PLANTING EARLY POTATOES / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

plus my feelings remain the same about snails I've never chitted a potato long enough for it to actually get leaves that's what snails need to do I need to watch their backs cuz I don't want to mess around with like poison you [Music] know good morning everyone welcome back to my lopment Diaries my name is Emma the these are my allotment Diaries I'd love you to hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already subscribed to my YouTube channel I just Vlog all about my alotment plot um here in South London I'm actually on the alotment site right now as we speak and oh my goodness can you see the sun on my face we've actually got sun today I can't believe it I'm so happy that I came because I was in two mins after yesterday yesterday it was a bit colder than I thought it was going to be they said 11° It felt more like 3° to be honest but I soldiered through but I'm really glad I came today because it feels so much warmer it feels like spring today and I just I just love it oh no I've still got my trainers on because I haven't got any new Wellies yet um and it's not ideal the lack of well is a serious serious situation now I will have to get some more soon but until then I just had to sort of Dodge the muddiest patches but look already all I've done is walked to my plot terrible good pair of Wellies is so essential for an allotment plot otherwise you're just going to get covered in mud not that I don't anyway even with Mell Wellies mellies Wellies oh my goodness right here we are on the allotment plot we emerged through this little Corridor into my double double plot amazing Einstein always waits for me so I can see him I think he can hear me chatting away to you guys and he waits for me through the archway here we go [Music] look at you waiting for me so cute wait for a long time now don't you yes you do you ready for this there you are lots of meal worms for you come and get them look all those D yeah gosh guys I cannot get over how lovely the weather is today and we've got such an exciting job as well cuz I'm going to so I'm going to plant out my early potatoes um I actually can't remember what they are I think they're rocket rocket potatoes and they've been chitting for absolutely ages probably the longest I've ever chitted them about 3 and 1/ half weeks and they are so ready to go out they're actually growing leaves so that's what we're going to do today but I'm just going to go around make sure that everything else is okay I think it was quite windy yesterday um so there's a few things that just need [Music] fixing I think they're all alive I can't believe it they're all alive this area here the structure whatever this is supposed to be I think it's a Rasberry structure this needs to be fixed at some point um quite urgently now cuz the raspberries are starting to grow and I don't want them to spread and cause me a problem I want them to spread over some kind of structure here so that's something I need to sort out but not today not today today is all about planting out our early potatoes so let's get on with that job I think so like I said they've been chitting for about 3 and 1 half weeks it's the longest I've ever left them to chip before in my life um which is just because the weather's been so bad that I just put off the job of putting them out otherwise I'd probably put them out a bit earlier to be honest cuz I'm a rebel um chitting just means that you lead them on a sunny window sill out of direct sunlight until they form little chits like that little things coming out but you can see that a lot of it's gone green now so it's like new shoots coming off of it also like for instance this one here this has actually got a leaf I've never chitted a potato long enough for it to actually get leaves which is amazing but you see how it's got like more than one chit on it so I'll probably just take that one off and take that one off and leave that one on because that's the one that's got the leaves and seems to be growing the best um I don't always do that but like I If if they're like coming at the bottom and everything then I'll tend to just brush them off until I've got a good a good chit going on um but yeah that's what we're going to whack out today so it's very exciting I've actually got hundreds here I might have to do two beds but we'll see let's go prepare the beds first [Music] [Music] just giving it a little bit of a dig over um just to just to see what the quality of the soil is and actually it's very good it's very nice soil I actually left the cuz I had brassas in here last year and I actually left the stems and the roots of the Brasa in like all winter I've literally just pulled them out cuz they're like nothingness now but that's supposed to add a lot of goodness to the soil so I did that I don't know if it made a difference but the quality of the soil is pretty good in here it is a bed I sort of actively growing every year so I have been sort topping it up and everything but you can see good soil just means that you squeeze it together and then it kind of breaks up fairly easily also there's loads of worms loads of worms in here worms are a good sign in any soil I think and also weeds as well