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 for another brand new episode.
Well it is Sunday today and I'm recording this on
Saturday night, and wow, it is absolutely horrendous the weather.
It's not as horrendous as what other people have had
it so obviously, I'm based in Sheffield, which is more
inland than on the coast where Wales is at Liverpool
and Blackpool and all that area, so I'm not on
that side of the coast. I'm in the middle of
the country and the wind has been awful. We've had
drential rain. It's been absolutely awful today, and I'm really
really dreading driving onto my allotment tomorrow because I'm scared
that my shed might have blown away, collapsed, pieces might
have flown off it, my polytunnel might have ripped. And yeah,
I'm really not looking forward to going down to my
allotment tomorrow. Fingers crossed. It's all stood still and survived,
but we'll have to wait and see and hopefully keep
them fingers crossed and hopefully that you have not had
much damage as well in your gardens and your allotments,
and hopefully you will be able to recover from this
bad storm. And that's the thing. We have to get
used to this. Around winter time, we get these storms
and we just have to keep as fingers crossed and
legs crossed and hope that we don't get too much damage.
We're probably bound to get a bit of damage, but
hopefully not alone. So we'll have to wait and see
and see what it looks like tomorrow. So yeah, make
sure you come to the next episode so that you
find out how my allotment is standing and if it
is still standing, and presume that it will actually be okay.
So we'll hope and we'll pray that everything is safe.
So today's episode is where we talk about what we
have been up to down at the allotment today. Yes
I did go to the allotment this morning, and yes
I did get quite a bit done, but it was
absolutely trential rain, so I couldn't stay outside and do
any work outside like I wanted to. I wanted to
do some jobs with a strawberry patch, but I couldn't
get around to doing them because it was just awful outside.
So I went in the shed, and obviously I listened
to my own podcast giving me tips and advice on
what to do in the shed at this time of year.
So I've been doing quite a bit of tidying up.
I've been throwing away any plants that were growing in there,
what haven't taken or I've forgotten to water them and
they've died. So I've been throwing all them away, clearing
them all away, and putting all the compost into a bucket,
which I'll use again in my beds and stuff. I
never waste compost. I always dig it into the beds,
the leftovers that I've got from my pots and stuff
like that. So we've been tidying all them up. And
also what I've been doing is I've been taking all
the plants off of the shelves and I've got a
load of plastic, really strong plastic like polytomal plastic which
I got spared from years ago, and it would just
shoved under one of my benches, and I thought, I'm
going to use that to protect my shelving in my
a lotment in my shed. So I've been cutting it
all down and putting it on the shelving and then
putting the plant pots back on it, which is quite
time consuming because you have to lift every little plant
pot off there and lift more back on again. And yeah,
it's been quite a big job today. So I've done
half of my shelving today, so hopefully tomorrow we're going
to do the other half. The weather is still looking
bad again tomorrow here in Sheffield, so it looks like
rain again, so I'll probably be stuck inside the shed
or I'll be repairing everything that's broken and damaged. But
we'll see, we'll see how things are. So while I
was in the shed as well, I was trying to
work out what renovations I want to do inside it
because like I said, I'm going to spruce it all
up this winter and make it look nice for next year.
And I've been looking at what colors to painting inside.
At the moment, most of the wood is painted like
a green color, and I want to change of color.
I want to brighten it up and make it look
more attractive, So I'm looking at painting it a nice
letterbox red paint color. So that's my plan to paint
all the wood up, playing all the metal up, and
make it look nice for next year, and hopefully a
lot brighter. But obviously we can't paint them at the
moment because the wood is quite damp from all the
rain and everything, because it just soaks through from the
roof and everything down into the wood. It's not rotten
or anything. It's pretty strong wood. But while ever it's damp,
I can't be watering it at the moment, not watering
it painting it. So I can't be painting it at
the moment, so we're going to let it dry out.
Usually we get like dry spells in January time when
it's just cold and frosty and not raining, so maybe
will get painted around them. We've just got to get
wait for some decent weather to start painting inside it.
But yeah, I'm going to be looking at hopefully sowing
my onion seeds as well soon, and my peppers and
my aubergine seeds, because usually start them off around January time,
so I'm gonna be looking at getting all them started.
My onions, I'll probably start off down in my shed
because they should germinate all right, fingers crossed, hopefully they'll
have enough warmth to get them to germinate. But my
peppers and my aubergines, I'm going to start them off
in my flat because I've never had a window sell
in my own flat, and I've actually got a window
sell here. So I'm going to start a few peppers
off and a few aubergeans off hearing my flat so
that I can give them that extra start and extra
warmth to get them germinated. Because peppers will need like
twenty five twenty six degrees to germinate, so they need
really warm weather. So we're going to start them off
at home and get them started. But the thing is
when you're starting seeds off on your winterstill, you have
to be careful of them being legge and getting enough lights,
so you have to keep turning them around and everything
like that. But yeah, once they have established, then we'll
take them down into my shed and continue growing them
down there at the allotment. But it's just giving them
that extra boost and extra few months. It passed off
started them off like March time and they've only just
been producing through by the time it comes to the
end of summer, so we're giving them a few extra
months to get started and get established, to get them
seeds growing down at the allotment. But yeah, I didn't
actually do an awful lot all down at the allotment today.
I fed missed cat, well missus captures say, I fed.
She's always waiting as soon as I come down to
my allotment. She's like waiting at the gate for me,
and my dad started whistling her whenever he comes down
to the allotment. But as soon as she is the
cars come Shu'll run onto the plot and get in
position ready to be fed with heid her on a
daily basis, so she's well looked after and she's just
a roague cat. But obviously she keeps the rats down
and keeps the nie down, so it's good to have
a little allotment cat wandering around. It's probably from one
of the houses behind the allotment site, but she's often
down on my allotment and I did see her rat
the other day, so hopefully she managed to get it.
So yeah, we've also got all those bird feeders to
fill up as well. I thought there's no point filling
them up today because the wind is absolutely awful. Some
of the bird feeders were on the floor, and yeah,
if I filled them up, they'd probably just blow off
the trees again and all the seedard just blow all
over the floor. So it's pretty pointless filling them up today.
So hopefully when the wind dies down we can get
them all filled back up again for the birdies. And yeah,
I brought on my SD card from my wildlife camera.
It's not got any good footage on it, to be honest,
it's not taken any good shots of anything. So we're
gonna have to look at repositioning that and sorting it out.
Hopefully get some wildlife on it. That's what we want
to see, some badgers, or want to see some foxes around.
I just want to capture some nice footage of different
wildlife down at my lotment because that's what I like
to do. I like to encourage the wildlife to my plot. Yeah,
the bad wildlife, some of them like rat's, mice and squirrels,
but I love seeing all the wildlife down there, and
every little thing that I can do to help them,
I certainly will do. So Yeah, hopefully we will be
back down at the allotment today when you're listening to
this on Sunday, So hopefully we'll be back down today.
Hopefully we'll be able to get some work done, and
then tomorrow's podcast again we'll be talking about what we've
got up to down at the allotment and what we've
managed to achieve and hopefully get done, and hopefully i'll
give you a report on if my shehad is still
standing and my polytomal is still standing. So wait for
that episode to drop on Monday morning. So I hope
you've enjoyed today's episode, a little roundup of what we've
been getting up to, and obviously storm dar hopefully everybody
is pretty safe and hopefully not too much damage. So
until next time, everyone, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and
keep gardening with Ben. Everyone, thank you for joining me
on this episode of the Gardening with Ben. I hope
you have found some useful tips and inspiration for your
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