NOT MY BEST DAY AT THE ALLOTMENT / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Well guys, welcome back. I have completely broken my camera. I have no idea what the quality will be like. I was already feeling a little bit discombobulated, now I'm like completely discombobulated. What are you eating? There's a great big spider in there. Good morning guys, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name's Emma, these are the allotment diaries. Talking quietly and cautiously then, just in case someone comes They'll be like, who's she talking to? There's a load of pallets at the front of the allotment plot here that look in very good condition that I need to make my new compost area, but I don't know if they're free to take or not, so I'm leaving this in the vlog so that when I edit it back later I will remember to email the allotment committee and ask if they're available for anyone to take, because I don't want to take something that someone's just left there for later. But that's good, you can always find free stuff at the allotment to make stuff out of which is really good, and the compost diaries will be coming soon. I'm determined to make my own compost next year and I'm going to really work on it, so the compost diaries are on their way guys and it's going to be very exciting. It's going to be a big learning journey for me and for a lot of you out there as well who also struggle to make compost. It's just nice to know that I'm not alone. Oh look, there's still wood chip left, that is very very good to know. I wonder if I'm feeling wood chippy today. There's also quite a lot of horse manure there, which is lovely. It's also starting to rain a little bit, so that's not so lovely, but there we go. We're officially in October now and that means the bad weather is coming. You can either embrace that and just keep getting your butt down here, or you can hide away at home and just watch these vlogs, it's up to you. I myself will be here struggling along in the rain. God, it's looking very sad here today isn't it? Very dishevelled. Is that a squirrel? It is a squirrel, it is a squirrel. What's he got? What's he got? He's got something. What's he got? He's got something, he's got something of mine. What is that? What are you eating? He's got something of mine, he's eating it. Look, look at him eating it. Excuse me sir. The absolute nerve of him. I saw him, I saw him out the corner of my eye, he had something. Was it one of my apples? Proper eating it is, proper munching on it. What is it? It could have been an apple, look, something's been eating all the apples. It's like, look at that, something's really eating it. That sort of looks like a squirrel, that squirrel business that is. Look at all the little chippings he's got off of it, that is so funny. Right, so just arrived, we've already had to chase a squirrel away, it's all kicking off today on Wednesday. I hope you're all doing well, I hope you're still managing to get outside a little bit. I know the weather's been terrible, a complete contrast to my last video where it was lovely and sunny and now it's sort of like grey, miserable and rainy. But hey ho, we carry on, we continue, we're still here. We've got two jobs to do today. My lovely husband brought down some bags of multi-purpose compost and we brought them from Wicks this time just because it was a bit cheaper than B&Q. I have no idea what the quality will be like, these are 50 litre bags, I think it was three for nine pound which is a lot cheaper than B&Q. So we got three bags of multi-purpose compost and I got a couple of bags of this which is topsoil which I never ever use in my allotment but I'm just sort of changing up what I put in the beds this year. This year I mean sort of next year, I know I've just done a whole video on like how I top my beds up and stuff but I'm always adapting, always changing and topsoil is a natural material so I'm just going to whack them on some of the beds and see if it improves the soil, I don't know. We're going to give it a anyway but the other job that we've got to do today is to plant out the onions and the garlic and so I'll be topping up a bed with this and planting those out. Now guys, excellent excellent news this morning because the sweet pea flowers are still alive! Not if I do that to them! They're still alive, they're still flowering. Now in my last vlog last week at some point I did say I'm determined to get these flowering until November. We're now in October, it's officially the first of October when I'm filming this, I've got to keep them alive for a month. I don't know why I set these unrealistic challenges to myself but I've set it now and I'm determined because we thought they would die, they didn't die, they survived. Now I want to keep them alive. The plant itself is looking a little bit dishevelled at the bottom, this is not good, this means that it's sort of finishing and dying. The top of it has got new growth, disgust, don't know, don't understand that so there's nothing I can say about that other than I do not understand and I don't know what the plant's doing. So we're going to do some sweet pea maintenance right now to try and preserve it. Right so a few things that we will be doing to try and preserve the life of this plant, this creature, I was going to say creature, I guess it is sort of a creature. It's first of all live in complete denial about anything that's dying because the best form of defence in anything in life is denial denial denial. I don't actually know if that's true but it sounds true so we should probably follow that because that sounds very good. I am cutting out any of these like flower stems that don't have anything at the end because they are so past it that even the