#AD RAINY DAY AT THE ALLOTMENT / SEPTEMBER 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can find the links to do that below and lots of other ways to follow me as well. You join me on a very rainy day and I'm actually at my plot because I was feeling like really cooped up at home and I just wanted to get here. What's really frustrating is that at this time of year my plot is flourishing and it just is. Everything's growing so well but the weather's so terrible so like I'm sort of stuck with like do I go out in the pouring rain and go and look at it all or do I just stay home and just miss the beauty of my allotment plot and I can't miss it. So I decided to come here and also might do a little bit of slug and snout patrol today as well because I think they might be out in full force after the rain that we have had. It's rained in London pretty much every night, all night long and then this morning it was raining. I think it's going to rain all day today as well so we're here that's what matters. I'm going to do a little bit of weeding first I think and that's the first job of the day. I did see some weeds coming up when I was here the other day so I think let's just keep on top of it as much as we can. Doesn't the vegetable garden always look so much better when it's just been raining? Everything looks so green and vibrant and lush. You look around and you just think I did this, I grew all this, I can't believe it. Though of course it wasn't really me doing all the hard work, it's the plants isn't it? It's the plants. I'm happy to say and report that the cauliflower is still very much alive. Oh look we've got a little wasp in there. Do they eat them? Do you eat them? Please don't eat it, please. Absolutely massive, doing really really well. I wanted to just have another look at these weeds that are coming up in my Exmus potato bed because I think I might have got a bit confused with them so when I was showing you around I think a week ago or something I was saying that these were all weeds. Well actually now I'm looking at them somebody said are you sure they're weeds and not radishes? I specifically remember sowing radishes in this bed and then what me and the kids did because they weren't coming up I thought oh they're all dead so we dug it all over and we might have spread the seeds about a bit. So I think I mean these look like nasturtiums to me so they might be nasturtiums coming up but these look very much like radishes they don't really look like weeds do they? It's so funny how I can sort of tell now that that's not a weed that is an actual vegetable. I really think they're radishes so I'm going to leave them and sort of hope that the potatoes don't come up too quickly though I can't see any signs of life from the potatoes at all. I'm going to try and be patient and not dig one up but I did plant them upside down as so many of you very nicely pointed out. I still think they'll grow I think they might take a bit longer but hopefully I will get some potatoes growing but for now I'm not going to weed this bed because I genuinely believe these are radishes and not weeds. As predicted it has just started raining so I've come back into my shed to escape the rain so while I'm in my shed and it's pouring rain outside I'm going to peruse a new magazine subscription app that I've got called Readly and it's a subscription app so you have to pay every month but you get unlimited access to over 6,000 magazines all different subject areas that you can peruse and have a look at. You don't have to just pick one you can just look at all of them. Obviously I'm most interested in gardening and luckily for me they've got my magazine on it too so I write for Kitchen Garden magazine and Homes and Gardens as well and they've got all the magazines on there. One of the best things about it is that you can actually backdate the magazines as well so I don't have articles out right now but I had articles out this year so you can actually just go back and look at all the magazines you could read some of my articles if you like or just have a peruse through all the old gardening magazines and get some really good advice and tips for going into the autumn winter. Another thing I like about it is that I can actually use this here in my shed and my internet connection is not very good at the allotment plot but you can actually download the magazines as well and just have them ready to read wherever you are and not having to rely on a rubbish internet connection. It's honestly so easy to use and I'm just loving it I just find that whenever I've got a little bit of free time I can just log on to the app find a magazine read a couple of articles and when I'm so busy and stuff with the allotment and with all my writing that I'm doing as well it's I don't have time to read a lot in one go so I love magazines I think magazines are great and this is just a great way of dipping in and out of as many as you like. So if you would like to try out Readly the magazine app that I've been absolutely loving and read all my old articles on Kitchen Garden magazine or any gardening magazine or any magazine out of their 6,000 that they've got on offer there I have a discount code for you and I'm going to link it below in my description bar and it will give you two months free and you can cancel at any time which is just amazing as well and make that really easy as well. So that's what I've been loving recently and that's what I'm going to do right now in my shed I'm going to have a little read of some gardening magazines while I'm waiting for the rain to stop. Right it's all stopped now so I think it might be a good idea to go and collect some more poo. I know there's quite a big pile of old horse poo sitting up there waiting for someone to collect and I know that there's not really anyone here today because it's been raining so people don't tend to come so I might just run up there and just grab some more poo and what I'm going to do is start mulching all of my beds for autumn really because it really needs it, it really