WEEDS ARE TAKING OVER! / LONDON ALLOTMENT GARDENING

I don't know why I keep bringing a coat here. It's honestly so, so warm at the moment. Like it's half past eight in the morning and I do not need a coat. I don't even need a jumper. Crazy weather. Crazy. Good morning guys. My name's Emma. Welcome back to my Not Me Diaries. If you're new here, I'd love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. As you can see, we are in the middle of a heat wave in the UK. It's just stunning weather. It's blue sky. The birds are out. The sun is out. It's warm. It's time to get out and do as much gardening as we can before the weather turns again next week. I think it's dropping a little bit next week. Not significantly, but enough to kind of feel it. If that makes any sense. I guess you would feel it. Anything that drops from 27 down to like 18, 17, you're going to feel the drop. Do you know what I mean? Brought a couple of dahlias that I've been trying to grow in pots at home. These are just another few that I had at home that I potted up ready for the allotment plot and they're not doing great. I brought some from an RHS garden when I went, I can't remember where I went, but it was like an RHS garden center and they're like coral and I brought them from my home garden. They're doing fantastic. They're like up here in my garden at the moment. Any other one that I brought from anywhere else, even garden centers have not done as well. I don't know what that's all about, but I have this one. I think I'm going to plant the dahlias outside today. I think the weather's too good not to, and I think they'll actually do fine in the ground. We're not having much slug and snail attack at the moment. Fingers crossed that remains. But yeah, I thought I'd get the dahlias out today. Why not? Right, let's go and have a look. Morning. Let's go check in the greenhouse. I left the windows open last night in the hope that it would kind of air a little bit in here and it has actually worked. It doesn't feel quite as hot and humid in here as it normally does. Let's see what it's saying. Oh my goodness, he's happy. He's happy today. I can't believe that. 25 degrees in here, 53% and a smiley face. I can't believe I've cracked it. I've done it. Oh, I can't believe he's finally happy. He's finally happy. It's the hardest thing to keep happy, that little face. Honestly, he's never been smiling like that. Oh, he's happy today. Thank goodness. Right, I'll leave the windows open for the next few days, I think. Right, so I've got this dahlia and this dahlia. That one has sort of started to sprout. I might get him out as well. I might just do it. Let's just go for it. And then he's on his big, he's got a teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of green. So I might leave him in here for a bit longer. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Okay, fine. So I've only got three of you then. You know what though, it's not actually too late to buy dahlia tubers and put them directly in the ground and I might actually do that. Just because they've not done very well. This one now looks like it's doing incredibly compared to the others. But compared to my ones at home, it's not. Isn't that funny when you compare things? Just a random little thought for you today on Friday. The very first thing I'm going to do is feed everything in here. I think everything needs a good feed. So I'm going to use the Andermatt Home and Garden natural feed on everything because everything looks a little bit sad and somebody said I need to feed it all. I had quite a few comments from people saying that the reason they're going yellow is because when I'm watering in here, I'm washing away nutrients and because the rainwater isn't getting in, the nutrients aren't being topped up. Bindweed, look at this, just everywhere. Yeah, and that's why they're sort of a bit yellow and the top is sort of doing well because work smarter, not harder. That's what they've learned. Here you go guys, have a nice feed. All right, come on in guys. Let's go. Oh my God, it's in my head on the window. Right, I think whack one in there. Yeah, let's do it. He's not grown as much as I wanted to. I wanted them to grow quite big before I put them out, but with the weather that we're having, it just seems so silly to wait because I feel like the slugs aren't out and that was my main concern was slugs and because they're not sort of out in this weather, there's no need to keep them in pots. Okay, so I'm just going to plant him out the way that I would normally plant really. Oh yeah, look, he's got roots. He's got roots. They'll be fine, won't you? Yes, she will be. So funny how there's like these perfect little places in between the tulips to put them. It's like they were meant to be there. So this one's going to go here and I think I'll also, I have cosmos in here and then I've got the gladiolus coming up at the front and what else could I put in here? I've got wild flower seeds. They might come up potentially. Yeah, it's going to be quite a nice flower bed still going into summer. Right, there we are. So three dahlias in. I think I can fit a fourth one in here somewhere as soon as it starts to grow. Then we'll have all the cosmos. Gladiolus, are they coming up? Yes, they are. I thought I saw some of them coming up and then I've scattered some wild flower seeds around and some of those are coming up. So we'll sort of just leave the weeds in here. I don't think the weeds are going to do anything bothersome. Yeah, gladiolus are coming back. Fantastic. Okay, cool. So what I want to do is keep this as a flower bed for the whole of summer and I think it's working. I'll just show you here quickly as well. The sunflowers are all still alive thanks to the shells and the beer traps and I've just staked them. I staked them early. Always good to stake your sunflowers early. I always forget and they snap later on. So I've staked them. I'm going to tie them in. I've started to tie them in. Yeah, but they're all doing well. They're doing good. They haven't died is the main thing. I'm going to spend a little bit of time weeding my flower area around the apple tree and in amongst the tulips as well. I think this area is beautiful and it's worked so well but it has the potential to become very, very overgrown and messy which is the last thing I want it to do. So I'm going to put my head down, get on with some weeding and try and look after it as much as I can. And that's basically the mantra this year. The mantra this year for the garden is little and often and just tackling those areas. Don't get overwhelmed, just tackle them. Just straight in and that's what we're doing. Right, I've barely started and the birds turned up. Right, are you after some food then? Yeah, are you waiting? Okay, right, okay. Right, you might not be able to see the difference but I can. That's looking a lot better now and the thing about weeding around here is it should stop hiding places for slugs and snails who will potentially