SOWING CARROTS AND ALLOTMENT CHAT / APRIL 2023 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

A panic and scatter, that's my other saying, panic and scatter. Good morning guys, 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 if you are new, I put up loads of videos about my allotment plot in South London, I'd love for you to follow along, come and see what I'm up to, see what you're up to, I'd love to know what you're up to too, I love to get your comments and today's video, I know that I have been a little bit sporadic with answering comments, I've just not, I've just not been able to find the time consistently to answer comments but after I have put this video up I'm going to be online for two hours waiting for your comments, questions, anything you want to ask me, anything you want to know, just leave it in the comments below and I am going to answer in the first two hours and then I will try and come back to the video as much as I can to answer any follow-up questions that you didn't put down in time and then hopefully I'll actually get some comments answered, get some of your questions answered and start to build this community a little bit because I know I'm not very good at it so I apologise for that, your comments mean a lot to me, I do read them all but today I am going to answer them. Anyway, how have you all been? I hope you had a lovely Easter, I had a lovely Easter, I took a little bit of time off, I don't know if you noticed, didn't have a couple of vlogs go up but it was really nice just to spend some time with the family, however the weather has been insanely good and I just could not stay away any longer, it's beautiful this morning, we are due some wind later on this afternoon which I was a little bit worried about which is why I've come down here to check everything because wind and me are not friends, like I'm not friends with the wind, any other weather, ice, snow, torrential rain, heat waves, I can deal with all of that, hurricane, tornado, wind, I just can't deal with it, my plot does not like the wind so I'm going to come down, I thought I'd come down and just check it all over and make sure everything's like mounted to the ground basically, is that word? Mounted? Mounted? Does that mean mountain? Who knows, it's been a long weekend guys, right let me show you my beautiful allotment plot right now. Guys look at this allotment plot, look at all the flowers coming up, it is like, it's just the most spring that my plot has ever looked. I am so glad that I went for so many tulips, they are just giving me life right now and I don't pick them, I've never picked a tulip from this allotment plot because I didn't, I didn't grow them for cutting flowers and I kind of want them to last as well and I just think the colour that it brings to an allotment plot is just stunning and beautiful and I just love it so I don't pick them, I just watch them, look at them, take loads of pictures of them and film them. So you can probably see that this bed here, it's not even been that windy and this is just blowing all over the place which is actually crushing all of my crops underneath it. Firstly let's see if they're alive because always good to see the crops are alive. Are you alive? I actually feel ridiculous right now because I cannot remember what the heck these are, are they cauliflowers? I think they're cauliflowers, yeah I think they're cauliflowers but they're all alive, they're all alive, they're all alive, um yeah they, is that cat poo? No, yeah they're all alive, they're done really well and this stuff here which is the Andermat, Andermat slug pellets, you can see how it's all broken up so that's done really well. I might put some more down actually. So it is this stuff, slugless and it's by Andermat and it's just a natural sort of slug pellets and it doesn't kill them or anything, what it does is when it gets wet it breaks up like that and it creates a layer across your bed that they can't go over. So it's a little bit like strulch, I love anything like this because it's natural, it doesn't kill them and because it's so wet under here, this netting is also from Andermat and it's completely biodegradable and it's wet under there. A lot of you were asking if water can get through it, well it can because it's been raining and it's wet under there so I'm assuming the answer is yes, yes it can. Right I'm going to put some more slug pellets around but to be honest I don't really like calling them slug pellets because they're not really slug pellets, they're like a natural deterrent but I don't know what else to call them because they come in pellets. So this is how they come, they come quite hard and then as they get wet they break up more. I think they're great, I love anything like this and also because they're made of natural stuff they're good for your soil as well because it's just organic matter isn't it, so if that goes into my soil it's fine. I'll water them, you're supposed to water them but it is going to rain later so that will also break them up as well, just water them a little bit. And this side here keeps flying up so what I want to do is peg it down I think, I don't think the rocks are quite doing enough so I'm going to peg it into the ground, I can't get it in, there we go, it went in, it went in, I'll put one the other side. So far this little tent thing that I've made for brassicas has worked really well, it's been so good, so I haven't had Rocky the cat digging in it which is excellent and I haven't had any slugs or snails under there which is thanks to the natural slug pellets and I think I'm not going to have a problem with the cabbage white butterflies, I hope, fingers crossed. I pegged it down now so it's really really secure, oh why are you going, but that was definitely worth making. If you haven't seen my video on how I made this, I used blue water piping and I will link the video now on screen somewhere, everybody uses it, look I'll show you my neighbours quickly, this is my lovely neighbour's pot and I've seen that he's used the water piping, I actually think that his might be an irrigation system, he might have actually put water through it so he just has to turn on a tap and then it sprinkles down because there's like hoses on it but he's much better than me at all but yeah I had a look at this one here and I was just like what is this, what is this and I was like oh it's water pipe so he's just used it everywhere, you can sort of use it for structure and you can use it for like to make netting tents and everything, I mean it's a great little hack really, it's a hack isn't it because it's not technically made for gardening but if you go to any allotment plot you'll probably see that blue piping everywhere and it's because it's and useful and good for your money so there we go, right that's one job done, really looks like it's going to rain any second and they said it wouldn't rain until like three o'clock this afternoon, it's only nine in the morning and it looks like