some stuff done. So if you want to find out
what I've got up to, make sure you'll listen back
to them episodes. So in today's episode, we're going to
talk about all the common mistakes. What gardeners do, and
I certainly make many of them, and I'll certainly make
plenty more of them. And with gardening, you're always learning
every single day. There's always something new to learn when
you're gardening, and I learned from mistakes. I don't mind
making mistakes because obviously that's how you learn. And sometimes
you fix the mistake, and then you make the mistake again.
But you have to keep on trying and persevering, and
you will then achieve great things down at your allotment
and gardening. But the first we're going to talk about
five different things down at the allotments. The five things
most common on making mistake. Now, one of them is overwatering,
and you can commonly overwater plants. Now, I didn't learn
much about this until I actually worked at the garden
center and they told me how to keep things watered
and how to check to see if they stalk damp
and stuff by checking underneath them to see if if
they're wet underneath, because sometimes you can just stick your
finger on top I think it's dry, but it's not.
It might be wet deep down, and that is where
the roots are, and over watering them obviously can cause
root rot, which you obviously don't want. Now. One of
the main things that can get damaged by overwatering is pumpkins, marrows, squash.
If you're watering near the top of the plant, they
can easily snap off from overwater and they can cause
the rot and cause the plant to actually just snap
off easy. One thing I learned about water gtering my
squash plants like your causeiet, your marrows, your pumpkins, your
zoochini if you're in America, that's what you call it,
not causeiet, but yeah, one thing I learned about them
is to plant a plant pot at the side of them,
down into the ground, and when you're water in them,
water into the plant pot and it waters straight to
the roots, right where the water is needed and where
the plant needs it and where it will suck it
up from. I even chucked some like chicken pallets in
it as well, so then I water straight into that
and the chicken pallet feed will go straight to the
roots and feed them that way. That's one way that
I do look after my pumpkins and squash, And that's
one little tip that I've learnt myself.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: I just saw the video online of people planting plant pots,
but they didn't show putting like a bit of food
in it or something like that. So that is how
I get great produce from that. So when you're watering,
make sure that they are fully dry or that they're
not too damp. When you're watering stuff. You don't always
want stuff sat in water as again, satin water doesn't
help them. It will just rot them because the water
will just rot away the roots and then you won't
have any good produce. So just keep them watered every
few days and they should thrive pretty much. When I
used to have stuff in my polytool growing, like my
peppers and my tomatoes and my cucumbers, I used to
have to water them every single day because it did
dry out. The compost dries out so easy, and yeah,
you have to water them every single day, but just
be careful when over watering stuff.
Speaker 2: Like when.
Speaker 1: We had a drought the year after, I decided to
plant all my tomatoes and my cucumbers outside because I
knew I wouldn't be able to get down to the
allotment to water them every day in the polytunnel, so
I planted them outside because I knew that the ground
holds water.
Speaker 2: Pretty well, so I could water.
Speaker 1: Them like every three or four days rather than every
single day, and they absolutely thrived. My cucumbers have done
best that they ever did last year, and it was
the first time that I've ever grown them outside. So
I am going to grow my cucumbers outside from now on.
So onto number two. Ignoring soil health. Now, I didn't
learn much about soil health for quite a few years
down at the allotment. I just used plant stuff every
single year. Didn't used to bother looking into my soil
and seeing if it needed any nutrients and stuff like that. Obviously,
you can get testers to see the pH and whether
there's any nutrition in the soil and stuff like that.
And obviously you can feed your soil as well as
well as feeding your plants. You can feed your soil
by adding nutrition from adding manure, adding special soil food
and compost or leaf mulch, stuff like that to improve
your soil and to improve your plants. If you don't
look after your soil, your plants will fail and they
won't do very well. So you need to start looking
after your soil and use the winter time to improve
that soil. The winter is the perfect time to do
it and add in that manure and dig it in
or layer it on the top of the ground, and
then dig it in in the springtime to feed the
soil and get the nutrition back and hopefully grow some
fantastic produce down in your allotments and gardens. I still
can't wait to get grown again next year. It needs
to hurry up and get to springtime. So next up
is planting without planning. Now I always.
Speaker 2: Go on about this at this time of year.
Speaker 1: I draw up a plan of my allotment and I
write down where things are going to grow. I look
at the shade on my allotment, where trees are, what's
shady and what's not shady, what gets full sun all
the time, and plant accordingly.
