#ad A BUSY DAY ON THE ALLOTMENT PLOT / APRIL 2023 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Hi guys, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I hope you've all been really well and happy Friday. So before I get into this video, I wanted to share with you an app that I've been really enjoying recently. You might have heard me talk about it a few times. It's called Readly. So Readly is a magazine subscription app. It means that once you've subscribed you can get access to hundreds of magazines in all different categories. One of the things that I love the most about it, being at this allotment plot, I don't have Wi-Fi a lot of the time, so you can download your magazines and then bring them along. So if you get a rain shower or you want to take a little break, you can access the magazine from your phone without accessing Wi-Fi, which is just amazing. I have favorited a lot of my favorite magazines so that I never lose them and it notifies me and lets me know when there is a new edition out and then I can read it and not miss it, which I absolutely love. I hate having to sniff through shops and looking for magazines. I also like the fact that you don't have to have loads of paper and carry around magazines with you. It's all in one app, on your phone, really convenient, really handy. So recently I've been looking through a lot of the gardening magazines and looking at the seeds to sow. I think it's a great time of year to plan your garden and plan what you're going to be growing if you haven't done that already. Magazines are a great source for that and there are so many gardening magazines on the Readly app that you can access and give you so many ideas, not just for seeds to sow but jobs to do, lots of gardening inspiration as well. One of the things that I did find and what I really want to grow this year is sweet corn. So I was looking through a few of the magazines on the Readly app. Something that was really interesting in one of the articles was about sweet corn and how sweet corn doesn't like its roots to be disturbed and that one of the best ways of sowing and growing sweet corn is actually to sow it directly in the ground. Now, it's not something that I've really done before because it's just not possible to do it in the UK outdoors, especially in April, but apparently you can and apparently it's a lot better for sweet corn to be sown directly, it doesn't get its roots disturbed and it grows stronger and healthier. So it's all thanks to the Readly app and being able to access so many magazines and so much, so many different gardening advice that I've actually managed to find, that I've actually managed to find that piece of advice and I'm definitely going to give that a go today. And don't forget I'm going to leave a link below to the Readly app and you're going to get a discount code with it if you click my link, you'll get some money off. So go below, click it if you're interested in it, use my link, get yourself some money off and hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I do. Cannot wait to show you the plot today, it's looking so beautiful, full of tulips and colour, let's go and have a look. This is my allotment plot and look how stunning it is looking on this lovely morning. All of my tulips are coming up which is amazing, definitely over planted on them but hey, who cares because they're just cheering me up no end and they look absolutely beautiful. I have a couple of really exciting updates to show you, when I got here today I couldn't believe it and I was like I need to put the camera on because you need to see my reactions to these things. So let me take you around a little bit. So some of you who watch these vlogs regularly might remember that I planted in my potatoes here and at long last they're coming up, they're coming up, they're coming up, they're coming up. So many potatoes coming up, I can see them all around the place, this one here as well. I can also see a few footprints where I reckon Rocky the cat has been having a little bit of a wander in here but most importantly all the potatoes are coming up. There was a moment where I was just like did I kill them all, should I not have put them in, was it too cold? But it's not at all and actually now I think the frost has probably done it's worst. If we get snow tomorrow please do not blame me for saying that, I can't help it, I get excited guys but I think the frost has probably done it's worst and so now all the foliage is coming up, it's pretty much protected, it's all good. I'm going to have potatoes. And then further down the plot is a bit exciting because nothing's died which is always an exciting thing isn't it in my allotment but the peas are doing particularly well. So these are just a few that I picked up from, where was it, B&Q and I've just whacked them all in together. Now you can see that one of them, we had one casualty over there, he sort of disappeared but the others are okay and I really think planting in numbers is a great thing and they're all clinging on now. He was clinging on and I've just pulled him off. And you might remember that I put down these little pellet things, well this is what they turn into after