SHAKING THE SWEETCORN / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

So now it looks like they're growing out the top of a molehill. Hello everyone, someone was behind me then. Hello everyone, welcome back, welcome to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma these are my allotment diaries, I vlog all about my allotment plot here in South London and if you are interested in following my journey a good way of doing that is to subscribe to my YouTube channel, just click the subscribe button, click the little bell and every time I post a video you'll get a notification and you'll never miss out on one of my exciting allotment diaries basically. They do get quite exciting sometimes, last time we harvested a cauliflower which was like the highlight of my week so what could be more exciting than harvesting a cauliflower, that's what I want to know. So welcome back, today I am back at the plot to do some actual jobs, so last time I just came here had a look around looked at what needed to be done, sometimes that's a whole job in itself is finding the jobs that need to be done and in this episode I'm going to be actually tackling some of those jobs so lots of weeding needs to be done, lots of chopping back lots of keeping on top of things, when you're away for a week in the summer months the plot can just go a little bit crazy and that's not really your fault, I mean that's just what happens in the summer, plants grow like crazy and it can be a bit disheartening but just get back on top of it, just start slowly build your way, work your way around the plot, get on top of it, you'll be fine and that's that's my motivation for today, so we're going to start with some good old weeding, let's get on with it, let's stop talking get on with it, just putting on my very well worn cool job think green gloves, so these are made from recycled plastic bottles, there's a link below that you can get these gloves with a discount code, so if you go below and have a look you'll find these lovely gloves, I always rattle on about them, I am sponsored by them as a disclaimer but they are fantastic gloves and like I said made from recycled plastic bottles, so you're doing a bit for the environment they come in a variety of colours, different shapes and straps around them, winter gloves, summer gloves, kids gloves, you name it they've got it, all different sizes and I've had no problems with them and they literally last me ages, so I think they are absolutely fantastic the link to these is below if you would like to purchase some for yourself for your allotment plot and yeah definitely a recommendation from me, okay right I'm just I'm still distracting myself, let's start weeding sorry this is just me running around trying to find my equipment before I do the nice cool shot I think I nailed that one so I don't really know what to do with my cornflowers at the moment because they're sort of dying back but at the same time sorry bee, I mean no harm, I'm a gardener, I have a license to touch these flowers thank you, um the bees are still loving them and they do kind of still look a little bit alive so what do people normally do with their cornflowers? A lot of people are telling me make sure you cut them down because they can spread like weaves around your plot and just turn up everywhere um but I don't know is that true and if it is true do I really care I mean would I really just want these to come up everywhere anyway but look the bees are just absolutely loving them still I really don't want to get rid of them yet um and they still kind of look quite pretty in a kind of I'm half dead kind of way which I still think can look quite pretty you know it's funny because like death can often look quite pretty in a garden and because things die back in such a beautiful way and you can still find a beauty in things that are half dead and I've always felt that about a garden that's one of the reasons I was drawn to gardening it's just that different perspective on life and seeing death in a completely different way but I mean look this is half dead and it looks stunning do you know what I mean there's like there's always something beautiful to find in a garden even if something's half dead there's still beauty to be found and I just I just love that I mean these sweet peas are I'm leaving them to go to seed and I'm waiting for their seed pods to dry out so I can pick them and have seeds but even these look just weirdly kind of beautiful there's just something quite magical about them I mean some of the flowers are still flowering a lot of it's gone to seed but I don't know I just something about this just makes me smile maybe it's just me and maybe this looks like a horrible mess but nothing in my garden that dies ever seems to feel like a mess it always just looks pretty and I don't know just it's just the cycle of life isn't it anyway the things I'll do to get out of weeding going into full-on philosophy right now just to get out of weeding it's ridiculous isn't it I think I have weeded quite a lot though I've been doing it for an hour so I should have and yeah it's looking a little bit more together I mean it's August it's going to look a little bit overgrown and stuff but it's overgrown in the best way possible with crops that are actually thriving the sun has come out to say hello that's a sign that I should stop weeding that is definitely nature mother nature telling me to stop weeding right now and do something else so of course I'm going to do what she says and I'm going to actually cover up my potatoes so in a few videos ago I planted out my Christmas veg and if you haven't seen that video go back I think it's called planting out xmas veg or something like that and we put in some potatoes we put them in beginning of July I think maybe second week into July for our Christmas harvest of potatoes and what I did was I dug two trenches and then I put them in left a bit of mound of earth I'll show you what I've done that would be easier in a vlog so this is one of our trenches this is a mound of earth in the middle this is another trench there's another mound of earth I mean we've got like poppies growing on it and stuff at the moment but I put the potatoes in and as you can see they have really grown really really well they're doing absolutely fantastic so it is time to earth them up whenever whenever I come onto my vlog and I say something like this like it's time to earth them up I get a handful of comments and people saying you don't have to do that I've never done that um all the rest of it and that's that's true I mean there are plenty of things I do at this plot that I don't do the correct way and they they grow fine everything grows fine this is the way that I do potatoes it works for me and also I really enjoy the process of doing this um I find it fun and I feel like a real gardener so I'm gonna do it but if you don't do it and your potatoes grow fine then great that's that's brilliant you know I mean less work for you well done but I just I like doing things like this because it makes me feel like I'm actually doing something to help my crops and I think it does help the I think the idea is that when you put more