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 of 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 a lotment. 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 today. I hope you're all well. I hope that
all your week's green well, and I hope you're managing
to stay warm. While it is a bitterly col it
certainly is here where I am fank like I'm working
in the week, so I don't have to go down
to the allotment in the week. I just go at
the weekends now, so roll on Saturday for when I'm
next at the allotment. So what are we talking about today? Well,
today's episode is encouraging the wildlife to your gardens and
your allotments. We're going to talk about today. So the
reason why I'm talking about this is because I find
it particularly beneficial for an allotment holder to have as
much wildlife going down as possible to your allotment. Now,
I've been working on this over the last few years
to improve the wildlife onto my allotment. And as you know, recently,
obviously I've had a cat coming down on my allotment.
It even had some kittens in my shed which have
fledged off now and moved on and obviously found new homes.
But yeah, it's good to see the cats down there
because obviously they'll catch the mice and catch the rats
and keep them down, which is a bonus. One at
times even left one in my shed, a dead one unfortunately,
as a present, but I got rid of that soon
straight away. But yeah, what else are we helping to
get down at the allotment and in the garden. Well,
at the moment, it's obviously at winter when we're recording this, well,
it's getting to winter. It's currently in autumn, but it's
feeling like winter certainly is now and at this time
of year, we like to concentrate on feeding the birds.
I don't feed the birds throughout the summer period. I
only feed them through the autumn and winter periods. In
springtime as is not much around for them to eat
down at the allotment. And I still want to help
encourage them to come to my allotment plot because then
they'll eat all the bugs and stuff like that off
other plants. So we're encouraging them by hanging up bird
feeders at the moment. Obviously, the only problem with hanging
bird feeders up is it attracts other wildlife as well,
some not beneficial, which are obviously the rats and the mice.
They come and eat the seed, but hopefully the cat
catches them, so it all works around in one favor.
And obviously it also attracts the squirrels to the allotment.
And I have no problems with having the squirrels coming
down at my allotment. They can come down or they want,
as long as they don't make too much damage to
my plot, which is obviously my spring bulbs, which they
like to attack all my broad beans, like they nibbled
all the tops off them in my shed. But yeah,
we do like to attract the birds. And at the moment,
we've got up some suet balls, we've got some suet pellets,
we've got seed up, we've got peanuts up, we've got
a sewet block up. So yeah, we're trying to attract
all different varieties of birds to my plot. Obviously, there's
not a lot of birds around at the moment because
some obviously hibernate and fly off to warmer countries over
the winter period. But there's still little birds around like
your robins, and I still see a little blue its
around and which other ones colt its, I've seen some
of those around. But yeah, we see lots of little
birds around and I love to encourage them. And obviously,
while I'm encouraging them to eat seeds from the plot,
I've also got some bird houses down at the allotment
as well, where I encourage them to come and live
on my allotment basically and to have babies. So I
put up a couple of birdhouses a couple of years ago,
and within half an hour blue teds were flying in
and out of them. They must have been in the
ideal location from and they were flying in and out
building the nest and then they had some babies in
there and they fledged off and left. So yeah, having
bird houses down on your plot, it's it's brilliant to
watch the blue it's flying in and out. So I've
been encouraging them, and obviously once they've had the babies
in the fledged and there's no birds living in there,
you need to take them down and clear out any
old nest or spiders and webs hanging around in there.
Just clean them out with disinfectant, get rid of the
old nest because new bluets won't move in if they
know that there's previous occupancy in there. So we do
this every year and we get bluet its living in
them every year, which is absolutely fantastic on my plot.
So after that we also for my birthday, I had
a ren birdhouse from my sister, so we're putting that
up this year as well, so you never know, we
might get some baby wren's next year on my allotment.
So I'm looking forward to seeing that. And obviously there's
other types of bird houses out there, so I might
look at different ones to try and attract some birds
living on my allotment. So if anybody's got any suggestions
of any other bird houses what they've got, let me know,
as I know there's robbing ones out there, so I
might look at robin's as well, because obviously we do
get a lot of robbins living on our allotment site,
which is always fantastic to see when you're digging up
the soil and they just sat there waiting for the
worms and they're scooping, get the worm and then fly off.
They serve team as well. They come right close to
you and yeah, what other wildlife are we looking after
on the allotment, Well, we have got a pond down
on the plot because I want to encourage the frogs
to my allotment and news and all the pond life
creatures as well, because obviously if you've got frogs living
on your plot, they'll go around eating all the slugs
at night, which is another bonus because obviously the more
frogs you have, those slugs you'll have, which is what
you want when you've got on allotment sits. You don't
want everything getting eaten down there. So we'll be cleaning
that out over the winter period and freshening it up
ready for next year, ready for when it's time for
foxborn season and hopefully get some fogs born in there,
and hopefully get some foggies again next year on my
allotment and encourage the fog to live down there. Whatever. Oh,
we look after the ladybirds as well, you might think,
how do you look after the ladybirds? Well, you can
actually buy ladybird houses. Well, I like tubes with little
holes in for the ladybirds to nest in over the
winter periods and hibern it and encourage the ladybirds to
come down. So yeah, we're encouraging the ladybirds as well.
Down at the plot, we have also got a hedgehog house.
What I need to put out. I've had that about
a year and still not put it out yet. But
you need to find somewhere obviously quiet and round, where
there's some leaves and shade and stuff like that from
just a living I've also seen that you can actually
get a hedgehog food, but I don't know if I
should put that down or not because it might obviously
encourage squirrels to eat it and they're acts of mice.
But if anybody else feeds the hedgehogs, let me know,
because I would like to know about them. I obviously
look after the bees as well. The bees are the
main big thing on the plot what I look after
as obviously, Like I always say, I plant the spring
bulbs to attract the bees down in the springtime when
they wake up from hibernation, to give them the energy
for the year ahead. I also plant a lot of
fragrant flowers and flowers that they can land on to
collect the pollen. And obviously, the more bees that you
get down to the plot, the more produced you'll get
from your fruit. Because if the bees are around on
your plot, they'll pollinate or your fruit trees or your
fruit bushes, etc. And your strawberries, and that'll give you
more fruit produced. So without these we wouldn't get no fruit.
So the more bees that you can get down on
the plot, the better. We're also going to start looking
into how to look after the butterflies as well. We
need to attract the butterflies to our gardens and allotments
more as obviously there's not much beneficial in them obviously
the pollinator, but and you don't want catapillars eating all
your stuff up. But I do love to see the butterflies,
so I'm going to look at how to attract the
butterflies to my allotment and what flowers I should be
planting to attract them, because absolutely gorgeous when you see
them flying around, And obviously you can plant buddlier Budley
is a good one for butterflies, but there must be
other different flowers out there to help look after them.
So yeah, I do my little bit down on my
allotment to help the wildlife. And I've also got a
wildlife camera up now which I purchased previously, so we've
put that outside, so hopefully we catch some wilde activity
on my plot. Hopefully I don't catch no burglars down there,
but yeah, i'd love to see like badgers and foxes
down there. That would be brilliancy. Obviously it's not good
for my crops, but I would love to see some
wildlife down there, like badges and foxes around at night.
Because it's an infrared camera as well, so it picks
it all up, so hopefully we might be able to
pick something up down there, So stay tuned and hopefully
we'll get some footage for you to show you. So yeah,
let me know if you're doing your little bit for
helping the wildlife on your allotments in the garden. It's
always brilliant to hear from you. Make sure you do
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great day everyone, and remember keep smiling, keep shining, keep
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