STARTING A COURTYARD VEGETABLE GARDEN / MARCH 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Hi everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries and today I am at home. As promised, this Friday I said, wow it's sunny today. That's not what I said but I'm sure I mentioned it. As the sun has been so nice I have been doing a lot of work on my little courtyard vegetable garden here just outside my kitchen and I wanted to update you on a few things and do a little home vlog today. Why not, as I'm not going to the plot. Bloody aeroplane. I've not gone too crazy with the courtyard garden because though it's really sunny and warm at the moment and just beautiful weather, obviously we are still in March and quite near the beginning of March, oh no we're at the end of March now but still, April is looking a little bit iffy. So I don't want to get too much out, I'm quite tempted, I mean I accidentally left this basil out that I re-potted and look what's happened to the basil. Absolutely did not like the cold nights at all whatsoever, it's completely died. I just forgot about this one and just left him outside and he's a complete goner. So the idea with the courtyard garden is that basically I want an extension to my allotment plot and I want to grow things right outside my kitchen that I can use and just pick whenever I want to and just eat them and a lot of the things in the allotment plot like tomatoes and things, it takes me a while to get them back home and like strawberries for example, which you might be able to see behind me, at the plot the slugs get them, the snails get them, the birds get them way before I can pick any and so having them right outside my kitchen is just such a really great idea. But it's not a very big space, it's a metre and a half by about four metres, four or five metres along, so it's quite narrow but I do have a lot of wall space which I've tried to utilise and without further ado I'll give you a little overview of it. So you can see that it's definitely different from last time, I've started to put some things in some bags and pots along here, some pots along here and then you can see here on the trellis I've got some violas which I've hung up there, I've got a little planter here which is going to be for herbs and then down here I've got all my strawberries on, so I'm trying to grow as much up as I physically can. So up on this pallet here I just basically put this pallet on the fence so I could hang some pots and I've just got the strawberry plants that you saw me dig out of my allotment plot on here which are looking really happy and healthy, now I've given them some compost and stuff they just look happy. This here is a bit of an experiment, I basically hung up this little bit of a pallet, I didn't make this by the way, it was already this shape and I thought it might be quite a good little herb grower, so eventually I'll put some herbs in here and in here and they can sort of hang down and stuff and then I could even have mint up here as well because they're in pots so it won't go crazy. So that was my little idea for a little planter which my husband hates but there we go. And then on the other wall here you can see the trellis I've actually hung some little pots with some violas in and these flowers are actually edible, did you know that? You can actually eat these flowers so I might make a cake at the weekend and see if I can decorate the cake with them and also I will grow something up here like some runner beans or something which will be really nice. Down here on the ground you know that I've got my potatoes because I showed you when I planted these out and they have started to sprout so I basically topped them up with some multi-purpose compost which hopefully will just keep them growing nice, I don't know. Anyway there they are, potatoes, here I've got some carrots, I've actually fleeced my carrots not just because it's cold at night but also the fleece keeps it moist in there, keeps it wet and carrot seeds if they dry out they don't germinate and the soil is definitely still damp on there so fleece is a great idea. And then in this one here, this is another grow bag, it's a felt grow bag but it helps the moisture and the... what am I trying to say? I never know what I'm saying when I start a sentence that's why sometimes they just come out like that, it's felt and instead of having drainage holes the felt basically allows any excess water to leave the facility, that's what I'm trying to say, I don't know what that meant. Anyway I've got that extra little mange too, remember I brought the little pots, I planted those in here and got some canes and I've got some twine and tied them in, they're all looking very happy and healthy so hopefully I'll get some little peas out of these which is great. I've got my mizuna here, now I actually read that the flowers are really delicious too so I'm allowing some of it to flower so that I can try the flower, I did try some of the leaves and they are a little bit too tangy for my taste but I'm going to try the flowers instead now but it's such a beautiful, beautiful plant isn't it? This one's got nothing in at the moment, it will have something in at some point, up here is my little lettuce which the guinea pig and the rabbit love and then here I've got my little greenhouse and what I've got in here is way too many broccolis but then we know the slugs and snails will get most of them but they're doing really well, they're quite happy and I've also got my sweet peas in here which are looking okay I suppose, maybe I can whack them out today. Anyway it's looking quite good, you might be wondering what that weird bamboo cane is doing just like randomly like across the courtyard, there it is if the sun allows us to see it, if you can see it there, I don't know really, what I was thinking is I want to grow something over but I don't want an archway because it'd be too much to walk through, there's only this much space to walk through, see what I mean? So I was thinking of growing a runner bean up here and then sort of trailing it along there or if you can think of any other plants that do really well and I could grow one up there too and then trail it along and have beans hanging down, I mean in my mind that works, in my mind that's pretty epic, I'd walk under here and just pick beans, pick them like that, that'd be amazing wouldn't it? I don't know if that's the reality of it but anyway that's what I was thinking for that. So that's my little courtyard kitchen, it's looking quite good at the moment, I'm quite pleased with it actually, it's amazing how much you can fit into a small space and I'm going to keep going with it and keep coming up with new ideas and keep sharing them with you because I know a lot of you don't have great big allotments and great big gardens to grow things in, so the more I can fit in here I'd like to show you how much you can grow. So my kids asked for a little area in the back of the garden here that they could play with their sylvanian families with, these are sylvanian families if you don't know, got them a little bit muddy I'm afraid but you know that's just that's what happens when you're outside guys and this is their little car and they've asked me to build a little sort of small world play in the back of the garden. So that's sort of what I'm trying to do, I can't say I'm the most creative person in the world, I like plants and planting plants and stuff but when it comes to like things like this they're not very good and so I'm just using what I've got in the garden and just trying to just trying to put it all in. I had a couple of bits of sedum which is a really beautiful flower lots of green spongy foliage and then pink flowers and I repotted it last year and I've just put a couple of those in but I want it to look more like a little jungle so I think I might buy some ferns and stuff like that to put there. Here you are look here's the two sedums there's one there and there's one there and then this is sort of the road which I'll try to sort of smooth out as much as I can. I found this old broken pot which I thought might be quite good for him to play and then that leaves down there to the pond. The planting is definitely the bit I think I can probably get on board with so I'm thinking ferns and mini little daisies and things like that like sort of daisy looking flowers just to line all the roads and stuff I think that'd be quite nice. Anything that looks like a tree I think would be quite good but a really small mini tree but not like a bonsai tree because I don't really like those like a tree tree but yeah that's what I'm doing right now how strange huh? Hey guys so I was supposed to end this vlog on Friday and have it up for you before the weekend so you had something to watch over the weekend now it's going up on Monday. On Friday I had to take my little bunny to the vets this is my little bunny behind me he is a mini lop and his name is Pippin and he's been with us for about two and a half weeks so yesterday I finally got his vaccinations booked so he had to have his vaccination and then over the weekend he wasn't quite himself so I was a little bit worried about him I spent a lot time with him making sure he perked up still eating drinking fine but he was just a bit tired after his vaccination and also probably the shock of having to get back into the box and go in the car again that's what I've been up to this weekend really and the weather's changed this week now so I don't know how much gardening will get done I've got my let's grow a pumpkin going up on Wednesday so if you are growing a pumpkin along with me stay tuned for my video it'll be up on Wednesday it's the first in the series of let's grow a pumpkin so I hope you've got your little seeds ready I've got my baby boo jack be little a kooky curry and patty pans and those are the four squashes slash pumpkins that I am growing this year so if you want to join in join in feel free and I will see you on Wednesday so have a lovely gardening week see you Wednesday bye