seeds have fallen off, that's not a good sign. So we're getting rid of all of those and of course any anything that's formed a seed already we're getting rid of as well because as soon as flowers start to make seeds they're sort of, it's the end, you know they're sort of trying to pass on their gene to the next flowers and stuff it's like it's game over. We don't want them to make seeds, sorry mate, I apologize, like that. We don't want them to make those because if they make those it's game over for the flower so we're going to get all those off. So the second thing I'm cutting down on a little bit is the amount of tendrils that it's making. Tendrils are these little spindly things, these little spindly green things that come off the plant. I'm sort of getting rid of them a little bit because sweet pea flowers they can get quite, they can make a lot of them. They're very very ambitious plants sweet peas and they really do believe that they can take over the whole world. They want to take over your garden, they are like the Donald Trump of the plant world, they just think they can just own everything but they can't, they can't, not in my garden they can't anyway. In this garden they're not in charge, I am, it's what I keep telling myself anyway. You see here they've got themselves all tangled up, look at this, if the camera will actually focus please, focus, yes, you see here they've got themselves all tangled up, all in a knot, they don't know what they're doing, what's going on, that can actually hinder the production of flowers so we need to sort of sort them out a bit. Right we're going to tie it in at the top as well to stop the wind from snapping it or anything like that, see if we can keep it all together. This is the twine situation going on at the moment so I don't really want to talk about it but you know I'll show you instead, that's that's my twine. Just put a load of dirt over myself, organisation eh? I've got to work on it a lot, we really have. Well guys welcome back, I have completely broken my camera, it won't even turn on now, look watch It's not doing anything at all so I can't seem to fix it, maybe I'll hit it again. This is how my dad used to fix the tv in the old days, he used to go work, I don't think that's gonna do it somehow. Oh great, right if anyone's got any camera recommendations for me please let me know. Wish I tried to continue the vlog on the phone unfortunately. Right okay so I have taken off a lot of spindles, I've tied in the sweet peas, they are looking good, the last thing I want to do is give them a feed because I haven't really fed my my sweet peas at all to be honest, so let's give them a good feed. Right I'm gonna use some of the homemade brew that we made that time so oh it stinks, absolutely reeks, but this is a stinging nettle like feed so it's just loads of stinging nettles, oh there's a great big spider in there Right sorry about that, did not see the spider. Okay loads of spiders, fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Well what we're gonna do is we're gonna get the pot and we're gonna dilute this feed into a watering can with water so we're just gonna... Would you drink that for a million pounds? Let me know in the comments. I think I probably would if I'm honest, I'm just gonna put that out there And there we go, the quest to keep sweet peas alive continues, will we make it till November? Stay tuned. Totally ruined that crow, what do you think you're doing? I'm very very discombobulated since breaking my camera, I was already feeling a little bit discombobulated, now I'm like completely discombobulated um so it's just I'm gonna have to buy a new one it's just so annoying and I have no idea which one to buy so I'm stressing a little bit I'm gonna try and relax by clearing a bit of the plot and putting in some onion and garlic so we're gonna clear, I think it's gonna go over here so the bed I'm thinking for onion and garlic is this one over here and the reason being I've always had a massive problem with white rot on that plot over there and I just cannot grow any kind of allium at all. Last year, this year even, I grew some onion and garlic in that one there and it was sort of okay so I think this plot might be safe from garlic rot or whatever it is, onion white rot. I'm not too fussed about it basically because I've never managed to grow onion and garlic successfully before so what I'm thinking is we're going to clear a little bit of this bed here and we're going to whack them in here because the peas here they didn't do anything this year they really struggled so let's clear this, top it up, because I get excited about new compost you know, just excited that's all, I just forget. Oh that is quite nice quality you know, that's all right, yeah that's good. This is the first time I've ever brought Wicks multi-purpose compost and I have to say I am quite impressed, that is really not bad and it smells gorgeous as well, I'm happy with that, that will do. So one of the main reasons why I think my onion and garlic has failed year after year is firstly white rot because there's nothing I can really do about that, if it's got white rot it hasn't for years, I can't grow onions or garlic in that plot for like 15 years or something ridiculous like that to get rid of it, I don't know, something like that. The other reason is I think because it gets too boggy and onion and garlic really needs really good drainage, now every time I ever plant it in the autumn time which is the best time to plant on onion and garlic by the way, it rains like crazy and it just gets too wet and it all rots, so this bed here has been topped up several times. This bed started life with a layer of cardboard, then it had all the leaves go into