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 i'd 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. Well, I've been saying it
for days, we've not had no more rain. And guess what.
While I was at the allotment, I posted a photo
this morning, say night, it's a beautiful day. Get out
in the garden, get your jobs done, and it started raining.
Of all the days for it to rain while I'm
actually at the allotment when I need to be getting
my work done down there. However, it didn't stop me,
as obviously I want to start doing all my shed
up over winter on the inside, so I went inside
for half an hour and did some tidying up in
there while the rain passed. It didn't stay forlong the rain,
but at least we've had a bit of rain. So
it does help with the garlic and the onions what
are in the ground at the moment, to keep them
watered and get them growing well. So yeah, we just
need a bit more rain, but hold off on that
because people have been telling me that snow is forecast
this week. Will we get some snow? Who knows. But
I've been looking at the temperatures and it's going to
get down to about minus one at night, zero degrees,
so it is going to start getting colder. And yeah,
the temperatures are going to be around five or six
degrees in the daytime, so it's going to start feeling
a bit more nippy. It's not going to feel like
what it's feeling like now. It was absolutely gorgeous down
at the a lot this morning. It weren't even that cold.
I couldn't believe what temperatures were having in November. It
is bizarre, but it was the perfect day for getting
lots done down at the lotment. Even though we had
a bit of rain. It didn't stop me for long.
So what have we been up to down at the
plot today. Well, I went to my parents' house first
for my coffee and to catch up with them because
I going to see them at weekends. So I went
round to theirs and my dad said to me, oh,
I've been I put one of your bird feeders back
up the square sewet block one, and it says but
on the floor there was a sewet block in plastic,
as if like I had not taken it out of
the plastic, And I went, well, I'm sure I took
it out of the plastic when I put it in
the sewet block. I wouldn't put it in in the plastic.
So I went down to the allotment after I'd been
to preparents, and all the sewet blocks had gone from
out of my polytunnel. They must have been about twelve,
so they'd all gone. And I just looked around the
polytunnel and outside and they were wrappers all over the place.
So something's had them, something's enjoyed all my sewet blocks.
So yeah, I couldn't put the sweat blocks up today,
but I managed to put all my bird seed all
my nuts, all my sewet bawls and my sewet pellets
as well. So I got quite a lot of bird
seed and food put up, but I couldn't put my
sueat blocks up. But like I said, with won a
prize on a competition, so I think I'm going to
be getting some suet blocks sent to me. So I'm
looking forward to them coming and to put up on
my allotment on my in my trees and on my
bird feeders. So what else have we been up to today? Well,
yesterday I said to you that I like to spread
my jobs out over the weekend so that I get
them all done and stuff like that. I don't give
myself two bigger jobs to do, but I try and
get them all completed by the end of the weekend. Now,
the job that I wanted to do today was to
cut back all the brambles around my food trees, round
my rub barb because my roobarb is my prime spot.
Because my mum makes me crumbles all the way through
the year, which is absolutely fantastic. And I usually chop
these back once a year and they'll usually stay back
for about a year and then I do them again
at the end of each year. So I thought I'll
get started on that today and get it all cleared
and finish it off tomorrow. Well I got it all done.
I couldn't believe it. I worked by socks off today
and I've hurt myself some points. I cleared it all
in one day. I must have had the momentum to
get going today and kept gardening. But yeah, I was
saying that I'd probably end up with loads of funes
in being scratched to death, but I actually did all right.
I just made sure I kept chopping the brambles into
small pieces, popping them in my tub to throw away,
and I hardly got scratched at all. The gloves were
really thick, so the porns didn't go through, which were
absolutely fantastic. So I'm not in any pain whatsoever from
cutting all the brambles back. So they're all chopped back.
I've cleared back any old fruit that had fallen on
the floor, cleared some of the leaves up, tidied it
all up. There's still a lot of leaves left to
drop off my food trees, so we'll still be clearing
that up in a few more weeks time. But the
bulk of it is all done, all the brambles cleared,
which was gonna be a massive job, so I've ticked
that off, so I need to find an other job
to do tomatow down at the allotment. So tomorrow I
think I'm just going to be concentrating on tidying my
paths up and clearing a bit more at the top
of my allotment. So hopefully we'll find some jobs to
do around there. I'm sure we'll find plenty. I don't
want to exactly start doing stuff in my shed yet
because I don't usually do stuff in my shed on
Polytunnel unless it's raining, because it's a waste of time
being in the shed when it's actually nice outside. I
feel like I need to do all the outside jobs
while it's decent, and then doing the shed when it's
not very nice, when it's chucking it down or when
it's awful. But yeah, we're moving fast. Our plot is
going to look absolutely fantastic next year, fingers crossed. That
is the plan anyway, But I would have to try
and make it a bit more less maintenance next year, because,
like I say, I'm only down there twice a week now.
