WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE PUMPKINS?! / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Wow, it is warm in here. It's actually quite a bit of humidity in here. There's some water on the greenhouse panels, which I wasn't expecting actually. It is a heatwave here in the UK, hi everyone, my name's Emma. Welcome to the Allotment Diaries. It's a bit of a heatwave, so we're having like maybe a five or six day really really intense heatwave here in the UK. They're saying that where I am in South London it could get up to 35 degrees Celsius today, which is insane. It's currently 20 past 8 in the morning and it is 28.3 degrees Celsius in the greenhouse. 63% humidity, not surprised to see that because, like I said, got some water on the panels. Yeah, it's gonna be hot and the thing is guys is in a couple of days time I'm going away on holiday, so I've only got a couple more days here to take care of it all and when I'm away that's when the heatwave continues. So I am ever so slightly concerned about this plot not being able to survive without me. I never know, I never know if it can. Some years it does really well without my help and I don't need to do anything to it and other years it just dies when I go on holiday. So it really is just, it just does what it wants, you know. Just realised I had a smudge on the camera the whole time, hope that wasn't too distracting guys. I plaited my hair last night and I undid it this morning. I've just let it go a bit wild. I kind of feel like Hermione from Harry Potter, kind of loving it. It's maybe a little bit too wild for my liking, but you know what, nobody cares, nobody cares Emma. Get on with the gardening. So I'm gonna give everything a really, really good water straight away this morning. I am slightly concerned about the pumpkin so we will talk about that in a minute, but I am still getting loads, sorry the sun is so, there's no way that I can get the sun to leave me alone. I'm still getting so many comments about this Angela Rayner thing and the Labour government saying that they're gonna sell off allotment plots for housing. I'm just getting comments all the time over all of my social media. I do know, I have heard the news, I have addressed it a couple of times. For now, I'm just gonna carry on, keep calm and carry on. I'm British, what else do I do? But I think, yeah, I'm just keeping an eye on the story really and waiting for any updates, but I mean, I don't think there's any immediate need to panic about it. Nothing's been said specifically about my plot and until it does, then I'll sort of panic a little bit and go, oh god, what's going on? But until then, you know, I don't want to get caught up in this kind of stress about it, wondering what's gonna happen, what might not happen, you know. I just want to buckle down, focus on what I've got right now. I just don't want to get caught up in all that stress. It might be unnecessary and I don't want to do it to myself. So that's where I am right now with it, but I know everyone's, everyone's worried, everyone's thinking about it, everyone's talking about it. It would be a great, great shame to lose any allotment plots. I know that eight have already been lost. Um, but that was before the announcement came. So I think those closures were slightly different. I know there's one in my area which is closing due to a hospital wanting to put like a road through it and stuff. And I know that that's really annoying, but I think those tenants are being moved to other allotment plots with spaces on. What can we do, guys? That's, I think that's all I'm going to say on it because until anything physically happens, it's not worth worrying about, you know. Right, let me show you the pumpkins because that is something worth worrying about. Let's worry about them. Right, so the pumpkins are doing really well and climbing over. I think you know exactly what I'm going to say. And I think I say this every time I grow pumpkins, but what on earth is happening? What is this? They've gone yellow, um, brown. Is it a lack of watering? Do they need a feed? Very concerning. Is it just the end of the pumpkin plant? Is it just finishing now? Because they've been growing for a long time. Could it be that the pumpkins are just finishing and it's just the end of the cycle of the pumpkins? I can't cut all those leaves off. Now normally what I do, if I got a dodgy leaf like that, I'd just snip it off and then carry on like nothing happened. But because most of the leaves are now that colour, I can't snip them all off. There'd be none left on the plant. So what I'm going to do is give it a feed this morning and just hope it's sort of the pumpkin life cycle. I think I did put them out quite early, so I would expect them to be done quite early. I always panic about the pumpkins, don't I? Every year on repeat, every year. Is that the title of this video? If it is, I do apologise. Is it panic about the pumpkins? Oh no, every single year it's the same title and the same video at the same time of year. Will I ever learn? No, no I won't. So so Hello, what are you doing up there? Is this the culprit? Is this the one that's destroyed my archways? Look, he doesn't look big enough. There goes my theory of it being pigeons that ruined my archways. Couldn't possibly. Yeah, couldn't possibly be this guy. He's too light. There you go. It wasn't a