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. It's a brand new week.
We'll start the weekend is finally over. Unfortunately I know
not what we want, but wow, what a weekend hit
has been. It's been absolutely gorgeous. Where is winter? Where
is the cold weather? Off? Autumn? This is actually a
really nice autumn that we're having. And as I mentioned
in my tour video what I've shared on YouTube yesterday,
it's not actually rained frages. Has anyone realized that it's
not rained frages? And when I were looking at maccarlic
of my onions, like some of them haven't started popping
through yet, and that's probably because we've not had no
read to water them, so I've had to water them.
And it's not often you'd be watering outside in this
sort of weather, but yeah, I'm having to water my
garlic of my onions to get them going, which is hard,
which you wouldn't often think about, to be honest. One
of the jobs that I did over the weekend was
fill all my water butts back up because they turn
our water off at allotment site over winter peace because
they don't want the pipes to freeze and them to burst,
even though they never usually do. But yeah, they've started
turning it off again and we have to make sure
we've got enough water because it don't turn it onto
like April time. And I usually start all my seat
off in March, so I'll need to keep on watered
from beginning of March, if you get me. Obviously, I've
got the water on my plot as well from my
water boats outside. But whileever the water's turned on, I'll
be using it out of the tap until they turn
it off, and then I have to start using it
out of the water boats, which I don't really want
to be using, so we needed to start raining. I
don't really want to say this, but we do need
some rain. But yeah, hopefully we'll get some main soon.
We'll have to check the forecast on that. But I
did get absolutely a load of work done down at
the allotment. And like I said, if you've not checked
out my tall video for my allotment for this weekend,
go and check it out on my YouTube channel called
Gardening with Ben, and you'll both see how well my
allotment's coming on. It's starting to look fantastic. All the
beds cleared, the paths are nearly all clear. I've still
got a couple more paths to sort out. Then they're
all done. Then I've cleared the top of my plot.
I've cleared quite a bit area of that, so I'm
pleased about that. I'm having visions now of what I
want to do up there for next year because I
built this area at the top of my plot a
couple of years ago, but I've never really used it
to its full advantage. I just used it to make
it look good, to be honest, because I've never used
it in the seventeen years that I've had the allotment,
so I thought, I'm gonna get it all clear, We're
gonna get it designed, and then we never planted anything
in it apart from a few herbs. But yeah, next year,
I'm gonna get all this back area plot up to
looking pretty good and I've got some visions for it.
I'm thinking like alpine plants up at the top of
my plot, along with more herbs and everything like that,
things that are easy to grow. And I thought alpines
will look nice because they'll just like cover the ground
and some have flowers on them as well. So we're
going to look for suns that I've got flowers on
and get them all planted out. So hopefully we're going
to have a nice new area on my a lotment
next year. As I like to invest a bit of
money into my plot each year and an area that
I've done up and it's worthwhile if you get me,
so each year, I'll spend a bit of money on
a different area. So I'm thinking of getting this top
area sorted one some fall, get some alpines in, get
some paving down, sort out of the borders, make it
look good and I know you're not meant to spend
lots of money on it, but I haven't got a garden,
so I love to see money going into it and
it looking nice, and the less maintenance that I have
to do on it, the better overall, because like this
year is probably like the first year that I'm not
having to do much maintenance on my plot because it's
getting to that standard where it's all pretty much good,
looking good, and I don't have to do anything on it.
The only investments that I'm going to be spending on
it over time is to get my paving done, because
paving slabs are expensive, So every year I'm going to
be buying a few more paving slabs, and eventually it'll
all be paved and my paths won't get muddy or
anything like that. They'll all be nicely paved so that
I can walk around nice And most of my plot
is actually paved. All my paths I've been getting there
over the seventeen years of having the plot. Whenever anybody's
giving up the allotment and it's empty, I've usually scoured
it for paving slabs. All the secrets are coming out now.
Don't tell anyone, but yeah, paving slabs are expensive. They
like gold. So if I see any paving slabs, I'll
have them if it's an empty plot, if you get me.
But yeah, hopefully next year it's going to look a
bit more better as well, a bit more investment into
the top area of my plot and making that look good.
So what have we been up to down at the
allotment this weekend? That is what this podcast is meant
to be about. I've got off on another tangent again.
I always do this, So this weekend my allotment, it
has been a case of clearing the top of my plot,
which I have been talking about. So that is all right.
