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 for another brand new episode today.
I hope you're all well, and I hope you're all
recovering from the storm over the weekend and hopefully getting
things tidy and back into ship shape and hopefully not
too much damage down at your allotments and gardens. Well,
what are we going to talk about today? Today we're
going to talk about the best winter seeds to start
growing at this time of year and giving you some
ideas and tips and advisers on what sort of things
you can grow, whether it be vegetables, flowers, herbs, whatever
type of thing you want to start growing. If you're
itching to get growing some things, we are going to
give you some tips and advice on certain things that
you can actually start growing at this time of year.
So for vegetables, what vegetables are the best ones to
grow at this time of year? Well, this has to
be winter gem lettice. This hardly, This hardy variety we've
stands low temperatures and thrives when sewn in an unheated greenhouse.
Ord call fin directly sow seeds into grow bags and
consider adding a sprinkling of fertilizer to promote optimal growth. So,
if you've got an unheated greenhouse or cold frame and
you're wanting to grow some fresh lettuce, try the winter
gem variety as that can with stand the cold weather
and it will keep on growing. So yeah, if you
fancy some fresh salad leaves, winter gem lettuce is the
way to go. Next up is spinach and kale, known
as winter greens. These leafy vegetables are resilient in colder climates.
Sowing them in December can lead to an early spring
harvest as temperatures rise So if you're wanted something to
be ready for the beginning of the year for first harvest,
think about growing some spinach and some kale. Broad beans,
sobroad beans directly into the ground now for an early
summer harvest. They're harday and we can withstand winter conditions,
especially when provided with some protection like clotters. But again,
you can have to sew them straight into the ground,
or you can grow them in pots first and then
plant them out and yeah, protect, protect, protect. I started
some off in pots in my shed. The squirrels got
in and ate the lot of them, so yeah, make
sure you protect them from pests like squirrels, rats, mice, pigeons, slugs.
Because there's not much produce around at the moment for
them to eat, they will come and eat anything, so
make sure you protect them from that. Onions and shalots
plant onion and shalots sets in well drained soil to
establish roots before the deep winter. There were zoom growth
as the weather warms, leading to bountiful late spring harvests.
So yeah, if you wanted some onions and shalots, make
sure you're getting the autumn winter vrieteris if you're growing
them from sets now and get them in the ground
and get them started that if you wanted to grow
onions from seed, you can start those off at the
end of December beginning of January and they'll be the
ones that are ready for harvest come summertime. And the
same goes again for peppers and chilis and auber jeans.
If you're wanting good crops from them, you're going to
be wanting to start them off around January time. So
have a look around for those seeds and get thinking
about growing them. So next up is flowers. What seeds
can we grow from flowers at this time of year,
so you can sew your sweet peas in pots and
places to be in a coal fame or an unheated greenhouse.
This early start allows for stronger plants and earlier blooms
in the springtime. Now I've got loads growing in my greenhouse,
absolutely loads. I started mine off about September time, and
I trimmed them all back the other day to help
them bush out as well and to produce strong plants.
So I've trimmed all them back, so we will be
planting all those out come springtime, and hopefully this year
we're going to have a fantastic bloom of sweet peas
down at the allotment. It's going to be absolutely astonishing.
Fingers crossed they all grow. Next up is daffodils. December
is an ideal times plant daffodil bulbs. Plant them in
well draining soil to encourage us colorful display when spring arrives.
And I know you can still get tulips in as well.
Now if you haven't planted any tools yet, and most
garden centers will be selling all their bulbs off at now,
all the spring bulbs, So have a look around, see
what's on offer and get them in the ground. You've
got plenty of time and hopefully get some fantastic displays
down at the allotment or garden. Next up is herbs,
parsley and chives. Now, if you're to start some herbs off,
you can start these off on a window sill and
it's got to be nice, warm, sunny window sell whether
they'll provide fresh flavors for your winter dishes and can
be transplanted outside in springtime. So if you've got a
window sell so if your seeds in a pot and
get some parsley and some chibes growing, and like it says,
come springtime, you can plant them outside and then they'll
spread and they'll bush out and they'll produce more and
more herbs for you to keep harvesting. So those are
the seeds that we can grow at this time of year.
And if you're itching to get growing some things, that
gives you an idea of the certain things that you
can get growing and hopefully it gets some great produce from.
So let me know if you're going to be starting
any seeds off. I'm going to be starting by onions
off and my peppers, my jill is, my auber jeans
off soon, getting all them started and hopefully get some
things growing ready for next year. Next year, I'm going
to try and do the best I can do on
my allotment because of so, like I said, I work
five days a week now, so I only get two
days off. But I'm going to try and show you
how you can actually get your keep on top of
things and get things growing and hopefully get amazing produced
from your allotments in just two days down at the
plot a week and hopefully it's going to be amazing.
So make sure you stay tuned for that, because we
will be blogging it all as we're going along. We're
producing more and more content these days for you to
watch and listen to. As you know, the podcast come
on every single day for you to listen to. I'm
finding new topics to talk about every single day now.
I found a website where I can get great topics
to talk about so that I'm not just waffling on
all the time. And I hope that you're enjoying all
these new topics that we're talking about, and yeah, get
involved as well. Feel free to send me an Instagram
message and ask me if you want me to talk
about a certain subject. I can't talk about composting because
I don't know anything about composting. I don't really I
need to start composting because it's getting expensive now. But yeah,
there's certain topics that I don't know about and certain
things that I'm not aware of. But I'm learning, like you.
I'm always learning, and I'm learning so much more about flowers.
And I'm keeping learning about flowers because that's the thing
that I want to learn more and more about. Growing
down at the allotment. So until tomorrow's episode, everyone remember
keep smiling, keep shining, and keep Guardening with Ben. Everyone,
thank you for joining me on this episode of Gardening
with Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips
and the integration for your own gardening and a lotment journey.
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Happy gardening, and until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining,
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