GETTING THE ALLOTMENT READY FOR FEBRUARY / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

I mean a professional did this one. Do you know what I mean? A professional did this one so I can't really compare it to mine. This is the work of a professional. This is not the work of an allotmenter just having a go. They're quite the same as those ones I just showed you but you know what it looks all right. It looks okay. Sort of looks like the rustic version of what I showed you on the way in. I think I'm happy with that. I'll tell you what guys the difference that a cleanup in my greenhouse has done is amazing. I've just walked in here and it's like walking into a brand new greenhouse. It's clean, it's tidy, there's no mess and clutter everywhere. The table is wiped down like it's incredible. Let's get some windows open. It has been very rainy and now it's very cold so a lot of the rain that fell the other day has frozen over so there's a lot of ice around. I think we've got a yellow weather warning for ice today but there we go. I mean yeah it's a little bit frosty I'd say, not icy, frosty. What's the difference? I don't know. Lovely sunny day, calm after the rain, calm after the storm. We didn't really have a storm here but there was a storm and we got the rain. We always just kind of end up with the rain or the wind where I am but now it's nice blue skies, nice and sunny, birds are out, everything's happy. Come down here today to do some jobs, feeling good. 1st of Feb, 2nd of Feb when this goes up, 1st of Feb when I'm filming, happy February. Oh my goodness we're already in February. This is the month where things get going. This is the most exciting month in my opinion because it's just before spring so you've got all of this kind of built-up expectation and hope and excitement. You can start getting your seeds out and organising them and planting, sowing some of them. You can start mulching beds and the daffodils come up and oh my goodness, February is where it's at. It's the most exciting month of the year in my opinion. You might think that's spring, you might think that's summer, you might think that's winter. I think it's February. February is a great month in the garden, just full of anticipation and excitement and you can see how buzzing I am that it is especially as we've got some lovely sunshine and blue skies for it. So we're going to start as we always do by feeding the little birdies. I can hear them all twittering away. Another thing I love about this time of year is you can really hear the birds and it's just fabulous. Hopefully I've been turning the volume up in the background of my vlogs trying to get all the bird song in and drown out the aeroplanes that go over and the helicopters and the sirens. But yeah, they are very, very loud so I will try and keep capturing that. Right, let's go feed them. So one of the things that I'm always really, really happy that I've like planted over the autumn time is spring bulbs and I think it's something that we kind of neglect a little bit at allotment plots because you kind of think of spring bulbs and flowers as ornamental and just looking pretty, which they do, you know, which they do to be honest. But what I'm trying to say is that as allotment plot holders, especially if you're a first-time plot holder, you know, the purpose of an allotment plot is to grow your own food and vegetables. So spring bulbs don't necessarily make you think of productivity and like typical allotment things that you would plant, but I think they're so important, I really do. Not only are they great for early pollinators, but they also they're really good for us and our mental health and you have to remember that when you come out in your garden it does improve your mental health. And seeing all that lovely colour come up in the springtime, you know, it hugely helps my head, it helps my mental health, it makes me feel good, it makes me excited to get down to my plot every day, even if there's not that much to do. And anything that encourages us to get outside is a good thing. I've got so much coming up in my plot this year, so many tulips, so many daffodils. This bed behind me here is my designated flower bed. You don't need a designated flower bed in your allotment plot, but I would recommend one because it's a nice place to put all your flowers without it sort of interfering with all of your vegetable crops. So this here is my designated flower bed and it is absolutely inundated with tulips coming up. In fact we can take this wire off because I don't think the squirrels will be digging up these now and if they do, you know, they can get stuffed for little animals. Right, this bed gets absolutely covered in tulips every year and then I'll also plant in my dahlias here and all sorts of other flowers and it's like a designated flower place for all my flowers to go. But the amount of tulips coming up is insane this year. They do sort of multiply year after year, you just get more and more of them. They're quite invasive really, tulips. Beautiful and very, very welcome in my allotment. But yeah, just the entire bed is just absolutely full of them. It's almost like a sort of pollinator highway, you know, it's like a really long thin bed full of flowers that pollinators can find and then hopefully disperse to all of my vegetable crops because you've got to kind of draw them in somehow because obviously you need pollinators for your vegetables as well. I just made the comment that tulips can be quite invasive and I think this kind of proves my point because I've actually pulled all of these tulip bulbs up twice now and I seem to keep missing some and they keep multiplying and coming back every year. The reason that I pulled them up is because they got tulip fire which is an infection of the tulip bulb and what it basically means is when they grow it looks like the leaves have caught fire. It's like an infection and all the colors on the tulips weren't funny, they all mixed together and went a little bit weird. So I didn't want the disease to spread to all of my other tulips so I took all the bulbs out and got rid of them but you can see they've all just come back again. So I must have either missed some which is probably the most