WEEDING, POTTERING AND SWEET PEA JOY! / SEPTEMBER ALLOTMENT UK

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name's Emma, these are the allotment diaries. As you can probably tell from my hat, my woolly jumper, temperature has massively dropped this week and it's feeling very very chilly. However we do have some sunshine and blue skies which is always quite nice. I mean I don't think we've seen much sunshine this this year at all to be honest. Right just excuse the intro for a second because Einstein's turned up and I really want to see him today. I've really missed the little birdie, he's just not been around. He's right there. Do you not want any food today then? Oh yes you do. The way he looks at me, honestly. Mr squirrel, he just came out of absolutely nowhere, ran for the bird food, scared Einstein to death. I think he's hungry, what I need to do is put some squirrel food up for him really because he's obviously not finding enough food around the place which is why he's bothering my bird. No one bothers my bird. Now I thought I had some left but I think I think he ate them all. What he likes is those little balls, you can buy these little like bird feeding ball things and they've got like lard in them or something and then they're full of bird seed and he really likes those so I'm going to get some of those for him so that he doesn't bother my little birdie anymore. Yeah I know Einstein, I can hear him clicking away. Anyway I was saying the weather's changed a little bit here at the moment and we actually did have a minor frost so I need to go around and check on things and make sure the frost hasn't frosted them out. Look at the size of my little cucumber friend, look at the size. I don't even know when this might be done to be honest but he's looking amazing and we've got some other little baby ones here, I don't know if they'll get big enough before the frost kills them but this one is incredible. Got dirt in my eye, it literally just flew up at my eye. You wouldn't think you'd need goggles for putting a stick in the ground but there you go, apparently you do. Stay safe out there guys, never copy anything you see on this channel because I'm an idiot. These little allotment jobs where I'm just coming around just fixing things they always take me a lot longer than I ever anticipate they're going to take and they really stress me out because I never quite know what I'm doing. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood, you know, sometimes I'm just not in the mood but I have to do it. Today is one of those days, it's just one of those days, it's Monday. Let's um, the less said about this the better I think, no no dirty comments about this please guys, I know what you're like in the comments. Let's just um, let's just call that a Monday morning job eh? So believe it or not and literally I cannot believe this and genuinely I'm in shock after months and months of trying to get this sweet pea teepee to give me a sweet pea, a single sweet pea flower that will do, it's actually, it's only gone and like grown now in September with new life, new buds, new spindly things, new growth. I don't know how this happened, I don't know where it came from, I don't know, I didn't know they were still alive, I was going to pull the whole thing out but I didn't, I just sort of left it so I'm going to try and look after it a little bit, tie it all in and see if I get more sweet pea flowers. I didn't know they could flower this long, genuinely, genuinely thought sweet peas would sort of end sort of June, July time because that's when mine have always died, apparently not. I know, I know, shock right, five years of growing and I still didn't know that so there's a lot of things that I don't know to be fair. Right let's tie them in. I actually genuinely worry about the day where I sort of know everything or I sort of like have more knowledge because finding stuff like this out is so exciting to me and I just love it. If I only had my scissors it'd be so much easier if I actually had my scissors but I don't have my scissors do I? No. Someone will be watching an old video of mine soon and then they'll watch a new one, see I've lost my scissors and they'll comment and be like oh you left your scissors there by the way. I rely on that you know, that's why I make these videos, so people can tell me where my scissors are. It's the only reason I'm still making them. Right I'm gonna try very hard not to kill the entire plant now but I do need to get rid of the dead bits. No, not again, come on. Please somebody watch the videos back and tell me where my scissors are, please. Where are my scissors? I've had enough, I'm gonna find them. Vlog will resume shortly, I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna stop until I've found my scissors now so I'm gonna turn the camera off and I'm gonna go find them. I've had enough. Right, remind me never to make a bold statement like that again because clearly I'm not gonna find my scissors just by saying I'm gonna find my scissors. I can't find them, I don't know where they are. I've just put a message up on Instagram, I was gonna say Facebook then, just put a message on Instagram asking anybody out there who might have known where I put my scissors in a vlog to get in touch so we will see if some hero comes to rescue me. Until then we'll just pull it all off by hand like I did in the old days before they invented scissors. What did they do before they invented scissors? What question for a Monday morning, what happened before scissors? How do people cut things? Answers below guys, answers below. Always tackling the hard hitting questions here in this vlog. What was life like before scissors? Genuinely made up with my sweet pea teepee, I know it's not got many flowers on but it has a lot of buds waiting to flower and it has had quite a lot of flowers. How fantastic, how lovely, I can't believe it did something. I'm gonna get in it, that's the point of it is to get in it. It looks really small, I don't know what I was thinking when I made it. My first mistake, I can't get it out. Oh my god, I found my scissors. They were here under the pumpkin arch the whole time. I've never been so excited to find my scissors in my life. Oh my goodness, I knew they'd turn up, I knew they'd turn up when I started weeding, that's why I've been weeding around the plot. Oh my god, right we need to put these somewhere we're not going to forget so I'm going to tell you, I'm going to take you, I'm going to tell you where I'm putting my scissors. We will never take our eyes off the scissors again. