PLANTING INTO MY GREENHOUSE FOR AUTUMN / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Good morning, guys. Welcome back to my a lotment diaries. My name is Emma. These are the a lotment diaries. There's a lot of work going on at the aotment today. um a lot of like council looking people chopping things back, chopping trees down, um chopping all the pathways back and stuff. So, it's just that time of year, I think, where councils start to sort of look after the a lotments more and, you know, do more jobs and stuff. So, apologies if it's a bit noisy in the background of this vlog. I will try my best to only turn the camera on when they've taken a break, which they seem to take many, so that's good. My sweet peas and my what is this? Calibrize. It's doing incredibly. Look how amazing. So these are the calibri here and then behind them if I push them down. Look at all these sweet peas. Aren't they just doing amazing? Very excited to have this greenhouse. Now this is one of the first times where I've been like, "Oh my goodness, I am so privileged. I am so privileged and so fortunate to have this greenhouse because the possibilities are now endless for me. Endless." Um, so I was going to prick these out and pop them on into little pots and grow them a bit bigger before planting them out, but I'm now thinking, should I just plant them out into my greenhouse? Uh, should I plant some of them into my green? Maybe what I'll do is I'll plant some of them into my greenhouse and some of them into pots. Yeah, let's do that. Let's pot some of them on because I think some of them could do with being planted outside into the actual a lotment. I'm sure you saw that I brought a um big old bag of compost with me today. It's Westland. I always use the Westland compost if I can now cuz I've just found it to be the one that works really well in my plot. Also, um, Silver Grow tends to do quite well. Those are the two sort of brands of compost that I now really like to use. It's just that they're quite expensive. And so if I'm trying to fill up a really big bed, like a new bed, I'll probably go for cheaper compost like the B andQ stuff, which arguably isn't brilliant, but then it just gives me a good base. And then I'll top it up with things like manure and natural material just to kind of improve the compost. But, you know, compost is compost. And sometimes sometimes you just got to get what you can afford and and you know do with it what you can and improve it. But this is Westland. I do like Westland compost. Here you are. This is the brand I'm using. Westland Pete free multi-purpose compost with added John in. That's what the packet looks like. If I'm totally honest with you, I can't really sit here and explain to you why it's good. Um, it's just that I've used a lot of compost brands and it's just trial and error. Those are just that's just the brand that just works really well for my plot and things seem to grow really well and I don't have any problems with it. So, it's just trial and error really. Um, look at those roots. Fantastical. Right. Get you in your new home, mate. When they're together like that, I'll just very gently break them apart. You hear the power tools now? Yeah. Chopping things back. I'm not sure what they you're up to. I think you're supposed to hold the leaves, aren't you? Like that. Come on. You can't be friends anymore. That's it. You go in here. Brilliant root system. Look at that. Well done, plant. Right, that's some of them potted on. So, the other ones will go directly outside. These are the sweet peas. Look, in all their glory, and they're looking great. So, these will sit in here over the autumn winter. I will cover them with fleece if it gets really cold. Um, but they should be okay. And I think I will pinch them out. Pinching them out basically. I mean, I'll probably pinch them out when they're a little bit taller, but it's essentially pinching the top of the plant out like that. So, it's just gone. And then what it does is it encourages the plant to send out more side shoots. And it's on the side shoots that you get the flowers. That is true with most flowers. I believe I think you get the longest stems from the main bit, but then when you get side shoots, you get more flowers but shorter stems. That could be complete rubbish, but I do know that it gives it more side shoots. Um because essentially what you're doing when you pinch something out, you're telling the plant that there's danger ahead. So, it's trying to grow up. You pinch it out and it goes, "Oh, there's a problem if I go this way." So, instead of going up this way, I'll start going out. And it sends all its emergency shoots out out the sides to try and get itself bigger. It wants to go as big as possible. Basically, that's what it's trying to do. And if it can't go up, it will go out to the sides. And that's what you're telling the plant by pinching it out. So, that's why it produces more side shoots. And that's where you get the flowers. But I will do it a little bit later. I can't believe how well they're growing. How straight. I've never grown sweet peas before cuz I've never had a greenhouse like this where they've actually grown up vertically. They always flip-flop over. This is amazing. I just I'm so happy with you all. Right. I think just because it's gone quiet right now cuz I think they might come back again. Um we'll do the jobs that we need to do outside the greenhouse first so that I can hide in here if they all come back. I really want to take my hat off, but um well, got this stupid haircut done. I know a lot of you said you really liked it, but this front bit, I don't know what to do with it. She cut this front bit really short. And in the hairdressers, it looked nice and I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really nice." And then ever since then, it's just not fallen right and it just goes like this. And I just don't know what to do with it. I know. It might be all right. Oh, Einstein won't care. Right, let's go and feed the birdie and see what jobs need doing out there. I always feel like at this time of year, it's a lot easier to stay on top of your compost because there's such an abundance of green and brown material to go in. So, for example, I've just put in I've just put in all this green stuff which is all been taken out of my flower bed. So, this is like gladioli and like the old um poppies and stuff like that. So