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.
Speaker 2: Each episode will dig into tips, tricks, and techniques to
make your garden and allotment thrive from planting, sewing and growing.
Speaker 1: We will share all the tips and add advice.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for
another brand new episode for today. I hope you're all well.
I hope you all getting in that festive mood. And yeah,
it's nearly the weekend. One more day and then the
weekend is finally here, so it's finally Friday. And yeah,
we're getting ready to go back down to the allotments.
Fingers crossed this rain and windows stopped. It's been pretty
stormy today here in Sheffield where I am, but hopefully
we'll be able to get down to the allotment this
Saturday and Sunday because I need to start filming some
more contact for you all, and I need to get
back into doing a lot of more work down there,
because obviously the last few weeks I've been absolutely tied
up with moving and getting ready. I've just got a
new chair to sit on today while I do my podcast,
so I'm a lot more come for you. And yeah,
I'm getting my setup pretty well here in my flat
now and settling in pretty well. I just need to
find out where the local places are now and go
and visit a few sites around me. That's the next
plan on the tick list. But hopefully i'll settle in
in the village pretty nice. So, as you know, we
start off with a Christmas joke to get you in
the festive mood. If you've not been watching them on
Instagram or on Facebook, we'll deliver them here as well
for you. So today's Christmas joke is, what do you
call a festive herb garden? What do you call a
festive herb garden? You call it seasons greeting, seasons greeting.
So what do you call a festive herb garden? Seasons greeting?
I hope you're enjoying all these little dad jokes that
we keep throwing in every single day. You never know
we might continue them throughout the year and just do
other gardening jokes. So let me know if you want
me to carry on with the jokes, and I'll carry
on with them on a daily basis, as quite a
lot of people are enjoying them. So today's podcast episode,
we're going to talk about five ways to transform you
out allotment over the winter period. And these are probably
the five things that I mostly concentrate on during the
winter months down at my allotment. And in the olden
days when I first started my allotment, I used to
finish off my allotment at September and I never used
to get back to my allotment until in probably January
February time, and then I was rushing to get it
all ready in time for March when I'm starting to
sow my seeds. So I tend to do a lot
of the jobs throughout the winter months when it's decent weather.
And as you know, I've dug over all my allotment
and cleared most of the rubbish away all ready, so
I then concentrate on doing parts of doing my share,
doing my polytonnel, and other jobs which need doing around
the allotment what I don't get chance to do during
the spring and summer months. So to get your allotment
ready in the winter, all these five easy winter tasks
which we like to stick by. So the first one
is clear and tidy your allotment. Now, this is the
first thing I usually do when my allotment's finished end
of October beginning of November. I clear away all the
old vegetables, all the old weeds, and give it a
good tidy up, and try and do any repairs that
need doing down at the allotment and getting it all
in ship shape and tidy ready for the year ahead.
And I write down little jobs which I need to do,
and anything what I'm planning on changing, I'll like design
it and draw it and hopefully get it built and
ready and support it. And now I've got my allotment
in pretty good shape with the layout. The layout I'm
going to stick with now probably forever as it works.
I've got my beds set out, I've got my paths
laid out, and the only thing that I'm going to
change is I'm going to get paving slabs for paths,
but they're expensive now, so it's only behind a few
pavings slabs every now and then to keep filling the
paths up and eventually hopefully we'll have all paving stone
slabs down on the paths. I just like them down
because they don't get as muddy. It's suppressed as the weeds,
it's level, and yeah, it looks a lot more aesthetic
as well with nice paving stabs down. Obviously, the slugs
like to hide underneath them, so they're not all beneficial,
but they do look a lot nicer. So that's the
first job which we concentrate on doing down at the allotment,
clear and tidy your allotment, and once you've done that
then you can start looking at some of these other jobs.
So the next up is enrich your soil. Winter is
the ideal time for improving your soil, and that means
either adding nutrients to the soil or growing green manure
in your beds and then digging them in the springtime.
As obviously during the summer months a lot of the
nutrition has been used up with growing vegetables, going your
flowers in and yeah, you need to get that nutrition
back into the soil. And one way obviously you can
do that is by spreading a thick cleave of well
wet manure down, covering it over and then in the
springtime dig it into the soil once it's rotted down
even more and hopefully that will improve the soil and
get your produce growing absolutely fantastic with great results down
at the allotment. Obviously, the more you look after the soil,
the more the produce will look after you, and that
is what you want, really, you want great produce coming
from your allotment. So next up is plan your crop rotation.