likely likely thing or um well yeah no I just I missed some that is it that is the only explanation right or I was going to say a squirrel might have found some and buried buried them here which isn't the craziest thought in the world but I don't think that's what's happened I think I've just missed some of the bulbs but look how they're multiplying look how they're all in little groups that's you know I just they're amazing I mean if you want them here they're amazing they come back year after year. Little signs of spring popping up all over the plot isn't that a great way of starting February just seeing all the daffodils you know I've seen daffodils blooming already in my local park I've seen quite a few daffodils already open sort of mid-January time which is unheard of shocking but there we go we've got daffodils already open around the place so spring is not too far off now and it's definitely looking more springy I think today we're going to start with a bit of weeding I'm looking around the plot thinking it could be neater the weeds could be less let's just start tidying up those beds getting them ready to be mulched over get them ready for the crops that are going in this year so we're a bit of weeding right just doing a bit of work on the back of the plot here just putting all of the rest of the logs and sticks whatever they're called how do we determine what's a stick what's a twig what's a log and what's a branch please leave your advice in the comments how do we know which is which how do we define them anyway questions for another day I think just putting them all into my fence here it is looking good it doesn't look like the ones that when you walk in the plot that I showed you it doesn't look like those but that's okay I don't think it has to it's doing the job and it's standing up pretty well and it looks good and I think that's sort of the main thing it's looking a lot more organized and there's an actual fence at the back here I love it I think it looks great so I'm just going to put the rest of these sticks logs twigs branches whatever into it and then I'm going to tidy up in front of it and put some ground sheet down and then I think next time I come I'll get the wood chip because time's getting on now I'm not going to be able to get enough I think it needs quite a lot of wood chip along here just to keep the weeds at bay but yeah I'm so glad that I started this job I'm so glad so good I am actually so blooming proud of that Einstein is loving his life right now but look at all the bindweed so what I've done is I've raked all this over and I'm going to try and pull up as much of that bindweed as I can the thing about bindweed is even if you leave a teeny tiny bit of root just lying on the ground it will root down and grow again so it's really difficult to get with it's really difficult to get rid of because it will just keep coming back and I definitely won't get all of it out so I will have to just keep pulling the plant up and weakening it over time but my plot is absolutely riddled with bindweed so if you have a bindweed problem so do I I feel your pain we're in this together it is unfortunately one of the hardest weeds to get rid of you can tell it's bindweed because the roots are like white like this and basically it's a plant that wraps itself around other plants and strangles them so it's something you really do want to get rid of but I think the roots can go like five six foot down underground so really what you need is a little digger and dig it all out but I can't do that so I just have to keep pulling out what I can and then as the plant grows I will just keep like digging it up and pulling it and trying to weaken it until eventually it dies eventually but this is not a nice weed to have okay I just managed to get that weird ground sheet out it turns out it's very thin and small so it's sort of covering some stuff and then not other stuff so it wasn't really doing any good anyway you can see all the bindweed underneath it which needs to come up there's a lot of work still to do here and the thing is now that I've got it all up and it's like just the perfect time a year to be doing this kind of job really I want to make sure that I take my time and do it properly so I'm not going to rush it today and just stick some ground sheet down I'm actually going to dig all of that up dig it all out get as much bindweed out as I can and then lay the ground sheet and the wood chip so it turns out this is not the last day working on the back of the plot I thought this might be it but it's not this rambling rose next to me is looking absolutely insane it's got so big I got this last year and just stuffed it in and it's growing over this little pergola thing that I made I need to sturdy this I mean make it sturdier sturdier this I need to add some more wood to it this year to stop it from wobbling but it's looking great and if that actually flowers which I'm really hoping it does this is going to be beautiful the whole plot is just looking beautiful today it's really feeling like spring I'll just show you once more this is how far we've got with it today so we need to do a little bit more work on the back sort it out properly and then that's going to look so much better I'm thrilled that I did this this year it's going to make such a difference right I do feel like this might be quite a short vlog and I do apologize if it is there's not tons for me to do I just wanted to get down here in the sunshine to be honest um but over the next few weeks we will be talking about seeds we're going to start sowing mulching over some of the beds filling in my new raised beds which will be a very big exciting day starting to plant some things directly towards the end of the month may very well get my sweet peas out and build the sweet pea structure so we've got lots of exciting things to come happy first of February second of February beginning of February whatever you want to call it welcome to my favorite month of the year and hopefully we'll get lots more sunshine and blue skies so we can all get outside and do some gardening I hope you've enjoyed my little vlog today I'll be back again on Wednesday with lots more gardening jobs see you then guys thanks for bye