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I found them, this is insane. Right, there we go. Scissors, the scissors are in the shed hanging up. There we go. We started a little rocky this morning, I tell you what, we started a little bit rocky. It's getting better, the day's getting better. So I have some crops to harvest today, a few more things on this plot over here to tidy up. I was thinking about doing, I've been getting quite a lot of questions recently about like first time allotment plot holders and a lot of you are getting your first plots. I was thinking of doing like a beginner's guide to getting an allotment plot and doing sort of a mini series, so like what to do first, how to prepare your raised beds, how to make a pathway. It's a great time to get a new allotment plot and I think a lot of people do get their plots over the autumn time and that is the perfect time in my opinion to start because it gives you enough time to prepare things for springtime. Things are dying back so it's easier to clear and it's the perfect time to sort of prepare your beds and get all that goodness into them for next year. So I'm thinking of doing just a few videos, they might go up sort of maybe once a week on a Tuesday or something and I'll just pick a topic and talk about it. So if there's anything, if you are a beginner and you've got your first plot and you just want to know where to start, what to do, you've got any questions, leave them below and I'll start picking them and sort of making a video on them I think. But if you've watched these videos for a while you'll know that I've made every single mistake in the book and made some really big stupid mistakes as well so if I can spare anyone that and help anyone out I think that'd just be quite nice. This is ridiculous that this is broken again, this is absolutely unbelievable. This side seems to be doing well but the other side is just, maybe the fleece is just too heavy for it, I don't know. Probably. Oh and half of it's stapled, oh what an absolute nightmare. Oh the downside of stapling you see, downside, there is always downside to everything now so. Oh these have been munched haven't they? What's that these then? Slugs I think, slugs. I still just think they'll be all right, I just think they'll be all right. They just bounce back at this time of year you know. I'll try and show you what the stick's for. So this is why I like sticks so much, okay this explains my love of sticks. You push the stick in then you thread the tube over the stick and the tube doesn't keep falling over. There you are, perfect. Is there anything a stick can't do? Answer me that. Where is this going? What are you doing? Right stay there, stay there, stay there, that's it, stay there. Right harvesting time, harvest time. Isn't the lighting lovely today, isn't it so nice to have that, just to have that, just blue sky. Isn't that just so, it's just such a luxury. I feel like I've not seen blue sky enough this year, it's just been a terrible year, it's just been a terrible year. Enough said, right harvesting, we're going to pick out all the beetroot. What? Harvesting, we're going to harvest some of the beetroot because I think the beet, the heat root, the heat root is heady. Right I think out of everything I've just said you've understood so I'm going to leave it at that. Obviously I can't talk today. Right it's all in here in between the peas, I thought it was a great idea to sow it between the peas and I was right because look it's done absolutely fantastically but we don't know that for sure until we actually pick it and see what's in there so let's do it. It's hard to know how to place you in here, I didn't think about filming when I planted these, I thought about planting you know. Right we'll do this one, oh oh yes yes very nice, little bit small, little bit small but very nice, very round, very beetroot like, very mindful, very demure, love it, that's one. Is our lot going to change for the beetroot? Ah this one's looking promising, okay okay yes yes not too bad you know, very nice colour, very nice colour. Better climb in there, oh I really don't want to do this, get some of these weeds out as well, that's the weed, that's not too bad, not too bad. It's not going great so far, it's not a great harvest if I'm honest. Oh hang on, look at that, oh munched, that's a shame, that's a shame that is. Now we've not won, we've not beat the beetroot, oh god. They've just not got very big and the ones that did get a bit bigger got completely munched and also I think they're a bit over, they look a bit like woody, do you know what I mean, when they go a little bit not good. So if you leave a crop too long before you harvest it kind of goes a bit woody, like it goes a bit hard and a little bit tough and stuff and it's just not good to eat anymore. So I feel like maybe some of these will be okay but I didn't get very big harvest from them which is a shame but to be fair, to be fair to myself, hang on a second Emma, slow down. This is the first year in about three years I've actually grown any kind of beetroot successfully. That is a success, it is a beetroot you know, it is what it is. So not terrible, not terrible but not great. You know what guys, sometimes it just, it is what it is and what that is is crap, that is crap. And on that note, on that note I do hope you've enjoyed today's vlog. If you have do subscribe to my YouTube channel, let me know what you think about the idea of a sort of a beginner's, a beginner's playlist of what to do with your allotment plot. I'll get busy making it over the autumn time and if you've got any specific questions let me know and I will try and sort of make a video around those questions really. I hope you've enjoyed today, I will see you next time, thanks for watching, bye.