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