needs it now so I'm going to go grab myself some poo. I'll bring you with me too don't say I don't bring you anywhere. Here's our horse poo pile and this stuff is new this stuff is old so I'm going to get the old stuff. Someone told me you should only get old poo. Old poo is better than new poo never forget that. That is valuable advice right there, you can't pay for that advice. Old poo is better than new poo. Right I'm standing in the poo. Oh god I'm reporting from you live from a pile of horse poo. Right I'll balance you on the poo there all right okay. What about the poo now? Never thought I'd say that sentence before but firstly it's so heavy because it's wet and I filled it to the top it's like a ton but secondly it won't fit through here and it's so heavy I'm gonna have to do a 360 or u-turn I don't know what you call it I don't drive so I don't know but I'm gonna have to do that one where you flip it around. Anyway I just thought I'd tell you that because this is a vlog and that's what I'm supposed to do. Right it's so bleeding heavy. I left myself this little bit here for the wheelbarrow. This is bad path management, bad path planning. It needs to be bigger so I'm going to have to remove this and budge this up a little bit I think and have a bigger gap for the wheelbarrow to come through. Just sort of got to figure out now which bed most needs poo because I mean they all do but a lot of them have got crops growing in them right now so it's a bit difficult to put the poo in them. I think possibly the flower bed. I think flower beds need a lot of goodness and richness so I think they'd probably benefit from a bit of poo. Let's finish weeding it and let's put the poo in the flower bed. Right this dahlia here he's sort of fallen down a bit. I wasn't keeping an eye on him because I didn't think he'd actually grow but he has grown and now he needs tying in. I can't find my twine though so I'm going to use some netting to sort of tie him in a bit. Keep him upright. It's actually easier to tie in without twine. The netting's so much bigger I can just like grip it better but that's basically the idea. He looks a bit happier now doesn't he? Right on with the poo. Amazing the lengths people will go to grow a carrot and half an onion. Tommy's got his eye on this jackly little under here. I think because it's one of the biggest ones actually. All of them are quite small and they're supposed to be quite small. I've had a few questions about them actually. Oh just as I start who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? He's come to see me again. It's all of our favourite allotment cat Rocky. There he is. Everybody's favourite allotment cat. Come to ruin the recording again. I'm joking. That's a borage flower Rox. Oh god. He'll be going to explore the new poo. Just to avoid any confusion there that's not my cat. I don't know whose cat that is. I don't even know his name. He just keeps coming to my plot and digging everything up and pooing and then I've just started talking to him and I've decided to name him because I just felt weird calling him cat. So I sort of gave him a name. I gave him Rocky. I think if I had a cat I'd call it Rocky. Right where were we? Oh we were talking about pumpkins. Right I've had a few questions about jackby littles. What you can do with them. So you can eat them. They're actually edible. The entire pumpkin is edible. You just put some olive oil around it. Hollow out the middle. Keep some of the pumpkin flesh. The same way you cook a normal pumpkin. You put the whole thing in the oven and you can bake it for a while until it goes soft and then you can stuff it with things like wild rice or quinoa or anything you want really and then you put it back in the oven and you just eat the whole thing and it's really delicious. You can also use them for decoration because they're quite cute aren't they? They're like the perfect little decoration sized pumpkins and as long as you don't cut them open or anything they'll stay nice on your table for ages. So they're quite little good like Halloween decorations or you can eat them. That's why I grow them because you can actually eat them. And in terms of how many you should have on a plant. No plant should really hold more than six to eight mini pumpkins. I've let this one go crazy because it's my only one and I was just desperate to have as many as I could. They won't get very big now because I've let too many grow. Like for instance I've got another one here. I know here and I'm just going to leave him and see what he does. So I'm not following the rules this year but if you have got more than one growing or you're quite happy with sort of six to eight then once you've counted about six on your plant you should really start chopping off any new ones that form and that'll just force the energy into the ones that are already growing basically. It's no more complicated than that guys but like I said I'm just letting mine go crazy this year because I'm a rebel. It's what I do so you can be a rebel like me or you can follow the actual rules and grow some nice pumpkins. The choice is yours. Right that's it for today that's my autumny what to do on the allotment plotty kind of job what I'm up to. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that you're enjoying your plots. Autumn is quite a busy time. I've got a few projects that I'm going to be getting on with this autumn and I'll be showing you more and more about those projects later on. For now it's weeding, taking care of mulching as many beds as I can and then I'll start getting on with the other projects. I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did do subscribe to my channel. Don't forget to check out Readly the app and the link is in the top of my description box below and you will get two months free and you can cancel at any time and it's just such a great way of reading your favourite magazines all in one place and I love it so do go and check that out if you're interested. I'll see you next time thank you for watching everyone. Bye!