MY NEW BEST FRIEND / JULY 2021 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

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 YouTube channel. Watering is the name of the game right now. Here in the UK we are having a massive heat wave. It is nine o'clock in the morning, it's already 25 degrees. I'm sweating, I don't cope well with the heat, though I do love it being hot and sunny, but only when I'm not doing anything and if I actually have stuff to do then my plot looks pretty fine now. It does tend to cope with lack of water for some reason. I think maybe because we're under a tree and we get quite a lot of shade here or maybe just it takes a few more days than just two days of hot sun for the soil to dry out, I think there's quite a lot of moisture under the ground still, so things are thriving really and doing really well. My pumpkin is taking over the plot but luckily it's up the archway. Look at that, look at that. He's like a rocket, he's taken off into the sky. I just love him. But yeah, watering is pretty much the name of the game today and just checking on everything, but like I said everything's had a bit of a gross bit. I've got a couple of really exciting updates to show you which I'm going to show you first and then we're going to get sowing with some carrots and possibly some more lettuce. What bird is that? I always feel like whatever bird that is, it's always laughing at me. It sounds like it's laughing at me doesn't it? It must just get its timing right because he always does it like between what I'm saying. Just trying to film myself walking and a little spider has made its web right across one of my pathways. How inconvenient. Definitely not going to be able to see it. I don't know why I'm trying to film it. It's literally right here, it's right here. Isn't that weird that it won't pick it up on camera? It's going from my sunflower right across to my archway. Okay, I'm not going to kill any more wildlife so I'm just going to leave him and just hope I remember not to walk through him. He's right at head height as well. How inconvenient is that? I must start with the pumpkins because I'm so incredibly excited and proud about them. They've got flowers galore coming out and this has just travelled right up over the top of us. So many flowers. It's such a tropical looking plant isn't it? It's a bit like a jungle and then look, right up here, right over. So excited. I can't believe it's actually climbing the arch guys. This one might need a little bit of tying in but look, we appear to have a little pumpkin. There he is. Can you see him? A little pumpkin and then down here we did have another one but I don't know if he survived or not. The first ones do tend to die don't they? He seems to have disappeared. I think he might have died. I've got all my nasturtium plants down here and you can see that the cabbage white butterfly is in there. He's in the net. Somebody said that if you plant nasturtiums nearby they like to lay their eggs on those as well. So there's a great big nasturtium plant here but he's still going for the cabbage guys. He's still going for that. My next super exciting update is that one of my dahlias has produced its first flower and it's the first type of dahlia that, this is the first of this type of dahlia that I've ever grown. So it's the first time I've ever seen the flower other than the picture on the packet and it is better than I could have imagined it would ever be. Look at this absolute utter beaut of a dahlia. How gorgeous is this flower? I can't tell you, I just, I'm absolutely in love with it. I don't think it would be possible to be in love with a but I love it. It's this speckled variety so you can see the petals are pale pink and they've got this sort of speckle of darker pink all through it. It has been a little bit nibbled but I'll let them off. My goodness what's happening with the birds? There's definitely some sort of argument going on isn't there? Anyway back to the dahlias. Yeah they're just absolutely beautiful and I didn't think that the dahlia would be this big but it's massive. Here's my hand in comparison. It's a massive flower. It's absolutely beautiful and look I've got more buds coming out so you can imagine when this is all in bloom it's just going to be full of these incredible flowers. I mean this is just stunning isn't it? I could just literally just do the entire vlog just like staring at this flower. I seriously could. And then just to crash us back down to reality next to it, the dahlia next to it has just been completely eaten by slugs and snails. It's turned into a bit of a sacrificial dahlia plant because they just love this one and they don't love the other two so there we go. He's just been absolutely demolished by slugs and snails but like I said you know at least it's kept them away from these ones. I know they've got them a little bit but it's pretty much kept them here. Oh my mate's here. Oh it's my friend. Hello. Hi. I haven't seen you for ages. Oh gosh she's called out for me look. Hello. Hi. Are you coming to see my dahlia? Yeah you come to see my dahlia? Yeah. You hear that I was here did you because I'm talking to myself. You think oh there's that crazy lady who talks to herself. It's nice to have a friend. At least someone wants to talk to me. The sweet peas once again have gone into full bloom. Absolutely stunning. All right so I'm gonna have to pick a load more of these today and also my cosmos are about to bloom. The ones at home have bloomed already so these can't be far off and they're massive so they're going to be really really beautiful. Do you mind? Do you mind? There's my potatoes in there. Hey excuse me. Excuse me. No don't dig in there. They're my potatoes. No come on out. Get out. Out. Yes. The whole plot's going over wonder. Don't go in my potato patch will you. Potatoes haven't done anything yet but then I'm expecting them to do something later because I only put him in a little while ago. He's annoyed at me now because I've told him to get out my potato patch because he's digging in it. He's skulking off now in a mood but you know what can I do? He's not allowed to just roam free. Off he goes. Off he goes to bug someone else. Right okay let's