But I need to make sure that it can look
after itself when I'm not at the allotment, and fingers crossed,
we can work out a plan for that and hopefully
get things still growing while I'm at work and staying alive.
But we'll look into all that, but hopefully we'll be
getting lots of stuff done. So yeah, I'm going to
be back down at the allotment tomorrow and getting all
them paths cleared and down the side of my plot,
and hopefully, fingers crossed, I'll be filming a lot more
content tomorrow, so it's done me a favor getting it
all done today in one go, because Sundays I usually
like to film all my YouTube content down there. I
film my daily real questions down there, so hopefully I'll
get all that filmed for you tomorrow. So I hope
you're enjoying all the videos because we've been posting videos
quite regularly now and these podcasts have been obviously posting
them every day, and I'm trying to promote this podcast
much as possible to get more and more people listening
to it. So if you are a new listener, please
do give me a follow and make sure you check
out all the other episodes, and obviously these are now
going out on YouTube as well, so I hope that
you enjoy listening to my on YouTube if you're listening
on YouTube. And We've got a lot of episodes to come,
and I'm going to be a film recording quite a
few episodes this weekend, save me doing them at night
when I finished work. So yeah, but tomorrow's episode will
obviously be talking about everything that we've done on Sunday
down at the allotment and what jobs would managed to
do and what we have found to do, and who
knows what the weather might be like tomorrow. It might
be snowing, it might be raining, or it might be
hot and sunny. I don't think it'll be hot and
sunny somehow, but yeah, but I'm always on the lookout
for new ideas for my podcast videos, So if anybody
has any thing that they'd like to cover, please do
send me a message and I'll try and cover it
in a podcast or a video. But I think that's
everything that we're going to be talking about today. I'm
just trying. I've been looking up as well when to
start my peppers off, because I want to try and
grow quite a few peppers next year. And I think
last year I planted them around April May time and
they weren't quite ready in time, so I'm going to
be starting off. I've been looking at when's best to
start them off, like whether i'd start them off in
January or February time. That'll be when I get them started.
But I'm going to look up into my methods of
growing them because I follow another person online and they
start all their seeds off in tissue paper rather than
in a compost, and once they've germinated, then they'll plant
them into composts because they'll know if they've germinated or not,
which is a good idea. And obviously you can put
into the final before you don't have to repot them
out of the seed trails and stuff like that was
to start growing. You can just put them straight into
the pots that they're going to grow into. So yeah,
I might look at different methods like that because compost
is getting expensive now. I don't know if you've seen
prices a compost, so the more I can save money,
the better, really, But let me know in the comments.
If you start your seeds off on tissue paper, it's
a case of just keeping them damp and getting them
to germinate that way. I'll probably not be able to
do with the really small seeds like that, but the
ones like courgettes and pumpkins and melons and peppers possibly
try that way and we'll see how well they get on.
I always love to do experiments when I'm gardening, trying
different ways, different methods, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work.
And that's the whole fun about gardening, trying different experiments
and seeing what works. So I hope that you come
back to tomorrow's podcast and listen to it. Like I said, tomorrow,
we're going to be talking about everything that we've done
on the allotment today and what we've got up to,
so make sure you stay tuned fast stay tuned for
my weekly tour video as well on YouTube. I always
post a weekly tour video now rather than monthly. It
on a weekly basis so people can follow along with
my seeing what I've been getting up to down at
the plot and staying up to date with it. I
don't go live down there anymore. I just like filming
the videos, So make sure you stay tuned for the
weekly tour video. If you're not following us on YouTube,
do give us a follow and then you'll be able
to see all my videos and what we have been
getting up to rather than just my voice. But yeah,
I hope that you're enjoyed everything. So until next time, everyone, remember,
keep smiling, keep shining, and keep guardening with everyone. Thank
you for joining me on this episode of the Gardening
with Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips
and integration for your own gardening and a lotment journey.
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