pigeon. I reckon it must have been a fox then. I reckon it was a fox trying to chase a pigeon. I reckon, right, with these archways that I thought was vandalised by people, I think a pigeon went to the top of the archway and a fox chased it up there. Or a cat. Could have been a cat. I'm not being foxist. I think it could have been a cat as well. I reckon that's what happened. How do I tell the police that? Because I made a police report on it. I made a police report on it. So do I have to like take it back now? Should I just ignore it? I don't know what to do now. Wow, he's a very confident little pigeon, isn't he? Is this going to be my new little garden friend? Should we feed him? Should we make friends with the pigeon? Not quite as cute as a robin, but you know what? It's a bird. I'll take it. Oh, there he is. There's Einstein. Right, who the hell are you? You're not Einstein. Who are you and what have you done with Einstein? That's not Einstein. I know you're a robin and I know you're probably a baby, but that looks quite evil. You look like Einstein's evil twin. Yeah, you really do. What have you done to Einstein? And he's so confident. This is not my robin. Sorry. Who was that? That wasn't my Einstein. And that wasn't the new Einstein that I've been feeding for absolutely weeks trying to get him to like me. That was a completely new one. I think it's a baby because he still had like his baby sort of feathers around his face. But didn't he look evil? Didn't he look like Einstein's evil twin? Wow. Is that my new robin then? Has the other one just gone now? Crazy, crazy how quickly they just change. And it's so crazy that I can actually recognise the different robins now from the personalities and from how they look. Who would have known six years ago when I took this plot on that I would recognise different robins? Madness. There's loads of different birds coming now, so we'll just leave them alone and let them come and eat. They must be really hungry. It's only been like three days since I've been here. They must be starving. I was just thinking how fortunate I am that most of my allotment plot is in the shade in the morning time. I get sun on the whole plot sort of in the afternoon consistently. So I kind of get, I get between like eight, nine hours of sun in the summer on the whole plot. But in the morning time I don't get as much sun at this time of year. And actually it's really lucky for me because like during like today, a heat wave, it means I can get down here a little bit later. I don't have to rush down at sort of 5am and I can water everything still because it's not in the direct sun. So you shouldn't water things in the direct sunlight in the heat because the water evaporates really quickly. You can burn your crops and all the rest of it. I mean there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't, but all this is in the shade. So when I've watered things, the ground has become really wet and I'm really, you know, soaking the roots. It's just excellent. Also to everyone saying that I should have two watering cans and fill them up to save time. That's an excellent, excellent idea, but I can't carry more than one. It's really heavy. And where I take the watering can from the water place, the pathway's really narrow and there's loads of nails sticking out from my neighbour's fence and I always like scratch myself on it. So I have to be really careful when I walk down that pathway. It's just not possible for me to have two watering cans. So it's a really good idea. It's a really logical idea, but I just don't think it's going to work for me. I'll just stick with this. It's my exercise, guys. It's how I exercise. Oh, it's another bird. It's a magpie. The second I try and film, he goes up in the tree. Oh, there he is. Can you sort of see him poking out? There he is. There's the magpie. He's come to see the food. These are those runner beans that I planted not too long ago, quite late in the season, doing absolutely fantastically well, coming up beautifully. And in front of that, look at the sweet corn. This is unheard of. I can't believe it. Really growing so beautifully. Ow, bindweed. It didn't just bite me, it was that bindweed. Ow. Oh, this is present me. This is a message to future me. I hope you're happy with what I've done with the compost. This is present me trying to make future me happy because I neglected the compost for a little bit and I'm trying really hard to stay on top of it now. So I'm chopping it up small, turning it. I'm going to give it a really good water as well because obviously with the heat wave, it's going to dry out a little bit. What I have noticed about the compost, and this might be really basic information, is that I've been putting stuff on it all throughout the summer, but it never seems to reach the top. It never seems to get any higher, which I think means it's actually doing the thing it's supposed to do and composting down, which is excellent because I thought I'd reach the top at some point in the summer, but I haven't. I haven't. Every time I've dumped something else on it, it flattens it more. It's getting smaller, not bigger. That's what it's supposed to do, right? Get smaller, not bigger. So you know what? It actually looks all right. I know I dumped a load of horse manure in it, and actually it looks all right. I've been chopping it up. It looks good. Everything's