DEATH AND GARDENING / SEPTEMBER 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my September allotment diaries and if you are just joining me for the first time I would love for you to subscribe to my youtube channel. I put up loads of videos all about the allotment plot and just what I'm getting up to day to day which I think when you get a new allotment plot sometimes you don't really know what other people are doing on theirs and so this is quite a good way of just peering into my allotment plot into how I work and what I do day to day month to month so that you don't have to spy on your neighbours, you can just watch me. Obviously I haven't put a video up for a few days now, I think in light of what's happened in the UK it just didn't feel very appropriate to put a vlog up of me being silly and trying to navigate the allotment plot, it felt a bit trivial really. So I left it, I think I feel ready to kind of get back down here and do a vlog and obviously I'm starting with a bit of a difficult job, I'm trying to get this pallet from the back of my plot to the front of my plot but I've just found a rather large slug that I really want to share with you. Now from my understanding on the lives of slugs and that understanding is quite limited um this is actually a good slug, you see the way he's sort of a bit like um he's got like a bit of an animal skin does that make sense like with the spots and stuff he's a bit like you know there's animal prints that people wear yeah I think that means that he's a good slug and that he eats the bad slugs um so I think this is an okay slug to have in your allotment plot but I can't I'm not convinced on that I don't know for certain I don't know if his pallet's actually all right or if it's a bit um rotted I mean they are sort of designed to be outside aren't they so I think maybe it'd be okay let's try and get it out why is it so hard to do at the end what I envisioned in my mind that's sort of what I envisioned ah that's all right that is so you might be thinking what my big idea is what that is basically um I mean you'd be a bit weird not to think what that is I think it looks like what it's supposed to be so I'll give you a minute to guess that's right well done if you guess correctly it is a strawberry pallet planter I've raised it from the ground a bit because I want the strawberries to be up off of the ground so that the slugs and snails can't get them but basically these bits here are our staple gun like a bag in there put it with some soil and put the strawberries in here so I have strawberries in there strawberries in there and all along there strawberries all along there and then we can even have strawberries right at the top as well strawberry plant holder the only thing I do need to make sure I do is secure it because obviously we don't want it falling down oh god just like this camera is you see we don't want that I've got two ways that I was going to do that so the first way is I was just gonna drill into the sides into the shed basically but I don't think my shed's very strong so I had an idea of poles I sort of thread the pole dig it into the ground obviously and then also screw it into the shed I thought that might work I think that'll work I think that'll stay standing I'm going to wait for it to dry out so I can brush all the stuff off and paint it before I put my strawberries in but for now we've got to focus on this and this is the reason why I've decided to do it because my strawberry bed is just a disaster okay tiny strawberry plants now ah there's a good one that's a weed how many strawberry plants is that I think that's two they're pretty indestructible strawberry plants I've got some at home and I didn't water them during the heat wave and they went completely brown and crispy and then I started randomly watering them again and they've all come back to life and I've got more flowers on um just like these these have got some more flowers on even though we're going into the autumn so you never know you might get a couple right what we're going to do is just take them out and protect them in some pots if we can find any among the weeds which just grows so fast in this bed I've just had enough of this bed this bed is a nightmare it's always been like this ever since I first planted it up it's always been full of weeds and this is the year I do something about it ah this one these things hanging off of the strawberry plant are runners and this is how the strawberry plant reproduces and basically makes more of itself so this is the main parent plant and he's at least one year old and he sent out a long runner and then there's another I'll put him down there's another couple of strawberry plants hanging on hanging on him and this one's even got some little strawberries which have been eaten obviously um but this bit here oh gosh where is it this is where the roots will come out there and so if I want to root him up I have to put him in a pot like that and hopefully he'll get roots um this is another runner and you can see the roots coming off the bottom coming out the bottom so all I need to do is snip that off and pop him up and he will turn into a lovely strawberry plant and that's just how they make more of themselves they are pretty indestructible plants I'm not going to lie I've just been yanking them up they'll all live their roots I think their roots grow quite shallow on the surface of the soil which is why they're able to spread so easily and it's also I think one of the reasons why there's so many weeds in here because you think the strawberries are just all on the surface and then the weeds can just come up underneath them so this bed's been a bit of a nightmare for a long time now every year I always go on about how much I hate sorting out the strawberry bed and it's for this reason it just gets so weedy and horrible and it sits dormant for a lot of the year because obviously you don't get strawberries all throughout the year so it's a pretty pointless sort of bed so I think I'm going to put all these plants in there and in these planters here and use this bed for something else and I'm quite excited about that actually when I found out that the queen had died and it came as a bit of a shock and I think it came as a shock for everyone so if you felt shocked by the news you weren't alone and I think when