HERE COME THE PUMPKINS! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

and then we can live in denial and just pretend it never happened now you know what this might be a baby boo plant that might be a baby boo genuinely just tastes like something i shouldn't be eating welcome back to my allotment diaries my name is emma these are my allotment diaries um i'd love for you to hit the subscribe button so just before i get into this video i just want to say something and i want to say it without alarming anyone because i don't want any of you to think i'm unsafe or get worried about me or anything like that um but i do think it's important to say these things because it's important for me to kind of address the reality of allotment life um especially when i'm inspiring so many young women to go out there alone and take on a plot by themselves um but i've got a message in my sort of allotment whatsapp group today that there are a group of men who have started breaking into the allotments and sort of camping out in the woods um which is those you know that beautiful kind of woodland that i walked through to get here so they've kind of set up a little camp there and they've been like staying at night and drinking and stuff and causing a bit of mayhem uh so obviously there's another entrance to the allotment plot which is off a main road and i've been using that basically uh recently just to avoid it which is a shame but necessary and i'm not saying this to kind of make you worried the last thing i want to do is make anybody out there you know feel concerned for me or anything but i do think it's important to address these things like i said these vlogs are meant to inspire you and especially young women to go out there and give allotment growing a go and be like you can do it on your own it's fine just take on a plot by yourself like i have but particularly if you are in not even just london but just a built-up area and you've got an allotment plot just think of your safety and be careful and be safe and don't assume that these places you know are completely safe because you still get nutcases around here and you still get dangers and stuff you have to look after yourself basically is what i'm saying so i thought i'd just start the vlog by saying that because i feel like it's a really important message that i probably don't say enough anyway i'm glad i said that because like i said i think it's important just to keep saying it just be realistic about allotment life you know it's wonderful it's fantastic it's a beautiful community here but just keep yourself safe you know especially any girls out there going out getting a plot on their own i hate to be responsible for anything you know not so nice happening so just take care of yourselves basically anyway how are you all how are your gardens growing um i think that's going to be my new saying now i've decided on it i've officially trademarked it are you joking i don't think you can do that how are your gardens growing right now so we are in the middle of august the weather in the uk is absolutely rubbish really really been struggling to get down here just because it's been raining so much i think we're due so much rain this afternoon as well fortunately it has meant that everything is really growing and it's very lush and it's very green and fabulous um i've come down here today with the intention of filling a few gaps now gaps in an allotment plot are just the most annoying thing in the world and last well my first year and my second year i didn't know what to do with them um so i'll show you some examples so here's the plot look how lovely and lush and growing it all is everything's just really taken off i'm pretty confident it's because the amount of rain that we've had and also the temperature is quite good i mean it's like probably about 19 degrees right now but it's just cloudy and we do more rain so just this kind of perfect temperature for stuff to grow basically which is what we want you know it's what we want um it's just that we also like a little bit of sun please you know so we can sit in it and actually enjoy our gardens for example this bed here had all of my broad beans in it now i have tried to regrow stuff i had rows of carrots unfortunately they got eaten i've recently put in a couple of rows of mibuna which is an excellent crop to put in at this time of year we've got the french beans at the back not doing very well but can you see how kind of this bed now is just sort of empty dead space so down supposed to be leaks i'm pretty sure i planted them i can see a few coming up but um they're not doing great i think i might bring my other ones here and just plant them all out i mean the ones that's still in are still alive except the ones that my kids flattened when they were here last time but yeah they might turn into something you know because they've not died and if they're alive they're not died so it looks alive doesn't it if it's bouncy and alive and green it's probably doing all right you know but i'm going to bring the rest of them and hopefully have some leaks here but having said that you see how like the leaks are here well here's a bit of a gap isn't it so we've got the californian poppies but they're happy sort of going that way that i don't know what that is that's some kind of broccoli or brassica i've just whacked in but there's a lot of space around here that we could potentially put something in so this video is going to be all about filling in those horrible little spaces that appear in august time and you just think oh the plot's coming to an end now i better cover it all over it's like no there's still time to put some crops in so i'm going to show you what i'm putting in good then all the power tools are out today so we'll try and film around them why why so there are lots of things that you can sew in august and that will do really really well i like to think of august kind of the same way that i think of spring why are you wobbling yeah i like to think of august the same way i kind of think of early spring so the weather's kind of going to be a little bit cooler than maybe it is in the height of summer particularly this year we just seem to be getting slightly cooler weather but we've still got a lot of sun and then we've got a lot of rain as well this year so i think of it like that basically and that means it's quite good condition for crops that kind of like cooler weather but they need that long sunlight and they need