Allotment Blogs Archives - Garden and Allotment Tips and Advice

Gardening With Ben Allotment Blog – 12th February 2020

Welcome to my new weekly Allotment and Gardening Blog. Here we will share with you what I have been up to at the allotment and garden and also at home.

Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book

Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-

You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.

What’s happening at the allotment?

Well the weather here in Sheffield has been absolutely freezing. I think when I got in my car the other day it was -4 degrees which is cold for the UK! As you know we have had snow as well – not much though in Sheffield. This has prevented me from going to the allotment to do any work which is a shame as this is now the second week i’ve missed going. I only get one day off a week at the minute and it always seems to be bad weather when this comes around.

The things that I’m currently progressing with at the moment on my allotment is renovating my shed. This has now been built on my plot for around 5-6 years. You can actually watch the video below of when I built my shed. This was my actual first Youtube video I posted from when I was The Yorkshire Gardener.

On the plot I’ve been concentrating on clearing it ready for the Spring Time. There is still alot of work that needs doing on the plot to get it ready and in shape for the growing season. You may have seen that I’ve planted 8 rose bushes on my plot for the summer which i’m excited to see in bloom. Today I have just used an amazon voucher which my sister got me to purchase 2 arches for my plot. These will be used for the entrance to my main plot area. As I seem to have gained an addiction to purchasing rose bushes I will be growing climbing roses up these as from pictures I’ve seen these can look beautiful so expect plenty of pictures of these in the summer.

Seeds growing

So what seeds have I actually got growing at the min well the short answer – not many! So far this year I have only planted my sweet peas and some lemon seeds which germinated really well. I will be sharing my sweet pea video soon once it has been put together but if you have not seen how to germinate lemon seeds easily you can watch below! In the next couple of weeks, I will be starting to chit my potatoes and also start my peppers and chillies off. I will of course be sharing videos of these for you to watch. I’ve also purchased my sunflower seeds. If you did not read that blog you can read it here.

Gardening with Ben Podcasts

Back at the beginning of February, we saw an Instagram challenge to share a picture for a different subject each and every day. We decided to adapt this an use it for podcast topics. I have had my podcast channel now for a few months but I was losing a bit of momentum on what to talk about especially during the cold non-production months. This idea has really helped. Up to now, we have been posting these for 12 days! The response from them has been phenomenal. They are getting 150+ downloads a day! We will still be posting other podcasts but these will be posted in an evening with a couple going online each week. We hope you are enjoying them and hopefully, soon we will be able to have guests on our channel. You can find it on any podcast platform – Search Gardening With Ben or listen below

Facebook Lives

Last Sunday I tried something new on my Facebook page – Gardening With Ben. A Facebook live from home. Last year I was doing lots of Facebook Lives at the allotment and they were really successful and you the followers loved them. I have been getting asked to do them again but as I’m not getting to the plot much and there is not much to show you I thought I’ll do it at home. This worked out very successful and a lot better than I thought. I was able to sit in the warmth – read all the comments and answer any questions. I also was not rushing off to carry on Gardening. With how successful it was we will hopefully be doing these on a weekly basis at home.

Posts

This last week I’ve downloaded a new app to help create better content for you all. These have started to appear and make my posts look a bit more professional. Now that I have got a new camera thanks to all the purchases you have made from my hoodies I can film and take better pictures for you.

Thankyou for all the support that you give Gardening With Ben – One day I do hope to do this full time which would be my dream come true!

As always, Keep Gardening!

Gardening With Ben

What Sunflowers We Are Growing This Year?

Last year was the first year that we grew flowers on our allotment plot. It was a hard choice to decide which flowers to try and grow in my allotment. Not having any knowledge on growing flowers from seed it was all new to me. Yes, I maybe Gardening With Ben but I don’t have the knowledge on flower growing!. Hopefully over the next few years as I do more and more research on flower growing I will be able to find out more and give tips and advice on this.

Well, last year I tried growing Sunflowers. I had grown these as a child before and had great fun growing them in the past so I thought I would give it another go on my plot. I chose to grow Giant Sunflowers, these seeds are extremely cheap to purchase costing anything between £1-£2 usually getting around 80 seeds per pack.

I started these off around April in my unheated greenhouse and lots of them germinated. Once these were big enough to move outside these were planted into the ground outside. I lost a few of these to the slugs as they seem to be very tasty to them. So this year I will try and protect them better from the slugs and snails. I will be looking for some slug traps that can easily catch them. The last year was the first year I stayed totally away from slug pellets. I will hopefully be doing some more information on the best ways to stop the slugs so watch this space.

The sunflowers that did actually take and grow well did absolutely amazing. I think I had around 10 that actually grew. I had a few at the front of my plot as a kind of welcoming flower then I had a few down each side of my plot. There was one in particular that did extremely well the head on the sunflower was massive which you will be able to see from the picture below.

I did save the sunflower heads from the plants that grew but unfortunately, the rats found them and destroyed them. Next time I think I will need to hang them up instead.

Sunflowers are great to grow with the children and as adults, you can see how tall you can actually grow them.

Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book

You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.

What Sunflowers I’m growing this year

So that brings us on to what sunflowers I’m growing this year. With them growing so well last year I have been looking more into sunflowers. There are many different colour sunflowers, heights and varieties to try growing so here are the varieties I’m growing, I have also provided the links to where I’ve purchased them from so you can try and grow them along with me.

Giant Sunflower

This year I will be growing the giant sunflower again! With the amazing success of growing it last year and knowing it grows well in my soil, it will be perfect. These can grow up to 3 meters tall and include 100 seeds.

You can find these by clicking on the link below:-

80 Red Sunflower Seeds Plus 100 Giant Yellow Seeds Flower Seeds by Pretty Wild Seeds

This pack of sunflowers includes 80 red sunflowers and 100 giant sunflowers. I’ve never seen red sunflowers before so fingers crossed these will be great to see on the plot. Yes I know these have more giant sunflowers in them but I can always save them for if the others do not grow.

You can find these by clicking the link below:-

Sunflower – Autumn Beauty – 160 Finest Seeds

These Autumn Beauty Sunflowers look absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen any that look as beautiful. The shades and colours in these are amazing. I just hope they are actually like what they are on the packet.

You can find these by clicking the link below:-

Sunflower Seeds for Planting-Autumn Beauty- Outdoor Mixture Bulk 20+

Well this pack looks amazing over 20 different variety of sunflowers to grow. I did not even know that there was that many. I will look forward to receiving this package. I don’t know if they are all individually packaged. Fingers crossed that they are. Most probably the separate packets will be in thse but I don’t think there will be many of each variety so we will have to wait and see.

You can get these seeds from the link below:-

Sunflower Black Magic F1, Dark Red

Last but not least of these dark red sunflowers. These will look greatly mixed in with the giant sunflowers. The mixture of yellow and reds will go great together. Apparently, these grow to around 120cm so a lot shorter than the giant ones.

These can be purchased from the link below

So you can see I’ve ordered absolutely loads of seeds for the allotment. You will probably be thinking where will Ben grow them all? Well, I’m thinking the same question haha. I will probably plant a few of each and save some for next year. These will be planted all the way down each side of my plot so fingers crossed they will look stunning. You will have to follow me on Facebook and Instagram to stay tuned on how they grow.