earth over them and you get more potatoes because there's more ground for them to grow under and they don't reach the sun and turn green which makes them poisonous poisonous potatoes equals death so or sick I don't know we're gonna earth them up anyway that's what we're gonna do and we're gonna do it okay it's my channel if I want to eat my hair I can if I want to bury my potatoes I can it's always felt a little bit weird doing this but I've always really enjoyed doing it so you see how they're growing now what we're gonna do is that big mound we're just gonna pull our soil down from it and just basically bury them again a little bit higher obviously they've really grown really tall up to the sun which is amazing but by earthing them up we should get more potatoes and we'll stop them from from actually making contact with the sun I want to say I don't know what's happened to my phrases sometimes I just say things in a weird way and I don't know why um but yeah we don't want them to make contact with the sun basically so now it looks like they're growing out the top of a molehill which is quite exciting for the plants you know they enjoy that sort of thing plants they feel special they probably feel confused what on earth are we doing here but you know they've got to do what I say why have you grown there californian poppy why wasn't a good move was it oh no oh gosh there's red ants oh oh god there's hundreds of them I don't want to get bitten because they really hurt red ants they actually hurt more than like a wasp sting no is there one on me no oh god I probably have mud all over me now from where I've been touching my face with these gloves on but I've had to stop because there is a red ant list and I did get bitten by a a couple of months ago and it was the most painful thing I've ever been bitten by but also I don't want to disturb them because they look really busy I seem to have really annoyed them I don't know if red ants are necessarily a good or bad thing for an allotment plot I mean I think all creatures have a purpose but you see them with their little eggs they seem really busy and they seem really annoyed that I've like disturbed them but behind them this is what we've done to the potatoes so we sort of earth them all up I don't know if this is necessary to do or not like I said a lot of you say it's not but I've done it now it looks a bit weird I have gone over some of the leaves as I've done it so you can just go straight over the leaves and cover them up and yeah they're just basically earthed up just growing out of these little mounds now and you can imagine potatoes are now protected from the sunlight and because there's just more earth over them and also we should be getting more but again I don't know if that's true or not this is just the way that I I do potatoes and this is the way I enjoy doing potatoes so if you don't want to do that don't do it and if it works for you great uh if you want to copy me give it a go it's fun was at the back of my plot here because um this apple tree is sort of growing over my plot I love it it's really beautiful but it's not mine it's my neighbors and I don't know if I'm allowed to pick them or not if they're literally coming onto my plot he never picks them to be honest and they just end up falling on the ground to the entrance of my plot and all the wasps come and I don't like stepping over the wasps and stuff so I have to clear them up um but I don't know what the etiquette is if I'm allowed to just pick these when they're ripe because he's never here I don't even know if he uses his plot anymore but I mean they're over my plot technically so maybe I can and they do look delicious and like I said he doesn't he doesn't pick them hence the fact they're all on the floor what would you do in that situation would you pick them or would you leave let me know because I never know the correct etiquette with this especially when people don't turn up at their plots at the same time that I'm here like I never know oh god there's hundreds of them there's hundreds of them no abort abort right okay so sorry I've had to go onto my phone because my camera ran out of battery just as I had a panic attack about like wasps um so like I said there are wasps on these apples unfortunately there are so many wasps on the apples that I can't actually pick them up so I'm aborting that mission because I don't want to be bitten by a red ant today and I don't want to be stung by a wasp and that was the direction this vlog was going in right let's find a safer job to do I think right I found a fun job I found a fun job I'm gonna shake the sweet corn as you can see from that very clear demonstration I am trying to pretend that I am the wind I am being the wind um so sweet corn plants are wind pollinated which is why you have to plant them in a grid so they all pollinate each other but unfortunately only two of them have actually grown so I need to now be the wind for them so just you just shake them and blow on them it's not hard to be the wind it doesn't have that harder job it's very destructive but it's not it's not hard to pretend to be the wind um yeah so that's what we've done we've just blown on them I'll sort of go into a little bit more detail if I can right I'm not a sweet corn expert I'm not an expert in anything I'm just figuring out as I go but basically this is the way I can explain it this is like the flower head of the sweet corn right so what happens is this drops down onto this and pollinates this fruit which is the sweet corn corn and a cob I don't know what you call it a cob I think it's a cob um so the wind will blow shake that stuff will fall down pollinate that there's always a more scientific explanation for this stuff somewhere um but yeah it's not the channel for it this is the channel for just shake your sweet corn why we don't know just do it sorry about the camera dying at the end it's a little bit annoying I clearly didn't charge it for long enough um I hope you enjoyed my little vlog today um we did a few jobs in the allotment plot I've definitely got yeah definitely got a load of mud on my face fantastic oh are you even an allotmenter who don't go home covered in mud like every single day I don't know if mud's good for your skin but if it is I should have the best skin in the world I hope you enjoyed it today if you did do subscribe to my youtube channel as always I will be back again in my next vlog um it'll either be Monday Wednesday or Friday if I miss an upload it'll just be on the next day like I said it's the kids um half term like school holidays so it's just a little bit difficult to get here but I will do my absolute best to get as many uploads as I can up and next time I will be harvesting a load of food from the allotment plot so be excited for that I'm excited for that and that is the point of it is to grow everything and then harvest it all so it's going to be a really really great vlog please join me again in my next one subscribe to my channel so you don't lose me and I will see you then have a lovely rest of your gardening week see you later guys thanks for watching bye why am I waving like a children's tv character see you later bye