BIGGEST POTATO HARVEST EVER! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

[Music] good morning guys welcome back to my allotment Diaries my name's Emma these are the allotment Diaries I've just arrived at my allotment plot here in South London um and the weather is actually pretty nice today we've got some blue skies little bit Cloud um quite a lot of sun so what's to complain about [Music] [Music] ah Sun Sun that's what we need today lots and lots of sun please and I've noticed this year I have complained a bit about the weather but it's been very unpredictable it's been very up and down all over the place we don't seem to have got the spring and summer that we were all sort of after so far it's just rain cold low temperatures not great low nighttime temperatures as well which I think is the biggie because that's when it sort of stunts growth so if any of your crops are sort of stunted growing and not growing as fast as you want them to it's probably to do with the low nighttime temperatures because it needs to be consistently up for everything to grow otherwise it just sort of stops and goes no not no no I'm not doing it I'm not growing you can't make me that's what your plants are saying I hope the power tools today are not too bothersome in this this video there's a lot of power tools going on lot of airlanes stuff like that there's nothing I can do about it but I do apologize anyway uh because I'm British and I apologize for everything I have noticed just by walking around the allotments that um a lot of people's crops and stuff are growing at very different times which is just quite interesting this year perhaps it's because I've got things out at different times to other people and people get their crops out at different times but for instance my sweet corn is quite high and I think most people's sweet corn on this site is still sort of down there like really low it's just very interesting walking through the allotments and just seeing where everybody else is with their sort of crops this year and their growing Seasons because it's very different normally everyone's sort of roughly at the same kind of level but this year you know you can walk past a plot that looks absolutely positively blooming and then the one next door to it hardly anything's got going and I don't think people have been planting things that differently in terms of times maybe a few weeks out but normally it all catches up hasn't so far so it's just very interesting um to see how other people's crops are growing how are your crops growing are they doing really well this year or have they stunted in growth are they growing fast or slow I have noticed over the last 2 days my borage has absolutely taken off it's all of a sudden got huge this was very very tiny literally about two days ago so this is really taken off which is incredible and I can see that one over there has also got a lot bigger very quickly the pnip seem to have shot up a little bit as well and just over the last few days I've just noticed they've sort of gone up a few inches and the lettuce well I'm going to have to pick some today cuz that's doing really well oh yes I also wanted to update you on the porridge oats experiment that we tried last week the thing is is I can't actually tell you for definite if it made any kind of difference because the weather's just been so all over the place I don't know what's contributed to what but the oats around the daia had disappeared so I don't think it was a great experiment as well because obviously I've done a lot of weeding around here which I think it's probably contributed to the lack of slugs and snails I can see a bit of new growth on this daia and I can see some Slug and snail sort of um what's it called slime what would you call that Slug and snail juice slime around there so they probably been eating the porridge oats that maybe the birds have as well I really don't know I don't feel like it was the Great lest experiment um definitely got lots of flaws in it so I wouldn't um publish it in a journal or anything uh but the pumpkins are still alive so whatever that means that means still [Music] alive right so the goal for today is very exciting to pull up my early potatoes now I thought long and hard about this the other day um I pulled up one plant the other day and um it was a success and the potatoes were fantastic they're probably not quite ready to pull up but I'm going to pull them up now anyway cuz that's sort of a size I was looking for and they look great it's obviously quite a big bed um so to pull all of this up is going to leave me quite a lot of space so one of my main concerns is what on Earth am I going to put here when I've pulled it all up well I've got myself a plan so at home I've actually got a few more cette plants that have germinated they're about this big at the moment so not quite as big as I want them to be but if we get some hot weather when I know but if if the weather does change at any point they will get going I've also got some beetro that I um sewed in a module at home that can go out here and I'd like to sew some more carrots as well so now that I've got more of a plan of what's going into this bed when this comes out I'm happy to pull it all out so I can't promise that they're totally ready to come up now I know that June is the month because I sewed them I planted them in ma um hang on in Mao what is Mao I planted them in March so I know that around June is the right time to pull them up maybe the end of June would have been a little bit better but at the same time they've done very very well and I have pulled up a tester plant I do also see some black spots in here now this I do not believe this is not blight this is leaf spot disease this is that leaf spot disease and this is probably caused by the excessive rain that we've had um so this is black leaf spot it's a fungal disease and it's basically caused um spread when um plants leaves get very wet and very humid and it kind of like creates a humidity along the among among the leaves which then creates it I mean it's not damaging to a plant in this amount but if I was to let that get really bad it probably would be damaging I've got that a lot on um a lot of my plants at home in my home garden and also on my cherry tree at home which has got Cherry rot Leaf Cherry rot I think it's called which is the same thing basically black spots on the leaves which is caused by an excess of rain so the rain really has done its damage this year but these are coming up now so it's all good this little birdie just absolutely terrified me you came out of nowhere look how close he gets to me now it's actually crazy do you want some M worms gosh just