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 alltment. So sit back, grab
a brew and enjoy today's episode. Hey everyone, and welcome
back to Gardening with Ben. I hope you're all well,
and I hope you're all keep him busy. And yeah,
it's finally the weekend, the first weekend of December. So
who's going in the allotment or who's getting ready for Christmas?
That is the question of in the garden should I
say as well? But yeah, are you getting ready for Christmas?
Are you out writing your list for Father Christmas? Or
he is spending it in doors staying warm and dry,
or are you mad like me spending it in the allotment.
So yeah, as always, we're going to be giving you
a Christmas joke of the day. For those that don't
see them online, this is another place where you can
listen to us. So I'm lucky for you or looking
for you, whichever way. So today's Christmas joke is why
did the gardener plant mint at Christmas? Why did the
gardener plant mint at Christmas? Because he wanted a mint
to wonderland? Why did the gardener plant mint at Christmas?
Because he wanted a minto wonderland? There you are, That's
the best you're going to get, and there'll be plenty
of while to come all the way up to December.
So I hope you're enjoying these daily Christmas jokes. So
what are we talking about today? Well, in yesterday's episode,
we talked all about the key tasks of getting your
allotment prepared and ready for a year ahead. I hope
you found it useful and I hope it gave you
some enthusiasm and encouragement into getting your gardens and allotments done.
So what are we going to be doing at the
allotment this weekend? For us down at the allotment, that
is a question. Let me share with you what our
plans are for our allotment and if it encourages you
to do a bit in your garden or allotments, that's
what I want to hear from. So, yeah, what our plans. Well,
I need to go out and get some more bird
feed as they are rummaging through throughout my bird feed
eating loads, which is a good sign. It shows that
I'm feeding the birds and encouraging them. But obviously the
squirrels are taking some, they're eating it, and I've seen
a rap down at my allotment as well, so they're
eating it as well. So I'm feeding all the wildlife
down there, and obviously I'm feeding the cat as well,
which we've got down at my allotment. But yeah, I'll
be filling up all my bird feeders and getting them
ready for the winter because we have had a bit
of cold weather, but not a load, so the ground
isn't that much frozen, so birds can still get worms
and stuff from out of the gardens. But obviously looking
after the birds, especially when it's cold and they can't
get anything out of the ground, it keeps them going
and obviously feeding them certain bird feed gives them energy
as well throughout the winter months, which is what they want.
The next main job down at the allotment this weekend,
well last weekend, I only went down on Sunday because
I was out celebrating work Christmas parties. But yeah, last weekend,
what I did was I rearranged all my loganberry bush
and tied it in a better position so it easier
to get down around where my strawberry beds are. And
I also tied up or my new BlackBerry canes as well,
what have been growing this year. Because obviously the next
year's blackberries will grow on the canes which grew this year,
and the same goes for logan berries. That the logan
berries will grow on the new canes this year, So
it's a case of tying them up and supporting them
and getting them all in place ready for the year ahead.
So I did that very delicately because I didn't want
to break any of the canes or damaging any of them.
And they're all tied to my fences and support so
they're all sorted. So my main job this weekend it's
going to be sorting out around where my strawberry beds
are and tiding them all up, and I'm going to
be trimming back any of the old leaves are on
and what are dying off, or any disease leaves to
stop them from like getting diseased and spreading throughout the
winter months. So I just give them a good trim
over the winter, and I'll obviously cut off any runners
what are growing and plant them up into the ground
and make sure they're well watered, which obviously there will
be at this time yet, especially with the amount of
rain that we've had recently, so it's just a case
of keeping the watered into the ground to make sure
that they take. But yeah, we planted about an extra
two hundred strawberry plants the other month of my a
lotment because last year I didn't get a good crop,
so I've replaced a lot of the plants. I filled
tons of gaps in which we're all over in my
black membrane, so they're all spaced out equally. So we
planted absolutely loads of strawberries. So I'm hoping for a
fantastic crop next year because my crop this year was abysmal.
I wasn't happy with it. Either the plants didn't do
very well or the birds ate them, so we need
to keep an eye and possibly protect them better next
year from any and squirrels from eating them next year.
So we're gonna have to look into possibly making a
little structure or some netting over them to stop anything
from coming down and getting them. So we're going to
be tiding all them up. We're also going to be
tied in all the paths around my strawy bed area
so that it's easy to get round and get down
the side of the bed so that I can reach
over and sort all them out. We're also going to
be emptying my carrot bed. What I planted. I started
off while with it. I sewed all my carrots in
this raised planter in my greenhouse and they all started
growing because they're high off the ground so the carrot
fly won't get them. And I thought, oh, I'm going
to get some decent carrots this year. I forgot to
water them throughout the year, didn't I. I just put
them in the corner and forgot about them and didn't
water them. So I'm not expecting miracles from these carrots.
