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, it's Friday. The weekend
is upon us. Everybody, Thank you, and yes, we are
looking forward to being back down at the allotment. Fingers crossed.
We have some decent weather and fingers crossed, we can
get lots done. But it doesn't really matter because I'm
going to be inside the shed, possibly doing the new
makeover in there, so stay tuned for updates on that.
So what are we talking about today? Today? We are
talking about turning the success, turning your failures into success stories.
That's what we're going to talk about today, turning your
failures into success stories. Now, I've had many failures on
my allotment over the last sixteen or twenty years that
i've had it, and I still continue to get failures.
Even though I give all these tips and advice out,
I'll still continue to get failures a year after year. Now. Obviously,
some of the failures I have are with like carrots.
I never managed to grow any carrots very well. Or
I'll saw my seeds and I'll forget to water them
in the law end up dying, or are plant loads
of seeds and I never plant them outside, so they
end up dying in my shed then. And the biggest
failure of all time, which I'd never learned about, is
putting seed and writing the names of the sea stuff
I've sown on labels and putting them in the trays
so that I know what I've planted, because I'll end
up growing corshats, marrows, squash, and melons and they'll all
look the same plant and then I won't realize what
I'm planting out until it's actually grown produce on it.
So yeah, I have That's one of my biggest failures,
and the same grows for brassacres. Like your cabbage, your cauliflower,
your broccoli sprouts. They all look the same when they
get growing, but you don't know what they are until
they actually produce on them. I'm sure a lot of
you are prone to that failure. But yeah, there's certainly
lots and lots of failures. And one of the biggest
failures is my DIY failures. I talked about this a
lot and that I absolutely loved they but I'm rubbish
it and things will collapse or one of the biggest
failures was I was. I just put up some new shelving.
I potted all my tomatoes up, my cucumbers up, my
peppers up. They were all in individual pots. I'd spent
a fortune on compost, and we'd sorted them all out
into all the varieties and everything like that. We'd even
label them up. Can you believe it. I'd labeled them
all up as well, but I only put a label
in the front one and all the ones behind it
at that variety, if you get me. So, I'd done
all that, and I was recording some footage for my
YouTube channel or Instagram, and thankfully the camera wasn't on it.
It was on me, but I was just filming it
and I just heard this massive crash and no on
this video, like no, no, no. All my shelving collapsed,
all my vegetables got mixed up, all the varieties got
mixed up. I was absolutely devastated. But from them failures,
you can create success from them, and some of the
stuff you learn from, especially like we're putting labels in
seeds and stuff like that. I am good at better
at doing stuff like that and keeping on top of it.
But obviously it goes back to writing a log book
as well. Like I've mentioned in the past, is that
at this time of year, I like to buy a
log book and at the beginning of January, I'll start
writing down all my seeds and when I planted them,
when I've sewn them, how well they've grown, which ones
haven't grown, which ones have failed, which ones did rubbish,
which ones were absolutely delicious. And it's good to look
back on the success and the failures, and obviously the
success for ones, you go back and you do them again,
and if they're a failure, then you've learned from that
and you try a different variety of produce. So without failures,
you don't get success down at the allotments. And I
always get loads of failures with vegetables and stuff like that.
And I'm open and honest when I'm sharing my videos
around and stuff like that. I'll show what's done absolutely rubbish,
which I've done terrible that, and I learned from that,
and I try a different method or a different way
of growing something, and I'll learn from it and hopefully
get better produced the year after. And I think that's
what sometimes stems down to the issue when you're watching
these gardening shows, etc. With celebrity people, is that they'll
just show all the best bits, and people can be
preconceived in thinking that it's easy to do things, easy
to grow, easy to maintain, allotments are simple because they
only ever see the best pictures of allotments or things
that they've harvested or done well with. And obviously it's
not an easy job. It's there can be a lot
of failures. And I see so many people come down
onto the allotment and start an allotment and they dig
it all over in the first year, or hire a
JSEB to scrape all the top off and to clear
all the weeds and everything, and then within another three
months it's back tall again because they think, oh, they
didn't realize that all the wheeds will grow back, or
once it's all tidy and cleared, it's easy to maintain.
But it's certainly not. It's not an easy job gardening,
and that's why obviously, like I like to be honest
and say of all the failures I've done. I'll even
show photos or videos of failures that I've had and
how bad it's been. And like this year, we've not
had a good year of growing. Certain things have done
fantastic growing, probably the best produce that they've had for
certain produce. But yeah, you get so many failures, and
that's why we need to share with each other the
success and the failures of produce, and then people will
understand that it isn't an easy job when you're gardening,
when you came in for producing, going down and weeding
every single day. So there's many failures and success stories
out there. So like I always say is that if
you don't have failures, you won't have success. And with
every failure, you have one success. So make notes of
things that don't work in the past, and then you'll
learn from it to grow your produce next year and
write down all the successes as well, because then you'll
do the same the year after and try again. Sometimes
you're write down the successes and try the same variety
of the year after, and then they'll be absolutely rubbish,
and then where do you stand. But yeah, there's certainly
lots and lots of failures out there, and hopefully we'll
have lots of success next year. And hopefully I warm
a year next year, because it wasn't a nice summer,
so we had a lot of failures. But like my cucumber,
I used to grow them in with polytunnel and I
couldn't manage to keep them watered all the time. But
I grew them outside this year for the first time ever,
and the best produce that I've ever had, the most
harvested I've ever had off my cucumbers. It was absolutely astonishing.
So I've learned something from this this year. I'll try
that again next year, and knowing my look, it won't work.
But yeah, there is lots of failures out there, and
if you don't get failures, you'll never learn. That's what
I always say. So I hope you've enjoyed this podcast today,
and as always, make sure you come back for tomorrow's
episode because tomorrow we'll be talking about everything that we're
getting up to at the Allotment this weekend. So until
next time, everyone, 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've have found
some useful tips and inspiration for your own gardening and
allotment journey. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please make
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