WEEDING, PLANTING AND HARVESTING RADISHES / MAY 2023 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, 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 tube, YouTube tube, my YouTube channel if you are new, so go and hit the subscribe button now, give me a thumbs up if you like these kind of videos and I'll keep posting. A beautiful day here today, actually quite warm, blue skies, sun's out, absolutely lovely, perfect gardening weather. Unfortunately I don't have that long here today because I've got a ton of work to do at home, so I'm going to start cracking on with a few jobs. The first thing I want to do, last time I was here I planted out some marigolds and also my sunflowers have recently been planted, so I want to go and check that they're all alive, fingers crossed they are. What was that? Fingers crossed they are, so let's go and see if everything's still alive. Look at this day, so beautiful, so peaceful, so lovely and warm. I feel like I've been dreaming of this day for so long and now it's here, you kind of, you have to like stop and try and appreciate it, otherwise you just pass as you buy you know, but I've been dreaming of the day where it's nice and sunny, blue skies, ah just perfect, right they're alive, they're alive. Sunflowers are still doing pretty well, getting new leaves in the middle as well, fantastic, looking really good. This one's been a little bit more munched, ah there's the culprit, missed a snail, so are you able to go on that then? Because that's strut and you shouldn't be able to go, yeah let's say you get stuck to them, they don't like it when all that stuff gets stuck to them I think, I think, I mean I'm just making that up but what buggers aren't they? I think what I'm doing now when I arrive is I'm checking along the sides here to see if there are any slugs or snails hiding and then I'm removing them and then I'm trying to keep all of this stuff chopped back against the raised beds because this is where they like to hide, so over here you can see I've started chopping it back but I need to chop a lot more of that back because they'll hide along there, they like that place because it's nice and damp and it's nice and dark. I've got some sunflowers in here, they're alive as well, I hid these in amongst the broad beans in hope that they would be safe and they actually are and look at this broad bean, he's doing so good, so proud of you mate, you are the winner, got a few little cheeky marigolds that I put in here, absolutely love these flowers and they are all alive still, absolutely fantastic. I think this is going to go today, you're supposed to wait for it to die back but the thing is slugs and snails just love to hide in here so I'm just basically making a slug and snail hotel next to my marigolds which I don't want so the hotel's going to go. What I will also do is just check on my runner beans and my sweet corn as well, I saw a lot the sweet corn was germinating yesterday, I can't imagine much more has but I hope that what's there is still there, that's the thing isn't it, you just want what's there to still be there the next day. It's still there, we have got germinating sweet corn all around this bed, looking so fantastic, oh so good and then over here we've still got our runner beans and they are still very much alive. So I did an experiment in my last vlog showing all these different methods of protection and we did conclude that none of them work but I have still used them nonetheless because I just can't bear to not protect them with anything. Fortunately all of the marigolds have sort of survived with this sheep's wool, this is sheep's wool all around them so they've all survived. The little tomato plant here that got eaten, he's still got his leaf so he could still grow back you know, he really could and then I've got a couple of marigolds in these things which I can see are still alive, that was like a double protection to make sure I got at least one marigold plant but yeah everything in here looks pretty good. I'm just going to remove some of the slugs and snails I can see. So I'm going to put out three more tomatoes today which are growing a little bit bigger. I'm going to use this stick and string trick, that's really hard to say, stick and string, stick and string trick that I used on the other one. So basically tied a pole across here or a stick as I like to call them and then I've got some twine going down, the twine has been planted underneath the tomato plant and then as the tomato plant grows I can just wrap it around the string or the twine whatever you want to call it and yeah so I'm just going to make that again basically there. So I am finding it to be quite a good method and I think it looks good as well and I think it's always good when something looks good you know, I think it's important and a lot of you said you know what will I do if the tomatoes get too big I'll probably just add a few canes or something you know I'm not fussed you know I'm always happy to adapt my sort of ideas and my plans to match what's going on so if they get too big you know simply a case of just adding adding more support and structure just add a few canes or something you know and that's it. Oh there's a great big snail sitting there, oh there's bricks under it too Look at you, are you the one who's eating all of my bleeding cucumbers? You little bugger. Oh god is it a tree root or something? What am I pulling out here? What is this? It's the biggest rock known to man it's a dinosaur bone, jeez Louise where did you come from? You can go to my pond, you'll like it there. So make a little loop, I know I've shown you this before but just in case you haven't make a little loop like that. I'm going to put that in the hole first in that goes like that and then I'm going to take my tomato plant or tomato plant whatever you might call this plant stick in the tomato plant hold that up like that fill him in fill him in fill him in welcome into his new home welcome thank you for stopping by we don't know how long you'll be staying with us but we hope it will be for a very long time now we've got our twine in it we just pull our twine tight and tie it up and look I can wind it around him a little bit like that and he's supported isn't that genius isn't that genius there he is so this is a gardener's delight absolutely love growing those because they're so easy you can see now the twine is wrapped around him and as he grows I'll just wind it around more and more and