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. Well, it's a brand new week,
fresh start, ready for it all to go again. And wow,
the temperatures are going to drop this week. Not seeing
the weather forecast, have a look, and yeah, it's certainly
going to be cold at night now. So if you've
got any delicate plants what are outside, fetch them into
the greenhouse. Fetch them inside, protect them and look after
them through the winter period because if not, the cold
weather's going to kill them off. And obviously if the
preennie or plants and they survive and they come back
every year, that's fine. But if they're not, and if
you want to keep them safe, definitely bring them inside
or put them in a heated greenhouse. As it's going
to turn nippy and the snow predicted this week, so
we'll see if we get a night. Fingers crossed. We
don't because it's my mum's seventieth birthday at the weekend
and hopefully I'm going to be out celebrating that. So yeah,
it's now Monday. What did we get up to on Sunday?
That is the question while I'm recording this on Sunday,
ready for Monday. I've just come back from the allotment
and I'm absolutely freezing. I went down to the allotment today.
I forgot my body warmer. I'll have to start wearing
my body warming now at weekends. As it's getting cold.
You certainly feel it compared to yesterday. It were gorgeous
yesterday down at the allotment, but today it's absolutely dropped.
So I think the autumn and winter weather is finally here.
We've been waiting for it. It's held off, but it's
finally appeared. But we don't need the cold weather to
help with the garlic development over the winter period, so
we do welcome it. Unfortunately we have to welcome it.
And yeah, what have we been up to the allotment today? Well, obviously,
yesterday I absolutely cleared all of my fruit tree area
around my roobarb, so I got most of that done,
so there wasn't that much to be done today. To
be honest, we took it pretty stead. We had a
bit of a lazy day at the allotment. I went
down and I was there for quite a few hours,
but we had a pretty much lazy day. We obviously
did our first thing of feed, making sure the bird
feeders are filled up, fed the pussy cat, and yeah,
then we did some more clearing off the paths and
clearing some more bind weed which are grown around one
of my garden arches. But I'm gonna end up taking
that garden arch down, I think, because it's it's not
very good. It's one of those metal ones and it's
bent and broken and it's not done very well. I
thought I could grow my climbing roses over them, but
they're not very good and they don't seem to last,
so I think that's coming down. We might have to
look at other options on what to grow my climbing
roses over. Maybe we'll build something, you know what my
diarisekulls are like. But maybe we will. We'll have to
have a wait and see. Maybe we'll have to design something.
And you're not seeing my drawing skills absolutely useless. But yeah,
I do love DIY but I'm just rubbish it it.
But yeah, we've been clearing some of that area, and yeah,
I'm happy that I've cleared all my rhubarb area and
around there now. And we've just dropped our YouTube video
up of our weekly tour, so you can see all
the work that I've done this weekend around my real
barb and how good it's looking. We've got a big
job next weekend, but I'll save that for the next podcast.
What we're for the weekend's podcast to tell you what
I'm getting up to down at the allotment, So make
sure you stay tuned for that fingers crossed if it
isn't snowing. We've obviously been filming our videos for the
week as after them all on a weekend. Ready for
the week I've filmed all my daily questions which I'll
be posting on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, so make sure
you get involved in the daily question what I post
as I do love to see all your answers. I
may not reply to them all, but I do actually
read them all. And yeah, we've done a few YouTube
videos this week. So we've done the garden tour. We've
done a tour of my shed and what I plan
to do with it this winter, what we're actually growing
over the winter periods, how to look after the wildlife,
an allotment or encourage it. So yeah, quite a few
videos coming up on the YouTube channel, so I hope
that you are following the YouTube channel. I do post
them all on Facebook as well on Instagram these days,
but they're easier to find on YouTube sometimes, So if
you're not following my YouTube channel, make sure you follow it.
Click the bell and you'll get notified when I upload them,
which will usually be at a nighttime. But yeah, we've
had a good weekend down there overall. I made a
start on tidying my shed out, obviously getting that all
clean and tidy, but I'm happy with how it's progressed,
and I mentioned this in my tour video that I'm
glad I started around the end of September, starting to
clear all my plot, clearing all my beds, tidying it
all up, getting rid of all the band weed, and
it's pretty much all tidy now. All my beds are
done and it's pretty much done outside. I've just got
another weekend to go on doing an area which we'll
mention later on in the podcasts, and then it's going
to be in door work getting all my shed ready
for next year. So we're well ahead of schedule. We're
absolutely flying with getting my open prepped for next year.
