Speaker 1: Welcome to Gardening with Ben, your go to podcast for
all things green and growing in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Whether you're a.
Speaker 1: Seasoned gardener, a budding enthusiast, or just curious about cultivating
your own slice of nature, you're in the right place.
Join me Ben as we explore practical tips, inspiring stories,
and the latest trends in gardening to make your outdoor
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friendly gardening. I'm here to help you grow your passion
and read the rewards. So grab your gloves, roll up
your sleeves, and let's get started on this year's gardening journey.
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for
another brand new episode. I hope you're all well on
this Monday morning, and hopefully the snow will start to
fore and fingers crossed disappear soon, because all what's life
left is all that ice.
Speaker 2: And it's awful when it's ice.
Speaker 1: It's lovely when it's first come down, when you can
crunch your feet in it and stuff like that. But
when you've had the snow now for about a week
and it's all that ice, it's awful to walk on
like all the main road to clear and stuff like that,
but all the pavements are so awful to walk on.
It's absolutely awful. But hopefully it will all go soon.
But yeah, we went down on our allotment on Sunday.
Obviously it's Sunday today when I've recorded this, but we've
been down to our allotment. And I didn't even drive
on to the site because my dad goes down every
single day to make sure the cat's been fed down there,
and it says don't even drive on the site, so
I didn't. I like parts away on the road and
walked onto the allotment site and it was really, really bad.
I wasn't expecting to see as much snow as I'd imagined.
Speaker 2: It was just as if it had.
Speaker 1: Been laid all the snow. It was just a blanket
of snow. It beautiful down there, absolutely beautiful. And when
snow's been fallen, it just feels so quiet, so peaceful,
so calm. It's absolutely gorgeous. So I've posted lots of
photos on Instagram and on Facebook of those. If you've
not already seen them, go and have a look at them.
Absolutely gorgeous. And my main job today was obviously to
go and feed the cat.
Speaker 2: The cat was.
Speaker 1: Waiting for me, waiting for its food. We do make
sure it's fed every single day. Even though it's a
wild cat and it can probably fend for itself, we
do like to give it some food to keep it
going and just make sure it's okay. And the other
main reason for going down to the allotment today was
to feed the birds. That is one thing that I
wanted to do. Obviously I've not fed them since last week.
My dad don't fill up the bird feeders like he
just manages to feed the cat. So I filled up
all the bird feeders on my allotment today, got them
all filled up with seed. But we do need to
get some new bird feeders that have got that I
can put peanuts in, because if I just put them
in normal ones at the moment, the squirrel will take
them all.
Speaker 2: So I need to get some squirrel proof peanut feeders.
Speaker 1: That is one one of the things that are in
my Amazon cart at the moment. So we need to
get some squirrel proof bird feeders for the peanuts, and
hopefully in time I'll get a few more different varieties
of seeds because I do want to get some different
varieties of birds down there. Obviously there's not many varieties
of birds at the round at the moment because obviously
it's wintertime. You'll just see a light blue tits and
your robins. I don't see any green finchers and stuff
like that at the moment. So when it gets a
bit warm up, we'll be starting to put out some
different varieties of bird seed, hopefully attract some different varieties
of birds down there, and have them all in squirrel
proof feeders so that the seed will actually last a
bit instead of it all be gone in a day.
Speaker 2: They certainly are.
Speaker 1: Expensive feeding the birds, but it's something I absolutely love
to do. And obviously feeding the bird attracts them to
the plot and all the insects, all the slugs and
stuff like that as well, So attracting the birds to
the allotment is a successful thing to do. And while
I was down there at the allotment, I just went
for a little walk around to see how things are
looking and see how things are getting on. And I
had a look at my geraniums. I had a look
at my sweet peas. The rolls still alive. Fingers crossed,
they'll stay alive for much longer, and we'll steer them
through to the springtime. I've only planted up my geraniums
from out of my allotment because I want to sift
somebody for next year, well this year. Now, what you
can do with geraniums is that when it's before the
cold weather comes, before the frost and the snow and
stuff like that, you can dig them up and move
them into a shed or into a greenhouse or on
a window sill and keep them alive throughout the winter
period and then you can plant them back outside again
one such chance of frost has passed and you'll get
flowers on them again, and you can obviously take cuttings
from them as well and start new plants off. So
it's a way of saving money and having stronger, bigger
plants for next year and get more flowers on them.
So that's what we've done. We've dug them all up
and hopefully we'll get some great flowers on them this year.
And obviously, my sweet peas, you can start them off
in October, which I did, and it makes the plants stronger,
It makes us plants be in front and flower earlier.
