A MUDDY ALLOTMENT DAY / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries, my name is Emma, these are the allotment diaries. I have to admit I struggled getting down here this morning, I wasn't going to come and then I had a little bit of a change of heart and I decided to just get my butt down here and do a little bit of work. It's really not that cold today but it rained like all night long and all morning and it's literally just stopped like an hour ago. Now it's cleared up and it's blue skies and sunshine which is lovely but I just wasn't feeling coming down in the mud. I just, do you know what, I really just can't wait for the spring and I can't wait for the weather to like cheer up a little bit and be a bit warmer. The sun, seeing the sun in the winter time makes me feel so impatient for it to be warm but I am in like four layers again today so I am actually quite warm. Basically I was just making a load of excuses but here I am, I've turned up. We have won the first battle of getting our butts down here and now we need to do some work. Just going to open the windows in here because it is a little bit, I mean it's really really wet which is not good for my plants. Might open them to the max actually just while I'm here. Try and get some air in here. Anyway I am going to start by feeding the bird because he has followed me here today. He followed me right from the entrance to when I got to my plot so he's desperate for some food. So I'll feed the birdie and then I think we're just going to crack on with the back of the plot again. I don't know how interesting that is. I'll try and do something else today as well and break it up a little bit but I am obsessed with it. I want to sort out the back of the plot before the spring comes for obvious reasons. So we'll start with feeding birdie. I can hear him, he's waiting for me. Right well I've ordered some pond liner to fix my broken pond. I think it's pretty obvious there's a hole in it now. I'm in no doubt anymore that I have created a hole. It's probably with the hoe when I was banging it and trying to break up the ice. All my own doing. Lesson learned there I think. Lesson learned. But yeah the pond liner is coming in a couple of days so I'll have to fix the pond then. I'm going to crack on with the back of the plot and start digging it out and getting it ready for the fence to go in. And what's really funny is all those robins, there was like five of them and they were all crowding round these worms and then I got up to walk away and they've all gone down to the back. It's like they know what I'm going to do today before I'm even doing it. They're all just sitting down there waiting for me to start digging. Isn't that amazing? Robins are so weird aren't they? I was just wondering what on earth this is. It's like a big plastic container that keeps breaking into little plastic pieces and I was like it's so heavy. What on earth is it? It's full of rocks. The whole thing is full of rocks. Someone's just got a plastic container and filled it with rocks. So I use all of these around my pond I think. But that's what this is. It's just a whole plastic container of rocks. Isn't that so weird? Really good rocks as well. I don't know why people would not want these rocks. I mean rocks are great. Is there a way I could transport them because they're too heavy for me? Yeah I know. I had to abandon it. I had to abandon it. There's loads of really massive spiders in there. I did not realise. Oh my god I'm freaking out so much. They're huge. They're huge. They're huge. They're huge. And then when I looked in there's like webs everywhere. Holy smokes. I don't know how I did that but I'm literally panicking. I'm having a panic attack right now. Whenever I think I've sort of overcome my spider fear a little bit the universe will throw more spiders at me just to see and I realise that I'm not over it and I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. I had to seriously abandon it. I was just having visions of it climbing up my glove and oh my god. Oh my god. Do you want to see them? Alright I'm going to show you them right now. This is a warning. I'm about to show you some really big spiders. There he is. There's one of them. That was actually one of the smaller ones. There's just loads of them in here. There's just loads of them. Loads and loads. Let me show you the web. Oh god look at that. Look at that. Oh god I just. Oh god I can see him. I can see him. I can see him. I can see him. Can you see his little legs? Look. Look. There they are. There they are. Loads of spiders. I was just putting my hand in that guys. I was just putting my hand in that. There are some creepy crawlies that I can kind of cope with now and I've kind of come to terms with but spiders definitely not one of my favourites. I cannot go near that now. Fantastic. Brilliant. Great. So we'll just have to leave that there for now. In fact we might have to end up leaving that there forever. To be fair they're living quite happily in there so why would I disturb them you know? Fantastic. Right we'll continue with what we're doing. We'll just dig it all out I think. Oh my god. Oh my god. I did not need that today. Right I've really worked hard. All right. I've just braked to let all the birds have a go. They're all circling me and sitting around me and they want to start searching the soil for some food so I've sort of taken a break to let them scavenge. Go on then. Scavenge. I've cleared it really well in this section. I think what I'm going to do is work in sections as always. It's always my best advice and clear each section as best as I can. So this section here