slither out, eat my sunflowers and then my pumpkins when they go out as well. Yeah, that feels pretty productive. Okay, let's move on to the next job so we're not stuck weeding for the entire day. Let's not waste the sunshine. Right, the peas are doing so, so well. This bed needs a little bit of TLC. There's a few weeds coming up as well but the thing is they're not grabbing on to the structure that I've actually spent time making. Why are you not doing that? What's going on? So what I'm going to do is try and reinforce the structure a little bit and then make them grow up it. Once again, I wish that plants could talk to you and just tell you what's wrong. I could sort of send them a questionnaire, you know. How's it going? What do you not like about the structure? How can I help you? Just using this paper wire stuff. I still love it. You can get it at most garden centres but the place that I got it from, I got sent it, was Shell on Earth. So Shell on Earth sells all those shells and they also sell lots of other gardening bits so you can find them there and they are excellent. Also, this might be a bit of a random question but does anybody know where I left my scissors? I know you guys watch these vlogs a lot and I film a lot so it's likely that you might see me leave my scissors somewhere and if you have, can you just drop me a comment below and let me know where on earth my scissors are. Thank you very much. You can do your bit to help me. Help me find my scissors. Your reward will be not having to watch me cut twine with shears, which does actually work. It's very effective. Probably dangerous. Oh god, not today. Now that I've fixed your structure, would it be all right if you actually grew up it? Would that be okay? I just, yeah, that's it, that way, that way. I think I'm just going to guide them up it. You know what, they're big enough now to grow up themselves. They're just being babies about it. Come on, up you go, up you go, that way. You know what, we'll twine them in a little bit. Twine you all in. Have I just murdered that whole row of peas? No, I haven't. Good. Just murdered all the, all the weeds. Cool. Right, so I've got this thing here to build. Sorry if you can hear power tools in the background, it is summer and it's an allotment. What more can I say? We also back onto back gardens. A lot of people mow their lawns and stuff, so I try not to film when there's noise going on in case it's off-putting, but I can't always help it. Right, I'm going to build this thing today. I think it's like a planter. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it at the allotment, but I thought it's probably a good idea to get it built, so it's not sitting here in a box, you know. So it looks a bit naff when it's sitting here in a broken box. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to grow into pots at the allotment this year. I know from my home garden that pots are quite faff. They need a lot of watering, a lot of looking after, a lot of constant, you know, being on them. Things can die very quickly in a pot if they're not watered. Right, let's give it a go. I think it's basically like a little tiered planter. I think it's the same one as my one at home. Yeah, it goes in there, doesn't it? It's a bit more fun building things without instructions. That didn't look right. Why doesn't that look right? Ah, okay, now it looks right. Yeah, there we go. That's not a bad little planter, is it? It's quite a smart looking little planter, really. I quite like it up against the greenhouse as well. I just don't know what will work in these pots that I'll be able to keep alive, unless I can think of some kind of self-watering system. That is genius, because it's next to the greenhouse. If I could put some kind of watering, guttering system on the greenhouse, it could just trickle down into those pots, couldn't it? That would be really good. Yeah, I do like it. I do like it, actually. I think it's really snazzy. It's quite a snazzy little addition to the plot. I might just buy some little flowers, little pansies and stuff and stick it in this year, and if they die, they die, just because they're quite cheap. I might just do that this year, and then think about it for next year, having some kind of guttering system, guttering watering system. Yeah, that would be cool. I'd need to sort of figure that out, but I think I could, yeah. Stick those down there. Right, I've sown all of my jack-belittles. I've got eight, eight germinated, and they're growing on at home. I've potted them on now. They are going to go around the big arch and also the little arch. I'm going to sow some different pumpkins today. They're actually, I think they're squashes. They're not actually pumpkin. I don't know what the difference is between pumpkin and squash, but I sort of think they're the same family, so I just tend to call them all pumpkins, but I think they're officially squash. This is the, oh gosh, I'm going to really slaughter this. I'm so sorry if you're Italian. I think it's Italian. Marina di Chigogia, Chigogia, Chigogia, Marina di Chigogia. I grew one of these last year, and it was the only pumpkin that worked, so I'm going to sow four of these, and I've also got some squash, winter squash, the Futsu Black Early, that one there, and you can actually eat the skin of this. You don't have to de-skin it. De-skin it. Yeah, it says to sow between April and May. I think we've just about got in there, so we're going to do four of those as well. Yes, I've just got my pot, so at the back I'll do four like that. Actually, should I sow two seeds per pot just in case, if I've got two seeds? Yeah, I think I will. Okay, we're just going to stuff them in. Just drop them. If you don't know what way to plant seeds, by the way, just drop them from a height, and whatever way they fall is the way they fall. Right, I've only got one for you. Bit of work, mate. Oh wow, these are huge. I forgot how big these ones are. Okay, cool. We'll just do one per pot of these. These are massive. Oh, that's got to work. Come on. I always feel more confident about big seeds as I do, instead of like little seeds. Little seeds are a mystery to me. Big seeds, I'm on board with. I understand them, you know. Okay, fill them in. Give them a bit of a water. I should have really sown my Jack Be Little's at the allotment, because they're getting so big, and I've got to bring them all down, which is a bit annoying, but I didn't. I sowed them at home. Too late now. Right, that's it for me today. I hope you've enjoyed my allotment diary today. I hope it's been entertaining, given you a bit of inspiration, and something nice to watch on a Friday. I'm going to be back again on Sunday with a new vlog. I don't know what it'll be yet. It might be a home gardening vlog, or it might be me taking you out and about somewhere. Whatever it is, hope you enjoy it. I'll see you back on the allotment plot again on Monday. See you Monday, guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.