FIXING MY ALLOTMENT SHED / FEBRUARY /EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel if you are new and all the links that you need are below. So I've come back to the plot today, it's Tuesday and the day after I filmed the destruction from Storm, what was it, Storm Eunice I think, we had another storm, Storm Franklin, which wasn't as bad as the first one but because everything had already kind of been blown over and was structurally unsound it obviously caused some more damage. Everyone around here just seems to have, I mean a lot of people have come over the weekend and cleared a little bit and made it safe so you can kind of get to your plots now, but everything just looks a little bit in disrepair and it's just sad isn't it. I mean I did, when I was leaving the plot on Saturday, you know there were a group of allotmenters all chatting about the damage and stuff and everyone was laughing, everyone was in quite good spirits and I think that's the thing I really love about allotment plots and what's really drawn me to the community of grow your own in general, it's just everyone's upbeat positive attitude. I think when you're a gardener and especially when you have an allotment plot and you grow your own fruit and veg, you're kind of used to failure and you're used to things being completely wiped out by blight or dug up by a fox or like you put a whole row of carrots in and none of them come up, so you're kind of used to that sort of failure and you laugh it off and you learn to laugh it off and I think a lot of people around here they're just very optimistic and positive and that's just why I love it here so much. But at the same time I can talk because my plot has been largely unaffected except for the roof of my shed which I plan on fixing today and the felt's come off so it's not good. I don't actually have a ladder because Dave stole it from me, so I've got a chair, that's about it. I need to get up there and put something over that because all that's going to happen is because the wood is now exposed, the rainwater is just going to make it damper and damper and it's going to get rotten and just awful so I need to fix it. I know what you're all thinking, Emma, Emma, don't tell us that you're going to fix your roof of your shed with a broken ground sheet. Yes I am, yes I am, as CEO of the plot it's my executive decision and that's what I'm going to do because I haven't brought any felt yet and I'm worried about the rain coming and I just think something up there is better than nothing so I'm going to temporarily put some ground sheet up there. I know it's not a great idea, um where's my staple gun? I'm going to staple gun it because that's the only thing I know how to do. I've said it a hundred times, if you have got an allotment plot, a garden, a house or a life in general, get yourself a staple gun because they will just be the best investment you ever make, they're incredible. Just don't staple your hand or anything, it hurts. I don't know what you can see there but this is what I can see. Not the neatest job in the world but I think you'll agree it does something. Like I said the very least it'll do is just stop the rain from seeping down into my um the wood and getting rotten because if the roof goes and gets rotted I don't know what I'll do, I'll have to get a whole new roof which would be really annoying so seeing as the storm didn't blow it away I thought the least I could do is try and protect it a bit. Job done anyway, there we go. What are we thinking about these onions and garlics then guys because the wind has pummeled them quite a bit however there are like new leaves coming through and new shoots so I sort of think they might be able to repair themselves. You can see like this one for example has been completely like obliterated in there in the storm but he's got a new little shoot coming through there so I think you know I think they can sort of fix themselves, they must be used to storms, if they if they're used to being sown in the autumn time they must be used to some kind of bad weather and be able to repair themselves like that's really good and in these ones look they're just starting to come up now it's amazing. I think they'll be all right I think I just get panicky when I see like leaves snap and stuff but leaves snapping is not the worst thing that can happen to a plant, the worst thing that can happen to a plant is that it ends up in my allotment plot no the worst thing it can happen is it gets diseased or something and then you really know about it because it all goes brown and yellow and dies and this is the other garlic that I've got growing and this again this this has survived the storms. I mean not just survived but absolutely thriving it's doing absolutely fantastically this garlic I'm so excited to harvest this they look fantastic I wish I'd had more bulbs actually more cloves whatever they're called to plant and because I'd like like to have had more of it but it's looking so fantastic. I think I'm learning that plants don't have to look perfect in order to be fine and when you're growing in an allotment plot you're not growing to sell you're growing for yourself so if you end up with a