they've had a bit of water and this is to stop slugs and snails, sorry I should have explained that, this is to stop slugs and snails, they're little pellets and they turn into this, they break up when they've had enough water to sort of create a bit of a protective layer around and I think so far they're doing quite a good job, I think they have done quite a good job, in fact I can actually see that the one that's been eaten I didn't actually put quite enough rounds, they've probably slithered around it. I think a big part of vegetable gardening at this time of year in particular when you've started putting stuff out is just protecting it from slugs and snails, so if we come to this bed here I've used loads of different natural methods to try and deter slugs and snails this year and these are just crushed up whelk shells and these have done quite a good job as well. These are coming through this net, I'd better move this netting soon actually, we'll make it higher, but yeah you can see that I've just surrounded them with these shells and actually you can see the greenery, most of them are alive so it's pretty good and the idea is just to stop them from crawling across because they don't like the roughness of the shells on their bellies. I think I've found that most natural slug and snail deterrent ideas are all about making the surface rough so that they can't crawl over it, so brambles, crushed shells, crushed egg shells, those pellets that turn into that strulchy stuff, Even the scouring pad idea that I had ages ago, which didn't work by the way, it's all about trying to stop them from slithering over it because they don't like the roughness on their bellies. I don't know how much that's true and also what if you've got a slug with like a particularly rough belly that didn't mind or what if they just evolve over time to be able to go over rougher surfaces, you know? I don't know, I don't know how these things work but I just know that I don't like killing them, if I can help it. And the other exciting thing I want to show you is down here but it's a not sure thing, it's like I'm not 100% what I'm seeing but I think what I'm seeing is what I'm seeing but you tell me if it's what I'm seeing. So in this bed here, this is my flower bed, I planted some cornflower seeds, so I just literally scattered some cornflower seeds wanting a great big bunch of them to come up and I think, I think these are cornflowers coming up. Now I can't be sure because obviously I know that's grass, so that's definitely not cornflower, that's weed but I think these things are cornflowers because there's so many of them coming up and they all look the same so I'm convinced that they're cornflowers, they've got to be. What else could they possibly be? I mean why would the same weed be coming up everywhere? I really think they are just flowers and that's exactly where I scattered them as well. I've got my jacket on, I probably don't need it on, it's not actually that cold, not when you're actually doing stuff, when you're walking around pointing at everything it's a bit chilly but when you actually do some work it's alright you know, we can plonk ourselves right in the sun. Rightly or wrongly, excitingly or not excitingly, I brought myself a million dahlia bulbs, just hundreds of them, so I couldn't help myself, I literally purchased so many dahlia bulbs and I don't even know where they're all going to go but apparently they're all going to go in the plot I've decided, last minute. So I'm going to plant out my dahlia bulbs today, now some of them I started in pots on my windowsill at home, those ones are going to go into my garden. The advantage of starting them in a pot is that they get going in the pot, they get a bit bigger before you plant them out, they give you earlier flowers and they flower for longer, however dahlias need quite a big pot, you know it needs quite a substantial pot to get going, the tubers can be quite big, I don't have a lot of room so I can't really do that, I've only done it to four of my dahlias so I just don't have the room. I've also purchased these, little hats for the plot, oh no it's full of crap. Space hats, so when we plant our dahlias we can wear our little space hats and be protected. No of course it's not, these basically are sort of hats, they're hats for plants really, so they go over the top of the plant and they protect it from like frost and pests and all that sort of thing, so I've brought a few of these with me too to put over the dahlias. So let's whack in the dahlias, now they're going to go in a flower bed, obviously all the cornflowers are coming up now, so I don't know. I'm going to whack them in along the back, I'm not even going to read what variety they are, I'm just going to whack them in because I think it'll be like an exciting thing when they come out. This is a dahlia tuber, isn't it weird, it's like an octopus, it's like a fattened up octopus that's shrivelled up and dried and you're about to eat him. He's actually starting to bud a little bit, he's got a little bit of a growth on him, so these are fine to go out now I reckon, because they're already starting to sprout. So basically this bit here, I always