I heard it I was I kind of thought of when my nan died why do spiders always build their webs in the most inappropriate places honestly right across my polytunnel and I don't think that makes me selfish I think that makes me human I think a lot of us thought back to when we'd lost loved ones even though my nan was ill for quite a long time when the end came and she did pass away it still came as a shock I think as gardeners we're kind of confronted and surrounded by death all the time and in a lot of ways the death of things in a garden kind of signify a new beginning so for example this pea pod is well and truly dead but inside it I have the seeds to create an entire new pea plant from scratch that will give me an abundance of peas if I'm lucky and I remember to water it but death kind of has different meaning in a garden and actually we kind of see it as a cycle and a process definitely gardening really helped me when I lost my nan because it kind of like it taught me so much about life and death and the life cycle and the fact is that in a garden nothing that's dead stays dead for very long and that's kind of comforting is that beeping what I was originally gonna do is keep the strawberries in here and put a weed membrane over and then put little holes in it so I don't get any weeds but I realised soil is so good like so rich so full of nutrients so good and it's just like butter to dig through absolute butter I just thought I could just put something so much better in here than just strawberries I feel like strawberries just sort of sit there for most of the time like dormant not doing anything and they need so much space and it's just such a waste of space I think at my allotment plot so I'm gonna put something else in here probably over the winter I'll put some more winter autumn winter stuff out here some brassicas and stuff but it's exciting I think it would be really good for pumpkins actually so watch this space right I'm gonna leave that for today because it's driving me crazy now I told you it's a job I really just dread but that looks so much better doesn't it I just need to get rid of the weeds around the edge and stuff like that and neaten it up a bit and then get those strawberries in the planter when it dries but I'm going to leave that there for today and I'm going to do something silly now so let's go and do that now a lot of you might know that I accidentally planted my potatoes upside down in this bed and at the moment all I've got is nasturtiums radishes and some Californian poppies coming up which is not potatoes so I'm actually going to dig one up and see what's happening under the surface and you shouldn't do this but sometimes I just do because I just want to know because if they're all dead I can just plant some more or I can just sort of put something else in here and not waste the space but where they bleed now what's the problem oh hang on is that one oh that is that is a potato right so this is what I dug up he's got many little potatoes but he's not growing any bigger or anything he's got little mini tiny potatoes on him though is that a good thing I'll put you back in sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry oh he's not growing like any like leaves though shouldn't they be growing leaves oh yeah he's growing like little potatoes but he's not growing any you really shouldn't be digging him up he's got like that on the top I don't know if they're potatoes or if that's how it grows but anyway right okay they're doing something so we haven't learned very much other than the fact that they are doing something they are doing something so that's good that's better than nothing um I just leave them then I'll just leave them because they're doing something and I'll just let them get on with it but look at the bed it is just literally a bed of horse poo and nasturtiums and some radishes and these are green beans or runner beans something oh I don't know I'll just leave them like I always say on repeat plants know what they're doing better than we do these are little munchkin pumpkins that I planted way too late but look I've actually got a pumpkin I can't believe that something's growing on this plant that's absolutely incredible he looks beautiful he actually looks more like a patty pan I wonder if these are patty pans oh well whatever they are whatever they are they're growing yeah look I've got a couple more in here absolutely fantastic brilliant I don't think anything would come of these and yet here they are growing so the plant's not got very big but we're definitely getting some kind of pumpkin on there which is just excellent so tomato jungle is doing absolutely fantastic in here as predicted because it's been doing well since the go the get-go to be honest we had such a warm summer that all of the tomato plants have just thrived in here and the great big ones are starting to go red so exciting look at this one oh so excited about those and then I've just got an array of gardeners delight and cherry tomatoes which are kind of all around there just hundreds and hundreds of them I can't even keep up with them all but I do love tomatoes so it's such a great crop to have actually done well in my plot I'm actually going to when these are done and I don't think they're going to be done for a few weeks yet I will remove them all and I'm going to grow stuff in my polytunnel over the autumn winter and I'm going to have a video coming up a collaboration with Erica's Little Welsh Garden and I thought I'd get that in nice and early so that we actually get off our butts and do it but yeah we're going to do a little collaboration and talk about what we're going to sow and grow in our polytunnels over the autumn winter because we just want to keep going and we don't want to stop over the autumn and I want to see how much I can get growing in here so that should be really exciting but for now tomato jungle is just what it is harvest huh beautiful so excited to take these home and eat them and cook with them I hope you are enjoying your plots and getting outside it really does help to get outside in nature especially when things in the world feel a little bit uneasy and unsettled and stuff it really is a great way of grounding yourself take care of yourselves I hope you enjoyed the vlog and I will see you again really soon thanks for watching bye