it, then it had bags of compost, then it's had broad beans growing in here and now it's got new crops growing in here and it's had top-ups between those two crops as well and now I've just added a brand new bag of multi-purpose compost, this bed has been topped up so many times that the soil here is good and I know it's good because look at all those crops that have just come up from seedlings and done well and I got a cucumber and the peas died but they got eaten and that's not my fault, so I think this bed will be good for onion and garlic, I was going to say gunion and arlic, whatever you want to call it it's fine, it's your plot, you can call it gunion and arlic if you want, anyway enough chatting, we're going to put it in, let's go, what did I buy actually, I don't even know what I brought, right so the garlic we've got is garlic white casablanca, that looks very good, I think we've got two bulbs there, I'm going to plant one, one of them I think and then the onion that we've got is senshu onions, so I don't know what they are but they look very nice, look at those, beautiful, hopefully they will grow this time, I've immediately changed my mind immediately, I'm just going to do the onion, I'm just going to do the onion in this bed, I'm going to put the garlic somewhere else, I always do onion and garlic together as if it is the same crop and I don't give them enough credit for the fact that they're different crops, it's like I don't appreciate them, I always just put them together but I don't know if they are friends, I assume they're friends because they're both sort of from the allium family but I don't know if they are friends and I don't know if they really like being together, so I'm going to put the garlic somewhere else, I'm going to put the onions in here, I'm splitting them up this year, it's cruel I know but that's what I'm doing, sometimes guys you have to do something you've never done before in order to get something you've never had before, why would the phone fall down at that exact second, that was a really really moving speech, why are you doing this to me phone, right, sometimes you have to do something you've never done before to get something you've never had before, there you go, can't do it again, it comes out once and then that's it, right here's how you do garlic, I mean what's this, onion, that's the roots, that's the top, that's where the green is going to grow, that's where the roots are going to grow, what you do is you just push it in a little bit like that so its head is sticking out, that's it, that is it, and then what you do is you spend the next few months panicking that the birds are going to come down and pick them all out, which they do, they definitely do, so we've got to protect them with something, I've just reminded myself of that, I'll tell you what if all this grows I'm going to have onions for a year, I'll have a year's supply of onions, what am I going to do with all these bleeding onions, come on you can't think like that, you have to assume that half of them will die, always assume death, right the onion is officially in, now in terms of spacing what I did, I think there is obviously spacing, what does the bag say, no instruction at all, so what I've had to do is just improvise and think of an onion, just in my mind I'm thinking of holding an onion in my hand, a big onion in case it grows really big and I'm just thinking there needs to be enough room for an onion, so as I've placed them down I've just thought onion, onion, onion, onion, and that's how I've just spaced them out, now I don't know if that makes any sense, that's definitely not you know professional or anything but it's what I've done, now half of these will die, half of them will rot, half of them won't grow, half of them will get eaten and hopefully we'll end up with one onion, so there we go, and that's if we're lucky. I'm just supporting some of these brassicas so they don't fall over and snap, we've had quite a lot of wind recently and actually brassicas have held up really well which is amazing, oh is it you Rocky, oh you have no idea how much I needed to see you today, come on then, are you seriously just gonna go past me and not say hello, hello, oh rocks, Rocky I've had the worst day ever, I really have had the worst day ever, Rocky, Rocky, you have no idea the day I've had, it's just been awful, it's been one disaster after another, oh Rocky it's so good to see you, wait like I was saying I've supported the brassicas and this will cheer you up and me up as well, an actual living broccoli, an actual living broccoli, can't believe it, there you go, I've actually grown a broccoli, it's tiny and hopefully it'll get a bit bigger, um is there any more going on, no that's a cauliflower I think, it seems this little guy has been doing his job properly, so thank you very much Mr Scarecrow, you've really helped stop the birds, or they just didn't see that broccoli, but you know what we've just, we've got to keep bigging them up, all right, we can't let you become like Harry and Sally, they did not pull their weight of the plot, we all know what happened to them don't we, yeah, keep their name suggestions coming in by the way, they are absolutely fantastic, I'm loving them, I will decide very soon. Right I'm off, I'm out of here, it's not been a great morning, but you know what, we did get some jobs done and I did do a few things that I really wanted to do, so it's not all bad, I've got to look on the positive, hopefully I will be back again on Friday, it may have to be filming on my phone again, fingers crossed to have a new camera soon, so the quality will improve I promise, I will see you again on Friday guys, thank you so much for watching, see you Friday, bye!