Speaker 2: Earn.
Speaker 1: Obviously you need to look at your spacing as well.
When you're planting plants. Don't try and cram too much.
And I've done that in the past. I've got loads
of plants growing, so I've just crammed them in and
hoped for the best, because I don't like wasting plants
that have grown. But if you don't leave enough space,
and it's hard to weed in between the plants, and
then the plants won't survive and they won't be able
to get established and grow as well without the good spacing.
So you need to keep plenty of space in between
your plants to keep them weeded. It's best off to
have less plants, keep them weeded, and then you'll get
fantastic produce as well. So look into the space and
also look at companion planting. I've not really learned much
about companion planting. I need to learn about that. That
is one thing that I need to start looking into.
Like I know that there's the three sisters. If you
plant like sweet corn, runner, beans, and something else as well,
they were meant to help each other when growing them.
But yeah, is different plants that you can plant near
each other and they will help grow better plants. So
have a look into companion planting as well, and so
do I. I need to look into that. So maybe
I'll do an episode on companion planting and then we'll
both learn at the same time. I'm always learning with gardening.
Whenever I'm doing these podcasts. I do like researching things,
so I'm learning every single day and I think, oh,
I'm going to do that, Oh that's happened to me.
But yeah, you're always always learning with gardening, so neglecting
seasonal timing. So you need to look into the importance
of understanding planting calendars. You need to think of when
you're going to start sowing your seeds at the right
time of the year and planting out at the right
time of the year as well. Everyone gets so excited
at the beginning of the year when it starts getting warmer,
like sometimes we can have a heat wave around Easter
time and people start planting plants outside and thinking no, no,
don't plant them outside yet because you can still get frost.
That's the saying never cast a clout till May is out,
and that is to do with the gardening that you
shouldn't plant outside until May is gone because you can
still get frost. If you're down south in the UK,
possibly you'll be all right, but up north where I
am in Yorkshire, you've got to think about when the
frost has passed and when we won't get no more frosts,
and keeping down the temperatures and the weather and have
a look around when.
Speaker 2: You should be planting stuff.
Speaker 1: So never get too eager to plant stuff outside because
if the frost comes, it can.
Speaker 2: Just wipe the lot out.
Speaker 1: So look at the calendar and think about when you're
going to be growing stuff as well. Now the next one,
the last one, which is the most important one of
the lot. And I should listen to this, Yes, Ben,
you need to listen to this. And this is forgetting
to label plants. Hold your hands up, everybody who does
it nearly every year, forgetting to label your plants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hold my hands up. I am a.
Speaker 1: Plant labeler, for I get it. I'll stand up to
that one. But yeah, you need to label your plants.
And I've done in the past, like I've sewn all
my seeds. I put my seed packets underneath the seed
trays and then I water them all and the plant
packet has become disintegrated and I can't tell what's growing there.
And then you're looking at your carseats, you squash and
your maths, and you're thinking which one's which, what varieties which?
Oh no, and then you don't know what it is
until it actually starts growing produce on it, what actually
plant it is. It's like all the squashes look the same, right,
your pumpkin barrower and corjiat. Then all your brassacres look
the same, like your cauliflower, your cabbage, your cauliflower, your brustles, sprouts,
they all the same. And you're thinking, no, what am
I doing here? I don't know what I'm planting, and
you think, no, I need to label them. I need
to label So make sure you spend time and label
all your plants up. And obviously you can make your
own plant labels. It's cheap enough to do. Just use
a milk carton, slice it up into strips and write
down the name of the plant with a permanent marker,
and then you can label your plants up. And if
you ever see me doing a video and I've not
labeled them up, make sure you commented it.
Speaker 2: Ben, label your plants. Ben, label your plants.
Speaker 1: I know I'll look forgetting them to do them again.
But yeah, those are the five big made mistakes what
you can make when you're gardening and allotment.
Speaker 2: In And remember one thing that you've got to remember is.
Speaker 1: That mistakes help you grow, just like your plants, So
it doesn't matter if you make mistakes. I make mistakes
all the time, and sometimes I learn from them. Sometimes
I don't learn from them, And obviously a lot of
times I share them with you, all the mistakes that
I do. Because I'm on His Gardener, I'll tell you
what I've done good and what I've done rubbish. But yeah,
I do share everything with you. So I hope you've
enjoyed that podcast for today. If you're new to this
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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
in very sure for your own gardening and a lotment journey.
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