But we're going to pull them all up and we're
going to see what carrots we've got from them, so
make sure you stay tuned for that YouTube episode. Because
you know me, I'm very open and honest. I'll tell
you if I've done rubbish, I'll tell you if I've
done absolutely fantastic. I share the truth. I don't hide
from it, not like some gardeners. They'll just say what
we grew with these probably bought them in the supermarket
and stuck them in the ground. But now we are
upen and honest with how well we do with our growing.
So we're going to be harvesting all them, and then
possibly on Sunday, we're going to start with the renovation
of my shed. And I'm excited for this because I'm
rubbish at the IY. I've always admitted that I'm absolutely terrible.
It looks awful and I do a rubbish job, but
I enjoy doing it and it's good fun. So we're
going to be renovating the inside of my shed this year.
Like I said, last year, we spent the time on
rebuilding all the outside, sort of all the structure out
and everything like that. This year we're going to concentrate
on the inside of the shed. Because I've got into
making my YouTube videos quite a lot now and I
absolutely love doing it. So I'm going to try and
make a potting bench type thing where I can film,
I can show what I'm doing with a good backdrop
to it, so it looks professional somehow professional. One day
I'll be professional. One day i'll be famous. Keep listening
to these podcasts and maybe one day I will be
But yeah, I want to have a nice backdrop to it.
I want it to look fantastic and look like a
proper little shed studio type thing. So I want to
improve in my shed and do that. I also want
to sort out all my shelving, tidy it all up.
I'm going to paint all inside my shed, make it
all look fresh and brand new. I've got wooden shelving
at the moment, and it's fantastic. They're all cut to pieces.
I can take them all off if I want to
grow anything underneath them so that I don't un scroll
the bench. That I can just take them off of
the supports and take them out. But what I'm going
to do is I'm gonna possibly paint them all and
then I'm gonna put some polyofene over them. I've got
a load of polyfene in my shed and I'm possibly
gonna put polyofene over them so that when I'm watering
my plants, it won't give the wood chance of rotting.
If you get me, it's going to protect it so
that the water will just run off and then the
shed will grow. Not the shed will grow, the shelves
will be protected for years to come and hopefully last
plenty of years. So I'm going to do all that,
and I need to sort out a lot of my
plant pots so much, all my seed trays. I need
to get them all cleaned out and ready and just
sweep up and tidy up and burn any old wood.
I need to start having bonfires. That's one thing I've
not started doing yet. We need to start having some
bonfires down there and getting rid of some of the
old wood that got down there. So hopefully I'll be
starting to do with the shed. But I will definitely
be filming plenty of videos down there in the shed
showing you all the transformation of what I'm getting up to,
and you can follow along and see how well I
get up to. So if you don't follow my YouTube channel,
do give it a follower, and then you'll be able
to see how well my shed is actually coming on.
And another job one weekend once it's dry is probably
to spray all my fruit trees. That's one thing I
want to want to spray them all and get them
all pretty much. I put like a winter wash on them,
and I'll also put some sticky bands around them as
well to stop any insects from crawling up and trying
to damage the trees over the summer periods. So if
you put them on over winter, it'll stop any insects
from hibernating in it and laying its eggs and stuff
like that. But yeah, that is one job I usually
do every winter. But there's still a lot of leaves
on my cooking apple tree. I'm guessing there'll be a
lot more left come off it now because it has
been windy today and awful when I've been recording this episode,
so hopefully the leaves all dropped off, so I'll have
to tidy all them leaves up as well and put
them in my compost heap so that they start rotting down.
So yeah, we've got a lot of jobs to do
down at the allotment. Obviously, I'm going to film a
allotment tour. I didn't put one out this week. I
did record it, but I didn't put it out. It's
a bit late putting it out now. That's a bit pointless.
So I'm going to do an allotment tour next week.
We'll start doing all the videos again. Obviously you're getting
the daily jokes and yeah, we're going to get some
more content delivered to you over on the allotment, So
I hope you're looking forward to all that. I'm trying
to get as much content out there as possible for
you to watch and listen to these days, and I
hope you're all enjoying it. I get a lot of
good feedback about my podcasts, so I hope that you're
enjoying all them. So if you're not following us, do
give us a follow. Feel free to share it to Instagram, YouTube, YouTube,
to Facebook, anything, share it to your friends. So until
next time, everyone, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep
guardening with everyone. Thank you for joining me on this
episode of Gardening with Ben. I hope you have found
some useful tips and integration for your own gardening and
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