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 for another brand new episode.
I've just been looking at how many people have actually
been listening to my podcast and wow, literally I had
five hundred streams of my podcast yesterday. I can't believe it.
Thank you ever so much to everybody that's listening to
my podcast and that has tuned back in and any
newbies that are listening to these podcasts. Make sure you
can do click the follow button and click the bell
and you'll get notified when new podcasts come up and
hopefully they will be uploaded for seven o'clock in the
morning and hopefully, fingers crossed, these podcasts are going to
be every day now, as like I say, I've got
an nice new structure now that I'm working back normal hours,
so I can record podcasts for every single day for
you to listen to and hopefully share some tips and
advice with you and talk about different topics from down
at the allotment. So what are we talking about today, Well,
today we're going to talk about looking after the wildlife
during the winter periods, as I always find an important
thing to do down at my allotment. Obviously some people
aren't that bothered about it, but I do like to
look after the wildlife and as you'll have been seeing
from like my posts on Instagram and social media, recently,
I've purchased a new bird feeder where the birds can
come along and help themselves to peanuts or seed or
I've also got a suet blocking it as well, and
it's also got some water on it so that they
can have a drink and a feed as well while
they're on there. But obviously one of the things that
it does attract is obviously rats, and it can attract squirrels,
So my dad's been out and purchased a special guard
that you stick on the pole to stop anything from
climbing up and pinching them all. Because obviously it's good
to see the squirrels there and look after the squirrels,
but I don't want them to tweet it all. It
is quite expensive. And I do want to look after
the birds on my allotment because attracting the birds to
the allotment it will help them come and they eat
insects off the plants and any bugs what are around,
and also eat the slugs that are around. So encouraging
the birds to the allotment is pretty much important and
something that I always want to do. And the other
week I thought, there's not many birds around here on
the allotment. It's absolutely quiet, and I'm thinking, is it
because I've not been feeding them or is it because
it's not much around from tweet at the moment, because
obviously all the berries are finished now and stuff like that,
so there's not as much around for the birds to eat.
But I did have a sparrowhawk nearly dive bomb me
down on the allotment. And yeah, obviously if there's a
bird of prey around. The other birds tend to disappear,
so it's hard sometimes to attract them back to the
allotment so that they're not scared anymore. And the last
time that I went down to the allotment, I was
happy to see that I had got birds coming back
to the allotment again. And I always love being down
at the allotment with birds. Like literally, there would no
robbins around or anything like that. And when you're down
there on the allotment and you're digging over your beds,
you've always got like a little robin watching over here,
waiting for those worms to come up and to quickly
eat them and hurry off on the way again. And
it's nice to have some company down there. I know,
I love being down there on my own on the allotment,
but it's nice to have the robbins around you and
the blue tits and everything like that enjoying it. So
I do love to look after the wildlife and attract
them to the allotment. So the more that I can
do to attract the birds to the plot, I will do.
And yeah, it is expensive. You can be spending quite
a bit of money every week filling the bird feeders up.
But it's something that I want to do more and
help more down on the allotment because I have also
put some wildlife cameras outside as well, so I've started
filming where the bird feeder is, so hopefully we'll get
some good footage and some good pictures for you all
to see. And you never know, I might be able
to see some other wildlife on their light badges or
hedgehogs and stuff like that. So I'm going to be
keeping an eye out on these wildlife cameras because when
I had the kittens in my shed the other week
when they'd been born, a lot of people were saying, oh,
get some wildlife cameras, gets wildlife camera. But I was thinking,
I'm sure they used to be like one hundred pound
each and stuff like that. But no, they've come down
in price a lot now, the wildlife cameras and the
infrared and battery powered as well, so they were only
like two for like eighty pounds or something like that,
and they came with the SD card and the night
vision as well, so they see what happens at night
and pick it all up and either record it or
take photos of it for you to look back on
later and absolutely fantastic. The quality on them is brilliant.