up he grows right seems my tripod is broken so we're going to have wonky shots from now on I think I'm going to use the wool the wool sheep's wool around it because it seems to work with the marigolds and even though the experiment was a failure with the slug and the snail I mean maybe it does work I don't know so I'm going to use this rather this than nothing I don't think I can bear to use nothing you know I'd rather use something than nothing so at least this is something at least I've done something so like I said because I don't have tons and tons of time here today I'm going to just weed and cut back as much as I can around my beds to try and stop the slugs and snails and also just to try and keep on top of it so I always say to you if you don't have enough time if you don't have tons of time to spend at your allotment just do some weeding when in doubt weed because it's the thing that's going to take over your plot the quickest are weeds and it's the thing that's going to stop you from coming down and feeling overwhelmed so that if you can just do one thing at your plot weed something little and often whenever you've got a moment just do that focus on that and then hopefully you won't kind of get overwhelmed with them with your plot and you won't feel out of control with it that's the plan anyway why are you so obsessed with my bum leave me alone oh rocky bottom that nice yeah I swear he just said Emma you heard Emma right I've been stressed over the last couple of weeks I've had a lot going on when I'm here on my allotment plot it's like all of that kind of goes away it's the only place that I can come and guarantee to kind of feel better when I leave like no matter how I'm feeling or what's going on I feel better when I leave here yeah when my nan died I just fell apart it was like the foundation of my existence had been rocked somehow and it was really really hard to come back from that the only place that I found even a glimpse of just feeling better about the world again was in the garden it's the only place where I felt peace and things just sort of made more sense in nature than they did in my world at the time I think death is all around us in nature things are dying all the time but we don't sit and cry about it I mean I cry sometimes when my tomato plants get eaten but you know I plant another one I whack another one in I'm always whacking stuff in stuff's always dying I think just gardening just makes me feel better because it makes me feel like I'm part of something beyond myself I don't think you can always explain that but I think that's why a lot of people get addicted to gardening and to growing it's because you feel something beyond that you feel like you're part of something bigger and I guess in a way I do feel closer to my nan it's funny because this whole journey with gardening that I've done has started from losing my nan and it's all come out of this it's all come out of that something so tragic something so horrid something that knocked the wind out of my sails has led you know my life to be on a completely different journey than I ever thought it would be on this week because I'm really grateful for that because I love it and I love my life now but I'm also really sad I don't know if I would have got here without that you know thing happening I really wish she could have seen all this because I know she would have been so proud of me so I just want to show you quickly oh it's a hair in the lens I just want to show you quickly my brassica bed because in this bed I've used that product from Andermatt home and garden called slugless and it's worked really well but you can see the sheer amount of the product that I've actually put down it's actually like probably half the bag in here and I've had minimal kind of damage I mean they're all alive still I have had some damage and the reason is because the weaves were growing over and into here which meant the slugs and snails kind of had a bridge to get in and I didn't realize that was happening because obviously it's all been covered up with netting so that's the reason why these have got a bit of damage on but overall I think it's worked really well so I'm definitely going to be ordering some more slugless I think as with anything at the allotment plot it's always a combined method so you need lots of different methods for protecting against slugs and snails you can't just put one thing down and expect it to work unless it's like evil slug pellets but I really don't want to resort to those the only ones that I would resort to are the Richard Jackson ones which are the natural slug pellets which cause the slugs to go underground and die and what that does is it means that birds and frogs aren't going to come and eat those slugs and then die themselves that's the only one that I'd resort to I only resorted it to to it last year once for my pumpkins because I they were all getting eaten all the time and I really wanted some pumpkins but I might resort to that at some point not yet not yet at the moment I'm just going to grow everything really big and strong and hope for the best really I mean this is only one thing I've got out I think these are cauliflowers and that's all I've got out at the moment and then what I need to do I'm still growing them at home and then that bed is going to be purple sprouting broccoli sprouts and cabbages I'm wondering if some of these radishes down here are actually ready to harvest because yesterday I ate that tiny one but I did notice a couple of bigger ones so let's have a look so I don't want these ones to go to seed oh look see that's quite a good radish size isn't it I think I might pick that one oh yes so that's a white radish he looks lovely oh hang on this one here he might be ready that one might be ready see I thought I was growing the bright lights ones which I thought were all red like bright red like that one I picked but I've sort of got white ones and then ones that kind of look like potatoes so I don't know I mean I think these are the multi-coloured ones aren't they so I'm not sure what I've grown here but these will be exciting to have for lunch today so you can take these home with me I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did do subscribe to my channel I'll see you again hopefully fingers crossed on Friday if not it'll be after the weekend guys but I'm gonna do my best to get a video up for Friday for you so hopefully see you then thanks for watching bye bye radishes