leave that little bit just a little bit above the surface so I know where they are and everything else goes below the surface. But they're weird little things aren't they, weird. Isn't it amazing that something so beautiful can come from something so weird and ugly, it's like the ugly duckling, that's what dahlias are. We're going to whack them in now. Oh god they're such ugly weird things, why, it's so weird. So we're digging a nice big hole, I'm pretty sure there's a dahlia here already actually, I think we're probably going to find him now, oh that's bindweed. I'm pretty sure there's a dahlia here, but you know what, that dahlia's had his day, he didn't do very well last year so he can bugger right off. He's just going to have to make room for the new. They all have to eventually you know, if they don't perform for me they're out. That's my role as the bouncer of the plot you know, if they don't do their job they're out mate, see ya. Right in you go you weird little lizard thing. I think some people probably soak these first, looking at it, it might be an idea to soak it. Yeah let's do that actually, or we won't and what we'll do is we'll put him in like that and then water him in the hole, then we'll fill him in. Godspeed little dahlia. Good luck. So now we're going to stick these over them just to keep them protected, so I need four. So he's in his little spaceship thing now and hopefully that'll keep him warm and also keep some of the pests away I'm hoping as well and then what I'm going to do is when I come back I'll put some strulch around him because I've brought some new strulch now just to give him a double protection but yeah I think he'll be alright under there. Oh look As I said at the beginning of this vlog, while perusing some of the garden magazines in the Readly app, which again my discount code is below, I discovered that sowing sweetcorn directly outside is actually better for the plant and the plant tends to do better than starting it in pots indoors. So that is exactly what I'm going to do this time round, so I've got my little sweetcorn pack from Seedcraft, a subscription box for seeds so you can see my link for that below as well, and it's the F1 Incredible. So I'm going to literally direct sow this into the ground here, cover it with some cloche and hopefully it will do better and the reason being is that the roots don't like to be disturbed and I already said that so Tom are you going to help me whack this in? Right we're going to whack in some sweetcorn. So if you don't want to learn anything about sweetcorn at all, learn this one thing, sweetcorn needs to be planted in a grid, so a square basically, not rows, a square. So it's sort of like rows but you need enough rows to make it a square and that's because they're wind pollinated, they blow onto each other and that's how they pollinate and that's how you get sweetcorn basically, it's how you get the cobs. So they need to be planted in a grid, a square. If you don't learn anything else about sweetcorn, just know that one thing and then get on with it and just whack it in, which is what we're going to do. Right so that's the sweetcorn planted directly outside as according to that magazine article I found and I've now covered it with cloche and I'm going to see if they work. At the same time at home I'm probably going to plant them in pots as well because you know, you never know if they're actually going to work or not and I do really want sweetcorn so I've whacked it out, I'll let you know how it goes. That's all you can do guys, whack it out, see how it goes. Fingers crossed. Can't leave the vlog without showing you the polytunnel. When will I not show you the polytunnel? I'm so excited to see it today, we've had so much, are you joking? I've literally not been down here for about four or five days, I didn't come down over Easter because we were just so busy. It looks like a different tent. Everything is just blooming and growing, it looks so flipping beautiful and these radishes are finally starting to flower. How gorgeous are they? These are radishes guys, can you believe it? My kohlrabi is looking fantastic, this one looks like it might have bolted which means it's going to develop flowers but I'm just going to leave them because wow, absolutely stunning. The garlic is all coming up, my new radishes, the bright lights are coming up and this, what is it called again, a pak choy has finally flowered. I thought they would be yellow, I was waiting to see what the flowers would look like, aren't they stunning? Absolutely beautiful. So we're going to leave him to do his thing because he looks lovely. Got this little, I think this is a dwarf kale, he looks happy. Radishes, I mean garlic looks amazing. Wow, everything's growing. Always good to leave it on a bit of a high in here, I mean it just gets better and better. I think because we're in a polytunnel and it's like warm in here, everything just gets a bit of a growth spurt whenever we get some sun so this is really exciting. Hope you are enjoying your plots, it's getting noisy on here now so I'm going to love you and leave you. I will see you again next week, thank you so much for watching, see you then, bye!