it's going to rain, why do weather people lie, why do they have to lie to us, just tell us the truth, blue skies and sun they say, blue skies and sun, well there's the blue skies, where's the sun and what's that, we're in a full torrential downpour now it seems, when I left half an hour ago it said blue skies and sun and I've just checked the weather app again and now we've got 60 chance of rain at 10 o'clock, too bleeding late now, you can't just change your mind when it actually starts raining, it's like there's someone sitting there changing the app when it actually rains and go oh it's raining, quick change it, oh my god what's happened, good morning it is another day, I swear to you the weather has just changed in about 30 seconds, this wasn't even supposed to happen until like three o'clock this afternoon, I thought I had loads of time this morning to be down here, it's just horrendous, anyway having said all that I will do is sow some carrots and then get out of here, what better job can I think to do in the wind and the rain than sow some carrots, Mr Fothergill's sent me a little pack with loads of salad crops in it and loads of their seeds to try and they have these carrots which are Nantes spied, now Nantes carrots are supposed to be some of the easiest carrots to grow and I've noticed something about my little row of carrots there which I'm going to show you now, if we don't blow away, so this is my carrot and parsnip bed and up until about a week and a half ago it was doing really really well, do you remember that, do you remember a week and a half ago and I was like this is my favourite bed, well parsnip's great, parsnip's doing absolutely excellent and actually look their seedlings, oh gosh, their seedlings are getting the extra little leaf now like they're real leaves, so they're doing fantastic, carrots have sort of disappeared a little bit and I think possibly something's eaten them because I can't understand why they wouldn't be doing well, I know all this is flown in but surely that can't crush carrots, surely they're uncrushable and then my little rhubarb potato is actually growing something now, I don't know what that is but we're going to leave him, so I'm going to put some more carrots in, I always just think when in doubt just add more, so if you think it's died it's probably died and if you are worried you're not going to get carrots just put some more in, like that's it, it's that simple and then what I'm going to do is protect him with that Andermatt slugless stuff which I just left out in the rain, oh I just left it out in the rain, oh well, I'm sure it'll be all right, so it's always tricky to put something back in the ground that was already in the ground because you don't want to kill the things that are already in the ground, so I can sort of see, oh god, I can sort of see where my rows are and what I'm going to do is sew two new rows in between, that's how we get around it, that's a row so we'll put the row there, so we'll put the next row there in the middle oh it's getting really windy now, I know I said it was going to be windy today but I sort of thought this afternoon it would be windy, not now, super quick seed sewing tip, always better just pour the seeds into your hand instead of sewing directly from the packet because you can control your seeds a bit better, so just pour them into your hand and then just pinch them, take a pinch and sprinkle, pinch and sprinkle, that should be my little saying, pinch and sprinkle oh god, I'm getting all flabbergasted because of the wind is flabbergasted a real word or is it a cartoon word, I don't know usually panic and scatter, that's my other saying, panic and scatter and then what we're going to do is because this will turn into like a, like a, you know, you saw it, the strawberry stuff, it's fine just to put it all over the crops okay, and it'll stop them from being eaten, I don't think they eat parsnips but I'm going to put them over there anyway just in case I can't be 100% sure that it was slugs and snails that ate the carrots and it wasn't just that they just died, sometimes they do just die, I can't always blame little slugs and snails, you know, it might have been the frost, it might have been that the cloche blew up and they just died, I don't know to be honest but what I do know is that I've sown some more and they should grow because it's April now and they won't need cloching so I'm not going to cloche them now because I think they'll just be all right, I have hope and I have, you know, optimism, that's what will help your garden grow, optimism I tell you what guys, I can't believe the difference in weather right now from what it was like literally 10 minutes ago, it's blue skies and sunshine, it's absolutely beautiful, the birds are out, it's like that never happened, it's the craziness of April weather in the UK I think, that just sums it up, I tell you what though, being here at my allotment plot today has done so much for my mental health and my mood has just lifted like crazy, just being out in the sunshine, being out in open air, putting my hands in the soil, looking at my plants, having a chat with you on the camera, it just makes me feel so much better and so much less anxious. This allotment plot is so much more than just a garden where I grow stuff, it is just my outlet, it's my escape, it's the place where I feel happy. I never thought that my allotment plot would be such a massive escape from all of that stuff that goes on in my head but it is, it's like when I'm here I'm not me and I hope that these vlogs inspire you, just to inspire you, just to make you feel uplifted and happy because if you can't get to your allotment or it's under snow right now or you know you just can't get there for whatever reason, I hope that these vlogs you just watch them and you just feel that little bit of happiness that I feel when I'm here you know and that little bit of like escapism and free and just you can just switch off for a little bit when you're watching them and that's kind of what I'm I'm hoping these vlogs do. Apologies for all of the noise in the background, a lot of people here with power tools today because that's what happens when the sun comes out. I hope you've enjoyed my vlog today, I'm gonna have a few more going up in April, hopefully the weather stays nice or I manage to get little pockets of it like this where I can film. I hope you are getting out and enjoying your gardens or your allotment plots and if you're not I hope you're enjoying my vlogs, like I said I'm going to answer comments from you in the next two hours so leave any questions below that you have for me, anything that I haven't answered before, anything that you've been dying to get a response from me from, just leave it below in the comments now I'm going to do my absolute best to answer every single comment on this video, that is my pinky promise to you guys so I hope you enjoyed it today, see you again next time, see you Friday, see you Friday, bye!