And what I've done is I've trimmed them all back
and to about six inch and when they start growing,
when it gets a bit warmer, they'll bush out rather
than just being a one stem plant, so we'll get
more flowers on them, a lot more flowers on them.
They'll bush out, probably won't be as big a flowers,
but there'll be lots more flowers if you get me,
So hopefully we'll have some fantastic displays down at the
allotment this year. That's what I'm wanting at some fantastic
sweet pea displayers because my mum.
Speaker 2: Loves them, my auntie loves them.
Speaker 1: And the fingers with sweet peas is that the more
you keep cutting the flowers off, the more they'll keep
flowering throughout the summertime. And you can have flowers up
to October on your sweet peas as soon as you
start letting them go to seed. If you don't pick
the flowers, then it'll think it's dying off and in
its dormant time, and then it'll stop flowering. So you
are encouraged to keep picking the flowers on sweet peas
from to keep blooming. So that's why one of the
reasons why we grow the sweet peas. They won't last
long in the ours, to last about three or four days,
but obviously you'll be picking them off every few days.
So hopefully you'll get absolutely loads of free flowers. And
they smell absolutely amazing. Sweet peas absolutely gorgeous. So it's
worthwhile growing sweet peas if you haven't tried growing sweet
peas before, and they're pretty easy to grow once they
started growing as well, just make sure that they're big
enough before they put them out so that they can
withstand like birds and slugs and stuff like that. Just
make sure you protect them and you'll get some fantastic
crops from the sweet peas, and that is what we want, really,
some fantastic crops growing. So yeah, I'm looking forward to
some beautiful displays.
Speaker 2: Next year down at the allotment.
Speaker 1: And I had a look around, or we're walking around
my plot today just checking and looking at the bulbs.
I can see a few bulbs popping through, not many.
Hopefully there is a lot of bulbs in there because
we have planted loads this year, so hopefully the squirrel
didn't get them all, and hopefully we'll get some beautiful
spring bulb and spring.
Speaker 2: Flower displays as well. Down at the allotment.
Speaker 1: I know quite a few people have been commenting on
the posts saying that they've got loads of bulbs popping
through and everything like that, so hopefully it we'll get
some beautiful pictures. I love plant but albs and flowers
and stuff like that, so that I can get some
great pictures as well as obviously making the allotment look
absolutely gorgeous as well, because if you're just grind vegetables,
there's no color in vegetables, so you need the flowers
to make some color down there and to make it
more attractive and obviously attract the bees to help pollinate
the fruit and the vegetables as well, So another reason
for planting flowers down there. So yeah, it's been a
nice day down at the allotment today. I didn't spend
too long down there. Spent about an hour down there.
I had a few coffees down there, just had a
look around my plot and just relaxed. Really, it didn't
feel as cold as what it actually looked.
Speaker 2: It actually pretty nice down there.
Speaker 1: Obviously I were wrapped up so I were pretty warm,
but it was nice just to be down at the
allotment after being stuck in.
Speaker 2: My flat whole week.
Speaker 1: I needed to get out and being in my allotment
is my happy place and I absolutely loved it. So yeah,
it's been a successful day down at the allotment today.
I've not done anything obviously, apart from feed the birds
and the cat, but it has been great to get
down to the allotment and fingers Crossed will be back
down at the allotment next week with lots of jobs
that we need to start doing and cracking on with.
We've tidied it out all our shed, we've cleared all
us beds, and my job at the moment is to
clear my polytunnel if it's still standing after all the snow.
I did notice absolutely loads of snow on top of
the polytunnel today. I should have knocked it all off
to be honest, but it'll be like a block of ice,
so I didn't want to risk damage in the polytunnel,
so I thought I'd just leave it and it'll slide
off in its own time fingers crossed this week, So yeah,
hopefully we'll be back down at the plot next week
and get your lots of pictures and lots of footage.
I need to start recording some more videos. Again, we've
not recorded any videos for a while and hopefully keep
you on track with how well we get on this year.
But yeah, I hope that you're enjoying the podcast. I
hope that you enjoy listening to them. We've had a
lot of nice comments coming from people via messages and
people of leaving reviews on the podcast as well, which
you can do. You can leave a review after the
podcast and just let me know what you think of
the episode. It's always nice to see and obviously it
pushes it out as well. The more people that comment
in the review section of the podcast on Spotify, so
thank you for everybody that does that. So until next time, everyone,
remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone,
thanks for tuning in to today's episode of Gardening with Ben.
I hope you've enjoyed our chat and picked up some
tips to help your garden and allotment pride. Don't forget
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