lots of rain and so for that reason i have chosen to plant in some spring onions and this is the white lisbon from mr flothergills which i think came free with the magazine and so i've got some spring onions going they should do really well at this time of year also got some radishes radishes the only time radishes don't do well is in if the ground is frozen over and it's ice and you literally just cannot even dig into the soil it's not going to do well um or in really really hot weather so right in the heart of summer they don't like that because they bolt really quickly which means they throw out flowers so this weather where it's kind of cooler and we've still got a lot of sunlight this is perfect for radishes radishes will love this weather you can go in today mate and i also found half a pack of carrots so um if you don't know the story of my carrots i put in some carrots they did really well they all germinated two rows came up we had a lot of rain all the slugs came they ate all my carrots so i'm going to resew those two rows of carrots um and i've now put in a couple of rows of mibuna around there too mibuna is really good mizuna really really good crop at this time of year and there's a lot you can whack in however you know like i always say be invented be creative don't always take the back of the seed pack as like that face value basically experiment you know i have planted courgettes at the beginning of august and got courgettes to harvest in october when we've had a particularly warm autumn so you know the world is your oyster if you've got a seed whack it in if you really want to see if it's going to grow don't ask me about it just whack it in and see you know that's the best way of learning so i think we're gonna start with sowing these in the ground just gonna flog my gloves one more time so these are from cool job which is think green um and i have a new link below with a discount code so if you put the discount code emma glove in you get some money off these are two different gloves um but i've got so many i just throw them all together just whatever i can find but they're great great great gardening gloves a lot of people always ask where i get my gardening gloves from it's think green and there's a link below with a discount code you're welcome right so i'm gonna start by resewing the rows of carrots that got eaten by slugs you can still see a few carrots coming up i'm just going to resew along there so wherever i see a little gap it's going to do that whack in some more seeds and then we can live in denial and just pretend it never happened all right i think these are the same carrots i think these are autumn king uh which do well in the autumn time as the name would suggest so autumn king carrots going in i think what we'll do is throw on some more slugless new rows a little bit more it won't harm the soil or anything because it's all natural so i'll just whack it over the whole thing hopefully the uh the carrots that are already growing won't scare off the new carrots and tell them horrible stories about how slugs ate them all yeah and hopefully that'll just fill in the rows of carrots right this might be quite a nice little place for some radishes but also spring onions i might whack them both in i've got a feeling that slugs and snails don't like the smell of onions and garlic um anything that smells too pungent i think oregano as well is that supposed to keep away slugs and snails um so if i sow the radishes in the middle and surround it by two rows of spring onions maybe that will deter the slugs i don't know though this is the point of year where you just start trying everything if somebody said there's a slug dance an anti-slug dance i'll probably start doing it in the middle of my plot you know you get a bit desperate this time of year willing to try it all right so we'll do three rows a row for spring onion a row for radish and then another row spring onion these are the radishes i'm sowing it's called sparkler and they're these little red ones they're so cute i love them i like radishes because their seeds are nice and big i can actually see what i'm doing with the seeds not that i ever sow thinly even when i can see them but you know it's nice to think i've got the opportunity to do it right even if i don't take it right radishes these are spring onion seeds i don't like these these look weird they're like little dead dried up bugs right we're gonna have to sow these quite thin there we are one row in you can't see them because they're the same color as the bleeding soil you don't know where they are what they're doing on the path and then of course completely forget what i planted here because i'm pretty sure something else went in here didn't it i've forgotten what it was so it's gone now it's already dead to me so this down here that i'm growing this year is called i keep wanting to call it perennial spinach but it's not it's called perpetual spinach and i'm sure i've grown it before by accident a couple of times i didn't really use it i used to give it to my guinea pigs and used to love it um but i've never really tried it properly before because i'm not a big spinach fan and i sort of thought oh just grow it for the guinea pigs anyway um i got given some for free this year by sarah raven basically i'm working with them over on instagram so i whacked in all these lovely lovely little plug plants they've just gone absolutely crazy they look absolutely fantastic they look great they look healthy but i have no idea what to do with them uh for me to eat them i don't have the guinea pigs anymore because they passed away unfortunately i don't think my rabbit can eat spinach i don't think he'd like it so i'm going to try a little bit now and see what i think of it it just looks like a leaf it doesn't it like it is a leaf it's not like a leaf it is a leaf i mean most crops that you grow like i said before in my last vlog are just leaves that you eat right so how different can this leaf be from any other leaf i'm about to find out because i'm going to take a bite of it it really feels like just eating a leaf it doesn't even feel like a crop it feels like a leaf nah it's not for me it's not for me genuinely just tastes like something i shouldn't be eating maybe you shouldn't eat it like that i don't know how you're supposed to eat it really maybe i'll google it actually good old google eh i should always google this stuff before i just stuff stuff in my mouth but i always just assume