cuz if weeds can grow then other things can grow so yeah I think it's good right let's get those potatoes [Music] in [Music] that she [Music] [Music] said [Music] so just stopping for a second to show you what I've done what we've done essentially is made three trenches in the ground we've got one there one there one there they've each got their own sort of mound of Earth piled up next to it there yeah I wonder if that's coming up on camera well enough but you can see the three trenches the reason I'm doing it in trenches is because I'm going to Earth them up Earth them up means it's very simple I used to think this was complicated when I first started gardening and I used to be really scared of growing potatoes cuz obviously if the potato reaches the sunlight and the sunlight hits the potato it goes green and a green potato is poisonous you can't eat that so what we do is we plant them into trenches and then when we start to see the foliage so the leaves growing up we just cover it back over again with some soil and then it grows up again and you can cover it over again and you can do it a couple of times or three times um every time you see the foliage come through and eventually when the foliage starts to die back and go yellow that's usually time to dig them all up and then your potatoes stay nice and hidden in the dark um because they need to be nice and deep under the ground so they don't hit the sun that's it that's all there is to it and this is sort of a tried and tested method um that's just really easy to keep them under the ground there is a no dig way of doing it and that's just placing them on the top and then cover them with I think straw or hay but I've never done that I don't intend to because I don't want to mess around with like poison you know I'm not I'm not too I'm not enough of an expert to trust myself doing a no dig potato method yet maybe one day but not today so we plant our potatoes chips up because that's where the foliage grows so put them in chits up guys chits up right so this is the sort of spacing we've got on them it's about a foot they're about a foot apart I think it's probably slightly too many particularly in the first row but I've got too many potatoes so I think early potatoes are quite a small potato anyway what we're going to do now is just lightly cover them so we're not going to cover them with all of the soil just about half the soil is going to go over the top [Music] is I think something's got trapped in my watering can I'm pretty sure it's a snail is it a snail are you a snail why do they go in the watering can of all the places they could go it's so unsafe snails really need to like think watch their backs really that's what snails need to do I need to watch their backs they need public snail announcements you know like don't crawl into a watering can right they're in the early potato potatoes are in yes it's too early you're right it is it should really be sort of towards the end of March beginning of April that these go in but you know what this year I'm just Breaking All the Rules I've decided to be super rebellious this year and just whack everything in whenever I feel like whacking it in I'm going to whack it in and that's it so there's the potatoes actually got quite a few early potatoes left seems such a shame to just not plant them I was thinking maybe I could just whack them into this bed but I'm worried I'm going to run out of potato beds M should I just whack them in immediately just changed my mind immediately immediately I think I'm going to wait and make sure the frost is passed and then put more out later on so I can keep them as like contingency potatoes that's a good idea let's save them right I'm just going to quickly whack in some borage um this is a very very good flow to grow but when you planted it once like you don't ever have to plant it again because it's sort of sell seeds it's a little bit uh what's the word um not like a weed but invasive I think that's what it's called it just spreads itself around but it's very good for bees and it lasts a long time and you can actually eat the flowers so I'm all full borage I love it coming up I'm going to put some around my Wildlife Area um and just whack it in um I think the bees will love it and I think it'll add really nice little color and flowers so let's do that so so we did sort of plant some wild flower seeds here but I'm sort of living under the illusion that Einstein's eating them all um and I think that's just I mean if if any grow that' be great but I'm going to assume he's eating them all got no faith in you little birdie no faith in you not to eat my stuff come Snail out I think it was just a leaf in this bit yeah it was just a leaf but I'm still not going to take back what I said about snow my feelings remain the same about [Music] snails right there we go guys potatoes in the ground very nice springy day it's very warm today there's a lot of people arriving now which is very exciting because it means we're on to Spring onto the next bit of uh our gardening year which is very cool let me know if you get your early potatoes in or if you doing it this weekend and I will see you again in my next Vlog which hopefully will be on Friday see you Friday guys happy gardening bye