So hopefully I'll start to get some footage from down
at the allotment. So we're looking after the birds again,
like I say, at the allotment and encouraging them. So
if anybody's got any tips and advice on what I
can do to encourage the birds to my allotment, please
do send me a message and let me know it's
it'd be good to hear from you. I obviously have
two bird houses down on my allotment as well for
the blue teds, and for the last couple of years
I've had blue teds coming nest in my birdhouses, which
has been absolutely fantastic to see. And you can bluet
its are so fast and it just amazes me how
fast they're going through the hole in the birdhouses, shoot
back out again and then come back again. And the
amount of insects they must catch to collect to like
feed the young while they're in there is amazing. And
you can hear the babies cheaping and when they're getting
ready to fledge you are waiting. You can see them
like peeking the head through the little hole in the house,
thinking are you going to come out? Are you going
to come out? Are you going to start flying? And
stuff like that, and then all of a sudden they've
all disappeared and they've left for the year. So you've
done your little bit down in the allotment in the
garden and looking after the birds and encouraging them, and
to have baby blue tits and build a family down
there is absolutely amazing to see. I do really love it,
so I encourage that every year as well. And one
thing you can do around this time of year now
is if you've got bird houses, is to clean them out.
And when I mean clean them out, it's not just
a case of clearing out the nest. It's a case
of disinfecting inside them as well, because they can be
diseases in there and you can find spiders. Yes, they
might be spiders hiding in there, so be careful if
you don't like spiders and bugs and everything like that.
So make sure you clean them out well and then
hang them back up ready for the springtime because springtime
is when they start looking around for the houses and
ready to nest again. You never know, you might get
the same family back again. But you can't really tell
with bluet it's if it's the same family or not.
But they won't move into the house if it looks
like it's been lived in before, So that is one
of the reasons why you have to clean them out
at this time you and get them are ready ready
for next year for a new family to move in.
So that's one job that I have to do every year.
And my sister kindly bought me a present for my birthday.
She bought me a ren house as well, so I'm
going to have to put that up and hopefully we'll
get some ren's living in there as well. But I'm
looking to get in some more bird type of houses
down at the allotment. I know you can get robbing
houses and other little houses as well, so I might
do that after I've recorded this podcast, actually look on
Amazon and see what other bird houses we can purchase
down there. And that's one thing that I've put back
into my allotment. And also I've got a hedgehog house
down at the allotment. What I need to put out
ready for the hedghogs because there will be hibernating at
this time of year, so we need to look after
them and hopefully encourage the hedgehogs. It might be a
bit too late to put out the bird, not the bird,
the hedgehog house, but we can give it a try.
We can pop it out and see if we're getting
the hedgehogs hibernating over the winds period. But the more
I can do down at the allotment to help look
after the different animals down there, the more that I
can do for the better. And I also do it
by encouraging different wild after the allotment by stuff that
I plant down there as well. Obviously I talk a
lot about planting my spring bulbs to attract the bees
down there, and yeah, the bees to the allotment, and
obviously you can plant flowers to attract the butterflies as well.
So you can do all your little different jobs on
helping the wildlife down at the allotment. So if you
are wanting to help the wildlife more down in your
allotment or in your garden, have a look online and
have a look see what you can do in your
garden for encouraging the wildlife down there, whether it be
just helping the birds or whether it's putting up a
bird house or even the hedgehog houses as well. There's
all different ways we can help the wildlife in our
gardens and allotments. So if you found this podcast encouraging
and making you want to pop out some birds seed
this winter time to feed the birds, let me know.
I'll always love to hear from you. I like to
know if I've encouraged somebody to do something along these ways.
And obviously, like say, we had four hundred streams yesterday. Wow,
we five one hundred streams on my podcast yesterday, So
a lot of people are listening to this podcast, and
I hope that you are all enjoying it and just
glad it's back as well. So I want to do
this every single day, whether I just waffle on or
whether I talk about a topic. That is how it
all ended up. But obviously you all are enjoying this
and getting something from it, or you wouldn't come back
and keep listening to it. So fingers crossed, We're going
to have another podcast tomorrow for you all to listen to,
which I hope will go down well. Like I say,
if you are not following mate or got the bell clicked,
make sure you do that and you'll get notified when
you podcasts come up and use like seven o'clock every
morning for you to listen to, whether it's on the
way to work, whether it's taking the kids to school,
or whether it's why you're having your morning brew or
at the allotment. I hope you all enjoy them. 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. I hope you have
found some useful tips and inspiration for your own gardening
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