move on to the next thing. Right what I'm gonna have to do is check the um what are they? Cabbages or cauliflower. I can't flipping remember what I planted. Sometimes I call them cauliflower. Sometimes I call them cabbage because I don't remember what they are. Label your plants guys. For Christ's sakes label your plants. I'm gonna check for eggs because the butterflies have been in all weekend so there's probably loads of them. I've not been policing this very well um and I can see loads. You see this here? See that little dot there? This is as close as I can get because of my silly camera. That is a butterfly egg so that's gonna turn into a caterpillar and that's gonna eat the entire crop and there's loads of them. There's loads of them. So I better go through all this and just take them all off I think. Oh bloody butterflies. I just wanted to show you under this leaf here. Is it this leaf? No it's not. Oh god I've lost them. Oh god where are they? Ah under this leaf here. That is a little cluster of caterpillar eggs that I was talking about um but they have all just been on their own as well but I just literally just wiped them off like that. It's a long old job but it does work. Right I've gone through every single leaf. I'm absolutely sweating now um and I've removed as many as I physically can and there's many caterpillars too so I think if I just keep on top of it I should get something and also I've discovered they are cauliflowers because I'll show you why. In there is a little cauliflower. See? You see him in the middle and that in there that's a cauliflower that is so that's what I've grown and now I know. Right okay let's sow some carrots then. Spider web don't go that way. Oh my gosh I'm sweating. I just need to come in here for a bit and cool down because I'm just not used to this kind of heat in this country especially like doing long jobs in the sun. Right the carrot variety I found these at home actually I didn't know I had these is chantenay red cord 2. Now I've grown chantenay carrots before so I know that they're going to be quite short and they're quite fat so short fat carrots um hopefully because that's what they're supposed to be like um mine would probably be thin and long but there we go um and you are supposed to sow them up to June so we're about a month out but I just figured the weather's been about a month out so let's just whack them in and just see what happens and see if we can get some more carrots. I've just done it. I've just walked through the bloody spider web. I knew I was going to do it. I knew it. I'm so forgetful and such a plonker. I've just walked straight through it. Right because the ground is so dry because it's such a hot day I'm going to water the soil before I sow my seeds and after as well um just to ensure that it gets enough moisture. So I'm just going to water it very badly. We'll do two rows. Let's put a The phrase so lightly doesn't seem to register with my brain so that's what we've done and we'll just have to keep thinning them but these are not carrot fly resistant this strain so this is going to be an interesting one. Another bug to battle. You might be able to see the two previous rows of carrots are now starting to germinate and pop up everywhere which is excellent so we will hopefully get another round of carrots before the season's up but you don't know. I mean a person might come and pick them all again. I don't know if I told you that but somebody came and picked my other two rows of carrots even though they were nowhere near ready to be picked they didn't care and it's very obvious that someone picked them unless it was the cat but he doesn't have opposable thumbs so I'm not sure how he could have picked carrots but hey he seems quite intelligent who knows but that's what happens in my plot. You see I grow something good and then someone comes and bloody picks it so I think next year I am going to make a fence around my plot which is a shame it's something I really didn't want to do but I think I'm gonna have to. It is like I said a very very very hot day so I'm going to spend the rest of the time here harvesting some stuff. I'm going to harvest some courgettes, spinach and possibly some of the lettuce which is dying. I'll have a look around and see what I can harvest. Obviously I'm not going to have the biggest harvest this year because things just haven't grown the way I wanted them to or I might take some of the nasturtium as well and make a salad with it but whatever I can harvest I'm really really enjoying. The courgettes were amazing. I actually put them in a stir fry which I've never done before and I sliced them into long fingers and then stuffed them in a stir fry just for a few minutes to cook and they were amazing so anything I am harvesting here I am really really enjoying so it's definitely worth it. I'd just like some more of it please so I'm really hoping that my plot starts providing a little bit more but yeah I'm going to go and pick what I can now so let's see what we can do. I just wanted to show you the courgettes that I picked in my harvest because it's quite funny I didn't, obviously there's a few that I've actually forgotten about and I didn't realise were growing they must have been growing for a very long time. So first I picked this one and I was like that's quite a good little size courgette can definitely cook with that that's lovely then I picked this one and I thought wow that's a bit bigger that'll do then I picked this one and I was like oh my god this must be like the mother of all courgettes but no he's still a baby because then then I saw this one which is like the biggest courgette I've ever grown in my life and it's such easy plants to grow and I know they're easy because I'm not very good gardener and so they must be really easy but look look at the size of them I must have forgotten about him because I don't actually know what I'm going to do with so much courgette but hopefully I'll figure out a way of keeping it for longer before it goes off or we're going to be eating a lot of courgette in the coming weeks I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did subscribe to my channel and I will see you in my next vlog thanks for watching guys bye