this is all in. Over the top of that has gone all the brown leaves. So it's just like the perfect balance in here at the moment. And it's so easy to layer it up with a green layer, brown layer, green layer, brown layer. Can't remember what the ratio of it is. I always forget. Somebody once told me it's um more brown than green. So just make sure you've got more brown in there than green stuff. But you need green and brown stuff in your compost to activate it and to make it turn into compost, which makes sense. There's different chemicals, nitrogen, and all the rest of it. So, but I just think the main thing to remember is brown and green. And just make sure that you're putting brown stuff. Well, I mean, I don't really know how else to say it, but I just try and make it as simple as possible because I do find compost quite complicated, but brown and green. Brown and green. So whenever I think, oh, it's getting a bit too green in there, just whack on a load of brown material, even like cardboard or shredded paper or something, and it just sort of evens it out. These are my main crop potatoes, and I've sort of neglected them for a bit. I mean, I haven't neglected them. I just haven't talked about them or done anything to them. So, I've left them alone, which my plants seem to like, to be honest. So, naturally, they've done fantastic. They've done amazing. They're growing so big, so strong. The foliage look looks great. It just they look amazing. But the problem is the frost is on the way. And the last thing that potatoes like is the frost. Nothing will kill your potatoes faster than frost. They do not like it. They are not frost tolerant at all. Even a little bit will start to kill them. So, I need to protect them now from the frost. Um, they're not ready yet. They'll be ready end of November, beginning of December time. Ha, that probably tells you how ambitious I've been with these. I've been very ambitious, but I am hoping for a Christmas crop of potatoes this year. I feel like I will get some. I feel like they're doing amazing, but we just need to protect them now from the frost so we can keep them alive. I'm pretty sure if I pulled these up right now, there would be a significant amount of potatoes under there. They probably wouldn't be that big, but I reckon I'll get a lot because this has just done I mean, look at the plants. They're absolutely incredible. But the problem is there's so much to protect now from the frost. So, we better get protecting. So, the fleece isn't quite long enough to cover it, which is a little bit annoying. I think I need to change all of the blue things to be smaller. I might need to saw them or something. Little bit frustrating, but you know what? We'll come back to that another day cuz I don't think we're going to get frost this weekend. And now I know what I need to do. So that's good. Um it's getting really windy out here now. So we're going to go into the greenhouse, sort that out. But that's what we've done. Right. So, we'll just top this all up with fresh compost and then we'll plant some seeds and the rest of our calibri in right so here I've got some spring onion which is the white Lisbon winter hardy so really good for planting in the winter time some lettuce which is the marvel of four seasons and some all year round cauliflower which I might just whack in a few seeds I've just scattered those calibri like that in the Um, not too worried about spacing because I want them to survive first. Can worry about moving them later and then we'll start to put our seeds in. So, we're not going to think too hard about it. We're just going to do it. We're not going to worry too much. We're just going to start whacking stuff in like it's the springtime. That's our mentality right now. Springtime mentality. So, a couple of rows here. What's that? Don't want that in there. couple rows here. Do four rows. And what we'll do, we'll alternate it. We'll do spring onion and lettuce here. That's our spring onion. Give them a pat to make sure there's good contact between the seed and the soil. And we'll give it all a water. Okay, so if you didn't get all that, I planted in some spring onion and lettuce here. Here we've got the calibri dotted about. And just at the end there, I whacked in a bit of all round all year round cauliflower. I just put them in as seeds. This end bit here needs to be properly weeded. So I'll bring another bag of compost for this. Weed this over and then we'll put something else in here as well for the autumn winter. Not sure what yet, but definitely needs growing into. The thing is is what I'm thinking is if I continue to use it over the autumn winter and grow into it and actually have things growing in here, I'll look after it and it won't become a weedy mess and then in the springtime it won't be such a big ordeal. Do you know what I mean? I'll just continue to use it. Whereas sometimes when I stop using something, I sort of neglect it and then it becomes weedy, overgrown, it just becomes a bigger job. So, I really want to utilize this space as much as I can for as long as I can. I might just pick some of the cosmos before I leave. Um, because I've really I've really enjoyed putting them into into vasees at home and my cosmos at home all died really quickly, which is such a shame. But here seems to have come alive like really late in the season. So, I'm just loving picking them at the moment. They are gorgeous flower. Aren't they just beautiful? They're one of my favorite flowers ever. And I really struggle to grow them. I really struggle even if I buy them as a flower, as like a potted flower, they just seem to die. And I've got so many buds growing. You know what? These ones here, these are actually quite small. They're not long enough, I think, to pick. And I'm going to leave these buds to flower. But yeah, as soon as the frost comes, these will be gone. These will be gone. I wonder if I can just get a few. Immediately changed my mind cuz I want some cuz I'm just thinking as soon as the frost comes, that's it. That's it for these. So, I might take that one. Right, that's it from me today. I hope you've enjoyed watching. Just a fleeting little visit to the a lotment plot. I'll be back again on Wednesday. Have a lovely rest of your gardening week and um we'll do some more gardening jobs together on Wednesday. So, I'll see you then, guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.