Speaker 1: Welcome to Gardening with Ben. You'll go to a podcast
for all things green and growing in twenty twenty five.
Whether you're a seasoned gardener, a budding enthusiast, or just
curious about cultivating your own slice of nature, you're in
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inspiring stories, and the latest trends in gardening to make
your outdoor space bloom with life, from a lotment adventures
to wildlife 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. It's Wednesday, already halfway through the week, and
we nearly getting towards that Big Bird Watch weekend. I'm
excited for it. I'm definitely looking forward to it. Figures crossed.
We get lots and lots of birds down at our
lotment at the weekend, but that will be talked about
in tomorrow's episode. We're going to talk about the Big
Bird Watching tomorrow's episode, so make sure you come back
for tomorrow's episode. To listening on that one. Today we're
going to talk about what our seed goals are this year,
what our plant goals, what we're hoping to grow, what
we're hoping to gain from our allotment this year down
at the allotment, and what I'm going to put into
it and hopefully what I will return out of it.
So this year, we're going to concentrate on growing all
the usual things which I always grow up, which are
sweet corn, peas, iceberg, lettuce, beet roots, spring onions, runner beans,
peas if I've not said peace, or tomatoes, cucumbers. So
those are the main ones. What we could go own
potatoes and garlic and onions. So those are the main
ones which we're going to grow, all the usual staple
vegetables which you grow down at your allotment, and I'm
going to concentrate on trying some new things as well.
This year. We're going to try some new varieties of produce.
We'll look for some different varieties, unusual varieties of vegetables.
We're going to try lots of different types of pumpkins,
possibly different types of squash, different varieties of cause jets,
so that we can see which ones do the best
and hopefully try and grow them ones year after year.
I'm also going to try and grow a huge pumpkin
this year. Now, I've never actually focused on growing a
massive pumpkin. I've just let them grow and let the
rain water them as and when and I get a
decent sized one, just a smallish one, just the size
for me. But I want to try and grow a
big one this year. And when you try to grow
a big one, you just have to focus on one
or two growing on the planet rather than having multiple
growing on it. Because the more pumpkins you have grown
on the plant, the less chance of it being a
big one you will get because it's putting its energy
into growing them all. And obviously if we're growing a
big pumpkin, we'll have to feed it regularly. We'll have
to water it every other day, may sometimes every day
if it's hot. So hopefully we'll get a decent sized pumpkins.
So I'm looking forward to trying that this year. Down
at the allotment, we're also, like I said, we're going
to try different varieties of squash, because there's plenty of
different varieties out there. There's button up squash, there's trombone
I think it's cold. There's urky I can't remember the
name of it, but yeah, there's plenty of varieties out there.
There's a Turkish one as well, so there's lots of
different varieties of squashed out there to grow. And now
that I've got my proper cooker, I've got my cook
a top, I've got my air fright, I can try
and cook some different recipes. So that is what I
want to try and do, try and grow some fresh
stuff to eat this year and hopefully get some fantastic
crops from And I mentioned it before that I'm hoping
to get a soup maker this year so that I
can make my own soups as well, so I want
to try that. I'm going to try and grow leaks.
I've never actually focused on growing leaks. I'd have been
in the ground, but I've not bothered with them. I've
just left them after a bit and I come bothered
with them. But I'm going to try and grow some
leaks this year so that we can have some leak
and potato soup, which have been nice. We're going to
try and grow some possibly different colored beetroots, different colored carrots,
different colored radishes because there's loads of different colors and
vegetables out there. They don't necessarily just come as your
standard vegetable color ours. Obviously you won't know about them
because they won't sell different colored in the supermarket. They'll
only say tell the standard variety because people won't buy them.
If you saw a black radish or a purple cauliflower,
which there is a purple cauliflower out there which I've
grown many at times, which does really well, so people
won't possibly buy them. So you can actually buy these
seeds and just be careful way by them from if
you saw someone Amazon or eBay that dodge, you don't
necessarily buy them. Always buy them from a reptile place
as long as you know that they're real or a
proper company, and you'll know that they're actually real seeds
and you're not being conned. So we're going to try
and grow lots of different varieties out there. We're also
going to focus on growing lots of different varieties of
flowers this year, as I'm getting so well into growing flowers.
I absolutely love it now. And we have got absolutely
loads of different varieties of poppies. We've bought about fifteen
varieties are literally just on Amazon and clicked every variety
of poppy and ordered it. I'm not going to throw
the seeds straight into the ground, as knowing me, I'll
dig them up, thinking that the weeds and stuff like that.
Not that I weed often, but knowing me, I'll probably
dig them up. So I'm going to start them all
off in seed trasts so that I know what varieties
are what, and plant them out where I want them
to grow. And obviously ones soup grown and the seedheads
are on the top, they'll burst and they'll land the
seeds in the beds and they will come back year
after year and hopefully get more poppies growing. We're going
to grow different varieties of sweet peas as well. I've
looked Amazon at them. There's loads of different varieties of
sweet peas. We're also going to grow different varieties of sunflower.
You get your normal yellow ones or you extremely tall ones,
which are the Russian ones, but there's like red varieties,
there's a black variety of some flower. There's a teddy
bear sunflower which is all fluffy and looks fantastic. So
there's lots of different varieties there. So we're going to
try and grow some different varieties of flowers down at
the allotment. I just want it to be bright, colorful
and attractive. I've all the borders filled with flowers and
make it look absolutely gorgeous. And I'm going to the gardeners.
We're live again this year. We've got tickets booked for that.
We'll be going on the Saturday. And I'm going to
buy some more salvia plants this year. I'm gonna take
some money for a lot more varieties of salvia, because
we purchased three last year and the best one was
the black current smelling one, which absolutely gorgeous. I took
loads of cuttings off that. So hopefully we'll get some
more salvia plants growing next year down at the allotment.
Fingers crossed, and I'm still looking forward to this year
down at the plot. It's going to be absolutely astonishing.
Like I said, I'm only there twice a week now,
not like it used to be like four on four
off with my old job, where I could spend four
days down there. But we're going to try and focus
and get it all done within two days every weekend
and get as much done as possible. So I hope
that you're looking forward to this journey if you new
to these podcasts, because I'm getting five hundred new followers
a day on Facebook at the moment. It's absolutely amazing.
One of my posts gone viral and I'm getting absolutely
a lot to follow us from it. So thank you
if you're new to this podcast, and thank you for
following me. I do love the community that we've built
up and hopefully it will continue to grow. So tomorrow
we'll be back with our big bird Watch podcast where
we're talking about what we're going to do for the
birds this year, and I hope that you're all going
to try and get involved, even if it's just popping
out and getting some bird seed. But yeah, we will
see you all tomorrow. So until next time, everyone, remember
keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone,
thanks for tuning into 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 thrive. Don't forget
to stay connected with me on all social media for
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next time, everyone remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep
gardening with Ben.