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 a Lotment. 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. Well,
it's middle of the week already, we're nearly at the weekend,
We're nearly at Christmas. Christmas is nearly here, and I've
still not born a single Christmas present. But yeah, Christmas
is soon upon us. But that doesn't stop me if
I'm doing these podcasts, And it certainly doesn't stop me
if I'm going to the allotment and doing my gardening
and enjoying what I do best, And yeah, it helps
me so much to get to the allotment into the garden.
It's one thing that I can always look forward to
at the weekend, getting down to the allotment, seeing how
things are getting on, and it helps motivate me as
well doing this for you guys, and it pushes me
and keeps me going. If I didn't do all this,
I'd just sit back and lay on my bed all
day and do absolutely nothing. So I do love doing
these podcasts for you all, and I hope that you
all enjoy them too. If you're new to these podcasts,
make sure you do click that bell button, give us
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So what are we going to talk about today. We're
going to talk about utilizing every area of your allotment
to for its potential. Same free garden. Really, it's the
same sort of concept now, whether you've got a massive allotment,
whether you've got a small allotment, it's about utilizing the
space correctly and appropriately. As I've learned from the past,
and I've when I saw my seeds, I never say
tend to save any of the seeds, I just throw
them all into a seed tray and chuck away the
plants that I don't need, or I'll try and plant
them all and use too many. And you don't actually
need to plant as many plants as you end up planting,
because you'll either not use them, all'll all be ready
at the same time, or they'll just go to waste.
So only plan what you actually need to plant, and
by doing that you can grow other stuff and fit
more stuff in. And it goes down to companion planting
as well. As I've not really done much companion planting,
I know about certain things of companion planting and how
to plant things to use less space, Like I know
when people say, like plant sweet corn, plant your runner
beans to grow around your sweet cone, and then grow
marrows or corgets along the floor to use that space up.
So it's about utilizing the space and using what's available.
And I have to do this because I get a
lot of shade on my allotment, so I don't have
much areas that I can grow stuff with sunlight, so
I have to think about what can grow in the shade,
okay without much sun, and then grow everything what needs
sun in the beds that need it. And obviously, like
the moment I've got my garlic growing, I've got my
onions growing, and they're in the beds that are sunny.
And the thing is these will be harvested around June
time July time. So when I harvest them, then I
can use them beds again and plant maybe beatrooting and
lettuce in them, marrows, corseats, runner beans in them. I
can use them spaces up once a harvest the produce,
and it's about timing, about being able to use the
space wisely. Like if I were to use the sunny
beds to plant Brussels sprouts in for instance, the brussel sprouts,
You'll be planting them out in March April time, and
they wouldn't be ready to harvest on November. So I'd
be wasting that full bed, a sunny bed on Brussels sprouts,
which I don't particularly like, and I'll end up using
a shaded spot to grow something that needs sunny, if
you get me. So, it's about you in the space wisely.
And obviously certain things you can grow in tubs or
in baskets, like you can grow tomatoes trailing tomatoes what
you can grow in like pots on your fence or
in a hanging basket, and they can trail down, so
you could, if you're shorter space, grow stuff in baskets
or in tubs, like lettuce can grow in tubs as well.
And yeah, make the use of all your fencing, like
grow your runner beans up your fencing or hanging some
pots on your fencing and grow lettuce in it, spring
onions in it, carrots in it. It's about using the
space as much as you can and making the most
of how much space you've actually got. And mine's a
big allotment. And I could grow lots and lots of
different varieties of stuff if I had time, or if
I had the patience to do it. But I tend
to like to leave quite a bit of space in
between my plants so that I can keep it weed freeze.
Like if I were retired or something like that, I
could go down every day and weed in between all
the plants on a regular basis. And because I can't
go down every day and I'm only down there twice
a week now, I have to leave a lot of
space in between the plants so that I can just
quickly whizz a whole around and scrape off the top
rout heads of all the weeds and keep on it
top of it that way, But I could plant the
beds to be absolutely fully stuff like you could have
a row of beetroot, you could have a row lettuce,
you could have a row of carrots, you could have
a row of spring onions, and you could squeeze them
in as much as possible and grow an absolute ton
of vegetables on your allotment if you wanted to, again
utilizing that space. And I know there's a method called
square foot gardening. I think it is, and that's a
sort of squeezing everything in in different rows but organized,
and it'll just be the right amount of vegetabrow for yourself.
And you can fit plenty of vegetables in doing it
in that method, as like obviously carrots don't take up
much rooms, bring onions don't take up much room, beat
wood doesn't take up much room. So you can plant
them all in rows like that if you want. And
again I end up planting too much that I actually
need to actually grow, Like I've got two hundred strawberry plants.
Now you probably say that's too much, but it's not
too much. I absolutely love my strawberries. If I could
have an altmonth of strawberries, I certainly would do. And
the more that I do of strawberries, I would do,
Like if I could, I'd have them on in baskets
on the fence and I'd have them up the side
of my shed. But then they dry out every single
day and I'd have to water them every single But yeah,
there's so much stuff you can grow, like on the
side of your fences and stuff, but obviously I can't
get down every single day to keep these watered. And
I think it goes back to my previous episode, is
that using this time now to plan what you want
to grow in your beds and the layout of the plot,
it all comes hand in hand in getting the most
out of your allotment and garden and trying to fit
as much in as possible. And yeah, I could grow
absolutely loads of stuff in my plot, and I might
possibly try and do that this year. I might see
if I can grow the most stuff that I've ever
actually grown down at the allotment. It's going to be hard,
it's going to be tough because obviously I'm working nine
to five monthay Friday now. But if I put in
enough time and effort, I could actually do it. Because
having an allotment is like a full time job. People think, oh,
it's going to be easy, it's going to be so
easy to just like go down and do a bit
every so often, but no, it's definitely a full time job,
and I absolutely love it. I'd do it as a
full time job. I'd love to be down there at
the allotment all the time. But unfortunately this podcasts not
gone viral yet. Once it does, then I can do
it full time. Keep sharing the podcast out everyone. But yeah,
hopefully we can grow as much stuff as possible next year,
So I might start looking in my seat catalogs, writing
down all the seeds that I want to do and
plan my layout and see about utilizing my allotment space
a lot more and trying to grow more and more
stuff this year and hopefully get some fantastic results in
some fantastic harvests and share with you all how well
I've actually done and on the little time that I
have to do it, and see what results we can
actually get. So stay tuned. I will be sharing pictures
and tips and advice on how to do it all.
But I hope that you do enjoy these podcast make
sure you do give us a follow. Until next time, everyone,
remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep guardening with Ben.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Gardening
with Ben. I hope you have found some useful tips
and the integration for your own gardening and a lotment journey.
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Happy gardening, and until next time, remember, keep smiling, keep shining,
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