kind of becoming easier to chop the longer it's in there, so I think I'm doing all right with it. I need to harvest these today. I need to harvest some of these. It's the day, guys. It's the day. The day has come. I'll just give this one a bit of a water, and then we're going to pull up some of those potatoes. Let's do it. Right, the time has come, the war has said. Talk of many things, pulling up the potatoes that grew in the compost bins. Right, we're going to go and pull up those potatoes. I'm not going to pull all of them up because I think there's quite a lot there. I'm just going to pull a few up that I can actually use, and enough that I can use in the next two days because I don't want them sitting at home for weeks. They might as well stay there. Is that a helicopter? Oh, lovely. Right, let's go pull up the potatoes. I know a lot of you have been waiting for this. It's now. It's now, guys. It's happening. Out of all of the potatoes I've grown this year on purpose, the ones in my compost bin that grew by accident, illegally, might I add, have done the best. Have done the best by far. I've done nothing to them. Nothing. Not one thing. I didn't even plant them. Let's see what they do when you do nothing to them. I bet they're the best potatoes I've ever harvested as well. I bet these are my best. Oh, well. There's a lesson here somewhere. Look, he's brought his mate now. Oh, what was that? Oh, my gosh. Is that a display of dominance? It's like, this is our plot. What does that mean? I need to get a book about pigeons. I really do. Can anyone recommend a book about pigeons? I don't even know where they begin. It's just the foliage. This is just the foliage. I can't even get in. I can't get it. I can't even see where these potatoes are. Where are they? Look at the amount of creepy crawlies in here. Oh, my goodness. Loads of life in here. I think that's a good thing. Oh, I thought it was a spider. It's just a leaf. Oh, this is actually really hard to film, but I'm going to pull one up and just see. There's no potatoes in that one. Are they just the plants then with no potatoes? Oh, yeah, we've got a few. All right. A couple of potatoes there. I think it might be deceiving, guys. There's so much potato foliage, but actually, there's not that many sort of potatoes growing in here because I guess they don't really have much to grow into. I found a few so far. Let's see if we can pull up a couple more. That's all right. This one's sort of in my new compost bin. I don't really want it in there, so let's try and get this out. I don't know if we'll find any potatoes. The rate we're going. Oh, yeah. Okay. Is that a potato? Do I really want to eat that though? Let's just recompost it. No. No, there's like no potatoes on it. It's just a plant with no potatoes. Potentially the worst potato harvest I've ever had. I'm so surprised. I thought that they would give me absolutely tons of potatoes, but it turns out it was all foliage and no substance underneath, so I guess having potato plants that grow really massively and they kind of went viney. Did you know that potatoes are like vines? I didn't know that, but somebody did say to me that potatoes and tomatoes are from the same family, and I guess tomatoes are vines. So could you grow potatoes up, like vertically? Anyway, getting ahead of myself. The point is it wasn't a great harvest. I've got a few little potatoes I can use, but that's about it to be honest. I was expecting so much more. I haven't picked all of them yet. I thought I might as well just leave those because they look green and lush and they're growing, so a little bit of a letdown wasn't it? But I do have lots of other potatoes growing, so there'll be lots of potato harvest to come over the next few months. Stay tuned for those. Hopefully, they'll be a bit better than this. I've just got in here. It's just gone nine o'clock. It's 36.3 degrees in here now. It's absolutely roasting. I've got every single window open. Oh, what's happened to that window? Hang on a second. Now I've got every single window open and the door open, which I'm going to leave tonight. Right, that's it for me today. I can't stay here when it gets too hot, so I'm going to be back tomorrow. Is that wobbly? Sorry guys. I'm going to be back tomorrow. It's the last day that I can come here before my holiday, so I really need to water everything, harvest things that so that I can eat them that night, sort everything out as best I can, and then I'm gone for a week. You guys won't see that because I'm going to continue the vlogs because I don't want anyone to know when I'm away, so by the time you're watching this, I'm already back, if that makes sense. But yeah, tomorrow's the last day that I can sort it all out before I go away, so I will be back again on Friday for you guys, sorting out the plot before I go on holiday, and then the next time you see my allotment after Friday, which will be Monday, it will have been like a week and a half that I haven't been here, so it's going to be like a complete difference, even though it's only going to be like two days for you guys. So stay tuned for that. That should be really interesting, and yeah, I'm going to figure out how I can eat 50,000 tomatoes in one day. Let me know. Let me know how you can eat 50 tomatoes in one day. Anyway, thanks for watching guys. I will see you again on Friday. See you then. Bye.