bit wonky veg or stuff that doesn't look quite right but it still tastes good then it's a complete success because you've grown something amazing from seeds that you can eat so I am learning slowly I know people get frustrated with me still when I like rip up all the strawberries or something but I am just doing my best and I'm just doing what I think is right for the plot and I think that's all you can do really just just do your best. Right I'm off home now to repot my chilies and peppers so I'm growing chilies and peppers right now on my windowsill I'm also growing some snapdragons but they're not ready to put on yet and I'm going to start my tomatoes now however I'm not going to put my polytunnel up until the last minute I've made an executive decision because I was looking back at these vlogs and we had like a freak storm in like the end of March last year or the year before or something and you can see it's still quite windy now so the last thing I want is that polytunnel flying away I'll start all the stuff that's going to go in it soon like tomatoes and my peppers are going and I think I'm going to do aubergines aubergines something like that and a couple of other things but I'll start the seeds now but the polytunnel will go up at the last minute when they're ready to go out probably in April and that's that's my plan because I really don't want it to fly away so right now I'm going to go home I'm going to repot some stuff so I'll show you how I do that let's do it so we're back home and I'm going to start potting on some of my peppers now the last time I spoke about my peppers um I actually referred to all of them as peppers and said I don't like chilies and a lot of you pointed out that some of these that I've sown are actually chilies um I didn't know that I like all the ones that I've sown I actually eat and I like so whether they're a chili or a pepper doesn't really matter I like to eat them and that's the important thing you like to eat what you grow so let's pop them on so they are all just basically chilling on my windowsill they've all germinated really well well some of them have I mean the sweet amys have done good and sweet colored peppers have done really good the only one that struggled is the kn um on both of the pots these are both kn pots and you can see they've just not done very well so I'm going to leave them to do their thing a bit longer um and then you can see all the other ones have come up so it's time to put them on right I'm going to try and show you this as best I can and I will start with so these are my pots we're going to go into I'm going to start with this one which is my jalapenos um and I'm going to show you how I'm going to put them on so what we're going to do here I hope you can see all this okay we're going to get a new pot I'm going to just make a hole in the pot there we go a little bit of you know what for you today right and then let's move on from that not sure what that comment was right I use a believe it or not a cocktail stick because it's nice and thin it's very thin and easy just to get under the roots without actually killing the plant so I've chosen my victim he is a victim let's be honest so my victim is going to be you so I'm just going to sort of move the soil around him so that he becomes loose from the soil there he goes like that and I'm going to hold him by his leaf never the stem because if you snap the stem it's game over guys if you snap a leaf it's all right not right I mean better than not you know better than stem that's what I'm trying to say happy in his home but mate you've got to you've got to come up sometimes you've got to egg them on a bit because they don't want to leave they don't want to leave do they I like it where they are what I will say is do take your time do take your time with it don't rush it there's no point rushing because all that's going to happen is you're going to snap it all and plant's going to be dead come on mate we ain't got all day there's an audience waiting here will you hurry up just where is he get your butt up where are you hey what are you doing jabby jabby jabby jab around and out he out he comes here he comes here he comes here he come look at the size of the roots the size of the roots I don't think any of us were expecting that and then we simply drop him back into his new home there you go all right you're all right just be nice to it so it doesn't die there he is and that is how I'm going to pot on all of my peppers and chilies um it is a fiddly horrible job and if you do kill some whatever I mean I do all the time that's why it's important to over so so if you want to grow one pumpkin plant don't just put one seed in the ground you know you've got to hedge your bets a bit you've got to put five or six seeds down and then choose the strongest one when you put it on you'll probably kill one another one will die another one you'll forget to water the other one will just die for no reason whatsoever you know so you've got to over so basically um and I hope that helps I hope I hope that's of interest to you um anyway I hope you enjoyed the vlog today and I will see you next time see you on Friday have a nice rest of the week bye