pulled my hair out ready for pulling B pulling just pulled my hair up ready for pulling potatoes gosh what's that called um alliteration just pulling my hair up to pull potatoes when a robin turned up so now we've got to just give him a little bit of food there you go [Music] Einstein oh oh no oh no oh no it's tiny oh no hang on it's okay it's all good I thought that's all all we were getting then I was like oh no oh no what have they done oh there another one C behind me there's absolutely moves my gosh there just hundreds of them I'm going to try not to use a fork or anything until the end because I um I always stab them gosh just potentially the funnest thing I've ever done in my life look at that one wow love him and then what you've got to do I see is like dig got dig for him wow look at these well that's the seed one that's the one we don't want there we go treasure treasure oh we found treasure it's so fun digging for them one there they're such a great size as well such a great size look at this one oh look at the size of him beautiful [Music] this is just like digging treasure it's so exciting you just don't know what you're going to get so far it's quite a lot that's a seed potato oh no I can't find any here oh I found one what a little be I love it look at the size look at the size of that one that's grown amazingly oh my gosh get over that that is huge oh yeah it's good size where are you where are you look at that one beautiful beautiful see I normally I just jab a fork in and dig it all up but I always end up damaging loads of them so I'm trying really hard just to use my hands for the initial ones so I don't damage them oh look at that one lovely [Music] wow that's last wow another Whopper gosh falling over the size of these ones [Music] this is the most insane um potato Harvest I was going to say pumpkin potato Harvest I have ever ever had um and that's not all of them that's definitely not all of them this is just what I was able to dig out with my gloved hand like I said um normally I just dig a fork in and just dig the whole plant out but I always end up killing a load of potatoes or just like jabbing through them I've also got some over here which I've collected as well so this is already a very big Harvest now what I'm going to do is clear these plants away and then dig basically and try to be very [Music] careful some of these [Music] so now we are going to very carefully dig over this bed with a fork and just see if we can lift up the rest of them but I always miss potatoes because I always have Rogue potato plants growing the next year somewhere so this bed will have potatoes growing in it next year guaranteed [Music] right I think that's about it for the potatoes and I've cleared out the bed giving it rco over and that's now ready for planting in again so cett beetroots carrots maybe some brassas anything else I can sort of fit in there really I'm like knackered but I'm also so happy um it's my favorite thing to do is Harvest potatoes they are just amazing such an amazing crop if you're not growing potatoes in the ground grow potatoes in the ground I know everyone says about growing them in pots and growing them in bags and yes it's great it's great for space saving you can tip the whole bag out it saves on a lot of mess a lot of stress but growing them in the ground it just hits different I've done it both ways and honestly I will always grow potatoes in the ground as well as in pots um and don't knock it till you tried it basically just find some space steal some space just go to a car park and dig half of it up I don't know just find some space right okay I'm going to put these in a bag now and uh tidy up all of that all of that stuff [Music] [Music] there's absolutely no sign of these sugar snap peas coming up yet I would have thought at least one would have germinated or something um but there's no sign I might do a little bit of a dig I just want to see one see what it's doing what it's up to you know I did plant quite a few in here so I should be able to find one and then I'll know if it's rotted or not or if there's a problem with it or maybe the seeds just weren't very good there's none here Sonic's got to him I think and eating them there's nothing here what happened to the row of peas they've been eating I think oh that's a shame that's a shame I think they've been eating okay okay I'm wondering if it's too late to start a cucumber at home I've got loads of cucumber seeds cuz that would grow really well over this structure wouldn't it I might just change my plans peas behind me are doing absolutely fantastically though I can't go on about these enough they're brilliant I'm not going to pick any yet until I've got a few to pick there's no point picking one but look I am starting to get lots look at this one stunning I'm starting to get lots of pea pods so as soon as they all start to be ready I'm going to start picking these what I might do though is chop their heads off chop their heads off if in doubt with a plant always chop its head off that's what I say the reason being they're still trying to grow up and quite tall and I want all of their energy and focus to go into creating pea pods for me now I don't want them to keep growing up you know you you're high enough guys you're tall enough don't need to get any taller so I'm going to chop their heads off and hopefully that will force all the energy of the plant into creating more pea pods for me to pick cuz that's what you were made for that's what you were grown for anyway okay off with the [Music] [Laughter] heads right it's getting noisy out there now with all the power tools so I've come in here to end the Vlog um I'll take these potatoes home but I'm not going to wash them I got told off last year for washing my potatoes straight away apparently they keep better if you don't wash them something to do with not washing the outer covering of them off because it they sort of protect themselves they got their own way of protecting themselves so if you wash them in water apparently you wash that away and they don't store as well so I'm going to keep them like this I me I think they'll dry off and then I'll be able to sort of like rub all the mud off of them there's not much mud on them anyway to be honest and that's what I'll do with them not much more to report today but I will be back again on Wednesday have a lovely rest of your gardening week and uh if you've harvested your early potatoes let me know in the comments below I'd love to know if I'm if I've got there before everyone or not I usually do I'm very impatient as a gardener um I hope you enjoyed the Vlog today I'll see you next time thank you so much for watching guys bye