GETTING THE ALLOTMENT READY FOR SPRING / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to My Allotment Diaries. My name is Emma. These are My Allotment Diaries. We are going to be heading down to the allotment very, very soon because it is absolutely stunning weather. In fact, it's so stunning that I can't actually film outside because the sun is so strong. You wouldn't be able to see me and there's just nowhere I can stand. We are starting the vlog at home today because I am going to chip my early potatoes. I always plant out my early potatoes just in the first week of March. So usually around the 10th or the 11th of March. And this is the time when I start to chip them. So I thought I would show you how I do that and what variety I'm growing so that if you want to join along and plant out your potatoes at the same time as me, then you're kind of at the same, you're kind of where I am with it all. So I'll show you how I chip them. You can chip yours and then we can just plant them together. They always just tend to do really well in sort of the first week or two into March. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Do you know what I mean? I've also had quite an exciting delivery and that's just arrived. So the package is from Wild, who I have worked with quite a few times on this channel. They are a fantastic company and they've sent me their Midnight Bloom collection, which is their new collection. Let me show you some of the packaging first. Oh, so if you don't know anything about Wild, they are on a mission to stop us from using single use plastic in our bathrooms. They provide refillable bathroom products for us to use, such as their roll-on deodorant, their stick deodorant, and also they have sent me some of their body wash as well. So these containers are aluminium and you can fill them with their refillable product and this is completely compostable. So there is no single use plastic in their products. This is their new Midnight Bloom collection, which is so pretty. These cases here can be personalised as well, which make a really good gift. And their new scent is black rose and velvet, which smells absolutely gorgeous. There are no parabens or harsh chemicals in any of their products and it's completely cruelty free. So they are vegan friendly. And of course they work really well and they offer 24 to 72 hour protection. And the roll-on, which is potentially my personal fave, it doesn't leave any white streaks when you use it as well, which is great. So far, Wild have saved over 600 tonnes of single use plastic from landfills, which is absolutely incredible. And they also plant a tree for every purchase made. If you want to try some Wild products for yourself, I have a discount code. It's on the screen now. There's also a QR code that you can go to and I will leave the link below in my description as well. That will give you 20% off of all Wild products. Right, let me show you the potatoes now. Right, here are my potato varieties for this year. So my first early is I've gone for Red Duke of York. I have planted these before and they do really, really well in my allotment. These are my main crop, which are Maris Piper. These are really great for Christmas, sort of roasting potatoes. I say Christmas, I always plant these around August and then I get a Christmas sort of harvest from them because they store really, really well. And then I got some second earlies here, which are Charlottes. Again, very classic. So egg boxes are really ideal for chitting potatoes because it holds them upright. And also it's really good to do it in cardboard. It gives it lots of airflow. Open these up. We'll take our potatoes and we'll have a look and see if there's any chits already on them. And you can see here, there's just a few, a few. So that's the way up we're going to put it like that to encourage the chits to keep going. You might find that you've got chits sort of all over them on the bottom, on the top. And when you come to plant them out, what you can do is just take off a few of the chits. So you just got them on one end of the potato and it would just encourage the potato to go one way. Um, so they need to be out of direct sunlight, but in the light and it will encourage them to grow lots of nice chits. And then when we come to plant them out in March, we should have lots going on and we'll know the way to plant them in the ground and they can grow away. And that my friend is my early potatoes chitting away. Right. So now my potatoes are chitting, let's head down to the allotment. Right. We've made it down to the allotment plot guys. What a gorgeous day. So blue skies and sunny. It's just, somebody wrote a comment on one of my recent videos saying they love how excited I get for blue sky and sunshine. And I just can't tell you how exciting it is to see it. Um, yeah, it's, it's so exciting to see the sun and the blue sky. It just lifts me up and makes me so excited to be outside. Um, it feels like spring. I know it's not spring, but it feels like spring. We are soon going into March. So I think we've got one more week of February left. If you watched my Sunday vlog last Sunday, you might know, picked up a couple of perennial plants for my little area under the apple tree. I'm trying to fill it with perennial plants. Um, so on Monday I sort of weeded it all and sorted it out. And then now I'm ready to put in some more plants. So I've got one of these, which I still cannot pronounce. Um, there's the label. I've had a few warnings from you guys saying that this spreads like wildfire, but I'm actually really happy about that. So I find a sunny spot for that. And then I did pick up, I'm going to say this right this time. Are you ready? Anemone. I picked up an anemone, anemone, anemone, anemone. Um, and it is the one with the open flower. So this one is called the hybridia, hybrida pamina. First things first, let's go feed the birdie. So last time I was here, I made my sweet pea structure and I said about how I like to use twine on it instead of netting because it just looks nicer. I've just immediately been reminded as to why I don't use twine. Oh dear. Oh dear. This happens every year. And every year I, for some reason, I forget that this happens, but I think, I believe because of the clean cart, it's the birds and they come down and peck it. I think they're looking for material for their nests. If not, then it might be the cat or the fox just walking through it. But I'm pretty sure that's a bird the way it's so clean cart, like a pair of scissors or like a beak. That's what my suspicions are. But yeah, this is why I don't use twine. This is why I always revert back to the netting. It definitely looks a lot nicer with the twine. Um, but it's definitely not practical, especially on my plot where