So we've cleared the top area of the plot. We've
got rid of all the leaves what are blown down
and put them into the compost bin. Leaves will still
keep blowing down for quite a few weeks because there's
still loads of leaves on at the moment. But we
cleared all that, clear all the bind we cleared all
the brambles, got that all sorted, cleared a lot of
the paths, which is the pain because I am a
messy gardener. Like I said, I'll empt to my bed,
but I'll just chuck all the weeds on the path,
which is no good for anyone. So really I should
put them into a tub straight away and then put
them into the compost deep. But I don't make life
difficult and I just chuck them on the path. Then
what else did we do? We potted up my salvia.
I've got all my salvias potted up now. They look
absolutely fantastic. There were loads of flowers on them, all
on all my cuttings. So I'll be putting a video
out this week, so make sure you stay tuned for that.
But basically, I potted them up and I've cut the
flowers off to make the root system better on it
and to hopefully push more shoots out on the cutting
and what's growing, and hopefully we'll get some nice bushy
plants next year. So fingers crossed we'll get that sorted.
We also filled up my bird feeders, obviously keeping the
birds happy. Got to keep the birds happy down at
the allotment expensive things, but the birds and the squirrels.
Should I say? We have pinched out all my sweet peas.
A video will becoming for that as well. We have
potted up my geraniums. Videos coming out for that. I'm
filming loads of videos for you all. I hope you're
all enjoying all these videos. And if you're not following
my YouTube channel, do give it a follow because I'm
putting a lot of time and effort into all my
YouTube videos. I would like it to get monetized eventually,
but it's so hard to get YouTube monetized. Obviously, everything
that I learned from these podcasts and from bits and
bobs like that, it all goes back into my allotment
for your videos and for your podcast to show you
what I'm doing and stuff, so it's all worthwhile. So yeah,
I know there's quite a few adverts in these podcasts,
but like I said, it all goes back into my allotment,
and it's all goes back into the labor off it.
What health have we done? That has been pretty much it.
It doesn't sound a lot, but it is a lot.
We have spent a lot of time down there. This
weekend and next weekend, I'm going to get absolutely scratched
to death, So get ready for the pain from that podcast.
Down where all my fruit trees are, there's a lot
of brambles growing from my neighbor's plot, so I need
to prune all them back. I won't be able to
dig them out in an awkward spot, but I'll trim
them right back to the base. I do that every year,
and then by the time it comes to the next winter,
they love growing back again. They usually last about a
year before they get bad again. So we'll pull them
all back and chop them all back, and then in
a few weeks, when my fruit trees are completely bare,
I'm going to give them a winter wash. Now, I
don't know if you've heard of a winter wash. You
can get it on Amazon, and basically it is a
chemical unfortunately, but I spray all my fruit trees when
they're completely bare, and it'll stop any insects from living
in the tree and hatching on the tree and stuff
like that. It just gives them protection over the winter.
And then I'll do it again in the springtime before
they start budding up. And also I'll be getting some
sticky tape things what you put around the trees to
stop anything from crawling up and nesting in the tree,
like bugs and stuff like that. So I like to
put a bit of attention into my fruit trees to
protect them for the year. Ahead and hopefully stop any
anything from eating the apples that can as there's like
something called a winter off or something like that, and
it crawls up the tree and it nests in it
and it hatches and then it'll like eat your fruit
and stuff like that. So the more I can do
top stuff getting eaten, the better, really, So that's what
we're gonna be doing next week. We go be sorting
out my food area, which will be a four weekend's work. Again,
I usually split it over two days. That'll be my
task for the week, and then I'll do little jobs
in between that, like any thing that I need to
pop up, or anything that I need to sort out
a path or a bit like that. I do a
few other jobs in between. I don't just do that
all weekend, if you get my but that's my main
project for next weekend. I accept myself little project areas
to do, and once I've done them, I can tick
them off. I know. I don't put too much pressure
on myself to do a massive area with my allotment.
I'll say i'll do that chunk this weekend, I'll do
that chunk next weekend, a bit like that, and you
get it. All done eventually, and that's the best way
of doing it. You don't have to put too much
pressure on yourself or it becomes a chore. And it's
not a chot. It's fun and good for the mental
health and everything like that. So I hope you've enjoyed
these podcasts. I really do. Make sure you do give
us a follow. If you don't follow us already, make
sure you follow us YouTube, follow us Instagram, follow us
Facebook page. And yeah, I'm hoping that you're all enjoying
all this content because you'll keep coming back. And like
I said, this podcast is here to stay now. It's
every single day I'm trying to get off the ground
gate going again. So the more shares of this podcast
twenty year Gardening Friends will help a lot. So until
next time, everyone, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep
gardening with everyone. Thank you for joining me on this
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found some useful tips and instpiration for your own gardening
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