you can eat everything raw like every vegetable in its raw state but i guess you can't like i wouldn't bite into a swede or a potato do you know what i mean so i don't know why i do it to myself it says you should cook it like any other um spinach it also says that it's a little bit more bitter than normal spinach but it's mild it says fresh young leaves can be used raw in salads um so maybe i just i chose too big a one let's have a look for a little one let's try that again so i think these bigger leaves these need to be cooked and i think they're supposed to taste a bit bitter so this is good news so i understand now um and i'm guessing the little ones the little leaves are down here i'm going to choose a really really little leaf so this should be able to be eaten in a salad raw so let's try this one so i'm expecting a bit more of a bitter taste now so this should go a bit better it feels better already okay okay i don't love the bitterness of it i'm not gonna lie it's not my favorite not bad not bad not terrible not great not my favorite five and a half out of ten i think yeah literally only a few days ago i had to cut some of the wire to let this big pumpkin through look how big it's got since then so if you watch the vlog where i actually had to cut this open i think it was last monday's vlog so it's been about a week and it's so big now but it's still hanging on really really well and it's just hanging through here i've also got loads and loads of other pumpkins growing so down here i've got one over there as well this plant's also doing really well there's one here and then they've got a few more little ones coming up the archway there's a couple up here as well just cannot believe how well the archway is doing this year it really has just completely taken over my entire archway it's amazing however down here i did so a like a giant jack-o'-lantern pumpkin and it seems to have got a little bit lost in like the foliage down here so i want to make sure he's okay i'm pretty sure that he is this pumpkin here and the leaves are starting to go a little bit funny now it might have a different colored leaf to be honest because it's not the same type of pumpkin as these ones here but i feel like it's a little bit nutrient deficient and i think it might need a bit of a feed um because obviously with three with three big pumpkin plants taking over this bed you know nutrients are going to be running low so i better feed him i think this is my big pumpkin and obviously i've stepped on him a couple of times i'm really sorry mate i think this is the only pumpkin growing on the big jack-o'-lantern plant um i think it's called a giant pumpkin not jack-o'-lantern but that's what i call them i think this is the baby boo yeah i think that's the only pumpkin we've got growing on this one so we better feed him and look after him bees just love these flowers don't they they just love them so i'm gonna feed him with a homemade stinging nettle feed which absolutely reeks it's in here um you've probably seen me make it a few times but it's really easy you whack some stinging nettles into an old container fill it up with rainwater so it absolutely reeks and then what you do is you dilute it into a watering can with just rainwater so this has got some rainwater in and all we do pour some of our magic mixture in and that is a really good pumpkin feed and it's obviously really cheap i mean it's free for me because i've got loads of stinging nettles around um but you can also feed your pumpkins with the liquid seaweed as well it's up to you really hopefully it'll make him you know come alive again not that he's dead or anything but you know what i mean i want him to be like really good so a lot of you left comments on one of my one of my latest videos about saying that you've got a lot of ants at your plot as well i've just uncovered another red ant nest so i've just noticed behind me that there are some blackberry bushes some lovely blackberries growing so i'm gonna pick one and try it because it's on my plot technically i could just say that i've grown these on purpose no one's gonna know not sure how sweet they are at this time of year i'll try it anyway though oh my goodness finally i've eaten something randomly at my plot and it tastes amazing i'm gonna get another one oh my gosh they're perfect they're perfect at this time of year i've done it i found the perfect time of year to pick them they're not sharp at all they're super sweet oh they're amazing i'm gonna pick some and take it home and make an apple and blackberry pie they are absolutely gorgeous go pick your blackberries i don't often show lots of those kind of mundane jobs at the plot like weeding and like cutting things back because it's boring to do and it's probably quite boring to watch so sometimes i show little snippets of it just know that i was doing that for over an hour then and so if you are on your plots and you just feel like all you're doing right now is cutting things back and weeding and doing all those boring jobs you're not alone and it is a very real part of an allotment plot and it's a part that i don't always show just for entertainment purposes it's not that interesting to see me chopping things back so much but it is part of it and it's you know you're not alone you're not the only one doing it it helps to put some headphones in listen to some music or something or just i'm going to try and get in the zone and let it kind of take your mind off of stuff uh but it's just one of those very realistic jobs that we all have to do at an allotment plot so yeah again just trying to keep it real on here and show you the real honest side of an allotment because i know a lot of you um are getting new plots at this time of year and i want to see a realistic view of what it's actually like to have an allotment plot so it is a lot of work and there are a lot of mundane boring jobs there's also a lot of fun jobs and a lot of cool stuff that you can do and it's all very very exciting at this time of year and you can harvest stuff it's all fun but there's also the boring side of it so i hope i showed you that well enough today and don't feel alone if you feel like that's all you're doing right now because it is august and there is a lot of weeding to do hope you enjoyed my vlog today if you did give it a like um leave me a comment below let me know what jobs you're up to on your allotment plot right now and i will see you again in my next video thanks for watching bye