I've got so many birds. They haven't said that they've not come down for their food today. I can hear him. Where is he? There's two of them. Maybe they're sort of fighting. Right. This is where I want those two new plants, because I think they get quite a lot of sun. So I think maybe the anemone can go here cause it's sort of more full sun and then we'll sort of put the other one over to the side of it. And if it spreads around there, that would be great. It has definitely had a mulch at some point, but not for a while. And look at that. That is not good for plants. That is clumpy. It's clayey. It's sticky. It's very wet and it's not coming apart at all. It's like just mud basically. I call that mud. I think, I think the technical term is clay. It's very clayey and that's just not great for most plants. So we are going to give it a good mulch. I've got a big bag of multi-purpose compost. I'm going to chuck it over this whole area and make it spread under the archway as well. And then we'll start planting. He's come to watch. It's our favourite bird, Einstein. Morning Einstein. All right, I think that's about the right position. And then I also think I could fit more in. So I reckon I should go back in a couple of months. No, not a couple of months, a couple of weeks, maybe next week. I don't know. And get some more plants to put in. I reckon I can get one, two, three, four, five. I reckon I could get 100 in here. What do you reckon about 100? That sounds about reasonable for this area to me. So, right, let's get these whacked in. So how gorgeous. If you're in a part of the UK where you're not getting nice weather, I hope this is giving you a little bit of happiness. Just seeing the sun is definitely making me happy. Right, we're in the greenhouse. I forgot to mulch around my calabrese last time I was here because they are getting a little bit munched, which is such a shame because they were doing so, so well before. I naively, naively thought that they would just be fine in here and that the slugs and snails wouldn't find them. But unfortunately, that's not the case. And they have found them and they are starting to eat their way through them, unless it's caterpillars. Go on here. Could that potentially be caterpillars at this time of year? No, surely not. How would it even get in here? No, no, no, it must be slugs and snails. So what, the only thing that I've got is a great big bag of hay. So I think we're just going to try that. Like I've said before, I have tried a lot of natural slug and snail defences. Unfortunately, most of them do not work. So I think the only thing that really works is using a combination of many different approaches and many different defences. I mean, that's sort of the only thing that works in deterring them. But I haven't found one method that's sort of foolproof. So I will continue to try. This is just all I've got in here at the moment. And so I'm just going to literally just use this. I don't think it will work against them, but you never know. It might slow them down a bit or it might give them a really nice little bed so they can have a little sleep. I don't know. It's quite soft, so maybe they'll like it. Right, we'll see how that works against them. It might just help to slow them down. But if anything, it's always good just to mulch your soil with something. So I don't think it's going to do anything bad to them. And it looks quite pretty as well. It looks quite professional. Looks like I know what I'm doing. Gosh, guys, it's just such a nice day. I'm standing like this because I'm balancing over everything in my greenhouse and I'm feeling like let's fill up one of those raised beds. Last time I was here, I talked about potentially planting some flowers into them and having flowers outside my greenhouse. And I'm actually completely sold on that idea. So I might actually fill up those planters. If I can just get away with using one bag of compost for that, I will. Is there a way? Can I? Yeah, let's walk down. Let's go down to the horse manure pile. I know we haven't got any, but there might be something there that I can use and just start to fill them up. These are the ones that I'm talking about, these two ones here. And I was going to use them as kind of like a mini greenhouse thing where you sort of transplant your plants to and then you put them outside. But I don't think I need it. I really don't think I need that. So I think what I'm going to do is fill them up and plant some cornflowers in here and some other flowers and just have flowers outside my greenhouse. I think that would be better. Right, so they're not letting any vehicles onto the allotment at the moment because it's been so wet and boggy, a couple of vehicles have come on and got stuck. So they sort of banned them for a bit until I guess it dries up, which is why we haven't had any fresh wood chip or horse manure for weeks. So it's all weather related. But because we're just trying to fill up a new raised bed, I'm not looking for the perfect kind of material for a pathway or, you know, just horse manure. I'm looking for natural rotted material. So with that in mind, because this has been on the bottom of the wood chip pile for absolutely ages and there is like dirt under here, like soil, it's not like a plastic or like concrete or anything. So if I dig a little bit and get all this bit here, I reckon it'd be fine for my raised bed. Right, there's ground sheet underneath this. So if I want to grow into here, I don't really want it to be ground sheet, I want it to go into the actual ground. So I'm going to cut the ground sheet out, move all the wood chip onto the pathway and then start to fill it up. Right, definitely going to need another couple of bags. I bent some of this, which is so annoying, you know, as I put the wheelbarrow in and that great big bag of compost, kind of bent it a little bit, but I think it's fine. It needs probably one more bag between them and then I think it'd be fine for cornflowers. Yeah, it's looking good. I really just think that's going to be so nice of flowers then. Right, well I'm going to end the vlog there. I do hope you've enjoyed it today. I've definitely enjoyed the sunshine and blue skies, all the birds. It feels very peaceful, very much like spring. So it's made me very excited. I almost just wish there was more to do, but I have to restrain myself because we are still in February, but not for much longer. We are going into March soon, so it's all going to be go, go, go here. Maybe subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out and you can see what I'm getting up to. And I will see you again on Sunday in my home garden, or my home, or I'll see you back on the allotment plot on Monday. Have a lovely gardening weekend, everyone. See you when I see you. Bye.