has now got no blackberry canes. I've pulled out as much bindweed as I can physically find and I've just started to rake it over and make it a bit level and then I'll move on to the next section and clear that really well because I don't want this to be an ongoing every year job. I want it done and then done forever or for as long as I can. I mean nothing in a garden's forever but you know what I mean. Longer than a year. So I've that section there. It's a very muddy job today. I've taken out quite a few canes. Let me show you how far we've got. Just this section along here has just been cleared really well. You can see where it goes back into overgrown jungle land. I'm just working each part nice and calmly, clearing it completely and it'll be ready for the dead hedge and maybe even some kind of growing area in front of it. I don't know yet. And then this is a wheelbarrow full of all the canes that I've pulled out. All the big blackberry canes which have been pulled out from the roots. So hopefully no more blackberry canes in that section there which would be great. But I expect there will be some bindweed still because that's really hard to get rid of. Obviously I will follow it all the way behind my polycarbonate greenhouse so that I don't have that problem of it all becoming overgrown again. But this is another huge huge job. So I think working in sections is the best way to go about it and then even if I don't finish the entire row at least sections of it will be finished and then I can just work on the next section next autumn. I really hope it doesn't come to that. I really want to clear it but at the same time you know I don't want to be doing this for the whole year. Right so this is my brassica bed at the front of the plot and I think last year I harvested some of the savoy cabbages and I just chopped the top bit of cabbage off and left the rest of the plant and what's happened is the plants have created mini little cabbages all coming off the plant which is quite amazing. I didn't know they did that. A lot of you kept telling me that they do produce more but I didn't realize a cabbage would grow mini cabbages and they do and it's fascinating and amazing. I've just taken the netting off the bed because it's pretty much finished. I don't think I'll get much more out of it so if the birds want to come down and peck some of it that's fine by me. I'm not sure what's going to go in this bed next year. I say that every year and I end up putting more brassicas in there. If it ain't broken don't fix it all that malarkey. This cabbage here the savoy cabbage which is my favorite cabbage by the way is stunning. I actually think that would make a really nice bouquet like a flower bouquet like instead of flowers you could just have a savoy cabbage like that. It's basically created lots of mini savoy cabbages so that's a savoy cabbage that's a cabbage that's a cabbage that's a cabbage and that's a They look fantastic and the thing is is the smaller the veg usually the tastier they are so oh I've also got a ladybird on there. First little ladybird friend I've seen this year how fantastic and maybe I won't harvest these then maybe I'll just leave them. The other ones are doing the same I mean this isn't quite as pretty as you can see it's a little bit all sort of curling up but it's done the same thing as has this one over here it's just throwing out more shoots. I just think it's amazing such fascinating plants Brassicas. I think I might just take a couple of them I think after all my work today I've sort of earned a little mini harvest haven't I so I'm just going to pull off a couple off that one that looks nice I'll pull off this one here he looks nice yeah mini ones. I think I might get a bit of this broccoli today as well I think I've earned it oh I think I've been working hard I'm just going to pull it off because I can't find my uh my scissors pull off some of this and this would be great for my lunch. I feel like next time I'm here I can start putting that fence together in stages so I reckon that bit there I could start making the fence um and just getting rid of these on my plot here I think next time that's going to be the job yeah next time so Friday for you um I will start putting that fence together um we've been working on it for about two weeks now just trying to clear the area and stuff and the thing is is these jobs they're not quick jobs they take time and I'm trying to sort of show it in a realistic format I could just film all of that and put it into one video but I don't feel like it's realistic and I think one of the problems with allotment plots is a lot of people get them not realizing the amount of effort and time and dedication that goes into them and so by showing things like this in real time of how long that's going to take me um as a woman on my own on my plot just doing it by hand I think it's more realistic and I think it shows the realistic side of allotment plots and that's kind of what this channel is all about it's just kind of showing you the realistic side of the allotment so stay tuned for that on Friday I'll start putting it together and I think it will start to come come together very quickly once the fence starts to go up so that's what I'll be doing next time I'm here until then that was sort of the vlog today so I hope you enjoyed watching it um I've got myself a little mini harvest to go home with so I'm very happy for me this is quite a successful day on the allotment because I feel like I've got a lot done um and a lot of really nasty work done so I'll be back again on Friday putting the fence together join me then guys thanks for watching