One of the next year's planned is obviously to improve
the soil in my beds, because I've not improved them
over the last like twelve years or so. So I'm
going to be adding some nutrients into the soil and
adding compost into it, adding food into it. Anything I
can do to help improve the growth of all my
vegetables and hopefully gets some huge pumpkins next year and
some fantastic cor jets. But we'll see. But we've got
lots and lots to get done over there. But yeah,
we've had a fantastic weekend. Like I said, it's been
a bit too cold today. Maybe I'm going to have
to start having them bonfires down there. I didn't manage
to get one done this weekend, but hopefully I'll start
getting some bonfires going and then that i'll keep them
warm as well. But as I'm actually recording this podcast,
you know, I said, it's not hardly rained here. It's
absolutely chucking it down now, which is fantastic, which is
what I want. We've not had no rain, proper rain
here for ages. We had a like fifteen minute down
poor yesterday when I was allotment, but it wasn't much.
But hopefully this is a lot heavier than it was yesterday,
So hopefully we're going to start getting a bit more
rain now. Because I needed to stop watering my garlic
and water in my winter onions as they're not getting
any water. I'm having to water with myself and it
seems strange having to water outside in November, but yeah,
I'm having to water everything. But it's going to be
a busy week down the allotment, well at home, to
be honest, not at the a lot, but it's going
to be a busy week. This week I'm going to
start planning and prepping for what seat I'm going to
grow for next year. So I'll be sharing that with
you all shortly as I need to have a look
what I want to order, obviously, pop them in a
basket and then get them all ordered. I want to
try some new flowers next year. That's another plan. But yeah,
I'm going to start putting it all together and I'll
share it with you on my podcasts and hopefully get
some new ideas for some my new podcast ideas because
I start to run out of things to talk about
after a while. I tried to make them quite long episodes,
but I only managed to ever get to about ten minutes.
But yeah, I like to talk about a different topic
every single day, so this podcast has obviously been talking
about what we've been getting up to at the weekend.
But we've got as bird houses back up, we've cleaned
them out. We're cleaning them out ready for springtime. If
anybody's got any bird houses in the garden, make sure
you take them down, clean out any old nests what
are in them, disinfect them out just in case there's
any diseases and stuff in that. Give them a clean
as bluets won't move into them if they look like
they've been lived in or anything's disturbed them, so have
them nice and clean ready for springtime, and then that'll
encourage bluets into garden. I do this every year and
then the bluetis moved back in again in the early springtime,
many four laying their eggs for baby blue tis. So
I'm looking forward to getting more birds down at my
allotment next year. And hopefully I'll get my prize as well,
delivered this week from my bird feeder. So hopefully we'll
have some suet blocks again, because after yesterday's episode of
the pesky squirrels eating all my sewet blocks, which I'm
not very happy about. So expensive, they're not cheap suet blocks,
but yeah, they're expensive and they ate them all. And
I thought, oh, that will last me for about ten weeks,
that put a new suet block in every week, But no,
it lasted me three weeks. But hopefully we're going to
start encouraging more animals down onto my plot. Obviously, I
had a look actually in the supermarket yesterday and they've
got some hedgehog food. Now it's specially designed for hedghogs,
but obviously that will encourage my some wraps and squibbles tweeter,
So I don't know if I should put a hedgehog
food out or not. Let me know in the comments
if you put hedgehog food out, well, not in the
comments by sending me a message. I'd like to know
if anyone else puts hedgehog food out. Obviously there's certain
stuff that you can feed them and certain stuff you can't.
But this is specially designed for hedghogs. So let me
know if you feed your hedgehogs with hedgog food and
whether it's worth off doing it or not. My a
lot them. As I have got a hedgehog house, I've
not put it out yet. I need to put it out,
find somewhere nice for it to go, because obviously this
time hedgehogs are hibernating and they need to stay safe
for anything next year. So let me know and send
me a message if you feed the hedgehogs or not.
Make sure you come back for tomorrow's episode. We're going
to be talking about all different topics in this week.
Tomorrow going to be start talking about what's the best
way to start an allotment off off excuse me, what's
the best way to start an allotment off from scratch,
so make sure you're tune in for that episode. If
you're not following, mate, do give me a follow, give
it a like, give it a vating as well. I
know you can give ratings as well, so make sure
you come back for tomorrow. Until next time, everyone, remember,
keep smiling, keep shining, and keep guarding with 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. If
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