Now some people don't do this, but it is a
key factor in getting great vegetables and it leads on
from the other segment before enriching your soil, is that
if you don't enrichy soil, you need to make sure
that you've planted crops in a different place to the
previous year. The reason being is that the crops will
take out the nutrition nutrients from the soil which are
needed for that plant. So if you plant the same
plant in the same place, a lot of the nutrition
has gone from the soil what that plant needs, so
either enriched the soil and ad manure backing or movie
vegetables around. Obviously, it would help if you did enrich
it as well, because they might not be the right
nutrients in the soil from a different crop as that
might have used them. But yeah, obviously enriching your soil
and moving your crop around is a key factor. And
that is one thing that I always do around this
time of year. January time, I draw a plan of
my allotment and a plan where I'm going to plant
stuff this year, and I make a list of everything
that I want to try growing, whether it be the
same things, whether it be new things, or whether it'll
be trialing things have never actually grown before. So planning
your crop rotation is a key factor of getting a
great crop from your allotment. And obviously check where this
sun and where this shade as well, because different vegetables
grow in different places. Next up is a job which
isn't that fantastic to do, but it needs doing. Maintain
your tools and structures. When it means by maintaining your tools,
obviously clean them up and store them away for the
winter if you're not going to be using them, and
oil them up. If you've got secretaries and different machinery tools.
Make sure they're all nice and clean, ready for the
year ahead. Maintaining your structures. That means looking after your sheds,
after your polytunnels, after your greenhouses. And we've talked about
this in previous episodes. Is that obviously in the winter months,
I do a lot of work on my shed. I
make sure all the polycarbonates fastened down well. I do
any repairs to my polytunnel by taping up any splits
in it. And if you've got a greenhouse, make sure
that all the clips are secure, that it's fastened down
to the ground well, just in case we have some storms,
which we have been getting few recently, and it's case
of making sure it's all in good shape. And obviously
you can do different setups in your shed, like possibly
paint it to stop it from rotting, or whether it
be putting you shelving up, or just tidying up your
whole shed and making it last an extra year, because
if you don't do a bit of maintenance you could
end up with a disaster like I did where one
year half of my shed collapsed. I weren't able to
grow in my shed for a year as it was
out of action. It was a mess. It We're all
falling down, polycarbonate were falling off, and it had all
cracked and split. Winter got in and blown off of
it away. And yeah, last wintertime I spent a lot
of time rebuilding my shed and making it stronger and
a better structure ready, So hopefully it'll last a few
more years, but obviously I will keep an eye on
it through the winter and do anything that needs repairing
or replacing. And the last up is plant winter crops
and perennials. So if you're thinking about growing winter crops,
now is the perfect time to do it. Obviously, if
you've got a polytunnel, you can grow stuff throughout the
winter months in the polytunnel or in a one call
frame or one greenhouse. I did talk about what you
could grow in previous episodes, so if you've not listened
to that one, make sure you go back and listen
to that one and find out what you can actually
grow in the polytunnel and greenhouse at this time a year.
I also talked about perennials and annuals, what you can
grow like sweet peas and geraniums at this time of year,
starting them off and obviously, if you think about growing
fruit down in your allotment are in the garden, now
is the perfect time to be planting any fruit in
the plot because it is the perfect conditions. There's wet
weather and the plants are dormant, the concentrating on growing
the roots. If you plant them in the summertime, it's
worse off because they're concentrating on growing the fruit and
the flowers. So you want to be planting any fruit
in the winter months. And that's why you see the
supermarkets full of fruit trees, fruit bushes, et cetera. Because
they know it's the perfect time to plant them. Now.
If you go to a garden center and some of
them don't have as many, but they'll still sell them.
But it's ideal to plant them during the autumn and
winter months down at the allotment. So those are the
five key tasks of what you should be doing down
at the allotment are in the at this time of year.
I hope you found it extremely useful, and if you're
new to this podcast, make sure you do give us
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I've just had my Spotify review or my podcast over
the last year, and it's amazing to see how far
and how wide my podcast actually goes. And it's not
just the UK that's big listeners. There's big listeners in
other countries as well, So if you're from a different country,
I thank you for listening and I hope you find
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Gardening with Ben. If you don't follow me on my
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until next time, everyone, remember, keep smiling, keep shining, and
keep gardening with Ben. Everyone, thank you for joining me
on this episode of Gardening with Ben.
Speaker 2: I hope you have found some useful tips and inspiration for
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