MY DIRTY ALLOTMENT SECRET / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Good morning guys. Welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma. These are the allotment diaries. I'm currently in my greenhouse and look at the weather. Oh my goodness at last, finally we have got blue skies and sun. It's gonna be quite warm today. It's gonna get up to about 18 degrees in London. So all of my seedlings are so happy. I was here yesterday, so for you that was Friday's vlog. It was yesterday for me. I've come today and they're just like, they're just shooting up. It's all just shooting up. It's amazing. I'm just so thrilled. Everything is just doing so so well. Finally got some sun so hopefully everything else does well. It's looking beautiful. The only slight negative that I have is that last night it rained pretty much the whole night. So everything's a little bit wet and boggy still which is frustrating because I had some sort of digging-y jobs that I wanted to do and though I'm probably gonna still do it because let's face it, that's what I'm like. Nothing's gonna stop me. It is still, it is gonna be a bit muddy and a little bit like just not as nice as if it hadn't rained. That's the only negative that I have and I don't really know why I said it because we don't need any negativity today. It's a beautiful day. I can hear the birds. It's quiet here. I'm here very very early so hopefully we'll have some peace for a little bit. Right, jobs of the day. I've actually got three jobs of the day and I can't remember any of them. Oh I'm just so blown away. I'm also, I'm so glad that I cleaned my greenhouse yesterday because it's very wet today so it would have been quite difficult to get all this tape on but luckily I've got all the tape on before all the condensation happens. So yeah, the panels seem to be a lot more secure in with this tape so that's really good. That's a good thing. It's looking very clean. I didn't even really look around when I got here but look how clean it's looking. All the panels looking so much cleaner. I'm so happy with it. I think we'll start with feeding the birds because I can hear them and it's so lovely and peaceful. Let's go feed that little Einstein. There's another one. There's another one. I'm guessing they're not friends. He's coming to have his one now. There's loads of them now. There's absolutely loads of them now. It's so funny because for so long I only had one Robin which is why he was called Einstein. It was literally one Robin that would turn up and people used to say how do you know it's the same Robin? How do you know it's just one Robin? But now that I've got multiple Robins I know for sure that I had one Robin because you can see all the other ones all around the place and stuff coming over. It's so obvious when there's more than one Robin and they all sit in sort of the same places. One sits on my archway, one's in the tree, one's over there and then sometimes I get one on the blue shed over that way and then they sort of, you don't know which one's gonna come for the food each time so it's really funny but that's why I want to make a second bird feeding station just outside my greenhouse. I think it'd be better to have two and then just feed them in two different places so that they can all get a chance to have food. So I don't want any of them to be fighting to the death which is what Robins do apparently. So right we're gonna start with some weeding I think. I'm gonna go around and just weed everything. It feels like good weather to be doing that so let's get on with some weeding today. Right I've been hiding a little bit of a bad secret because my strawberry bed is absolutely diabolical. It's horrendous and the only reason I can think that it is because normally it's not this bad, it's nowhere near as bad as this. Normally what I do with my strawberry bed is I look for the runners and I cut the runners off or pop them on and then plant them up somewhere but this year I decided what I'm gonna do is just allow my strawberry bed to go crazy and just plant its own runners and sort itself out because it's such a tedious job and a job that I've never really enjoyed. Strawberries are great, I love having strawberries but they do spread like wildfire and there's such a pain to look after so what I did last year is I planted them all into this bed with the hope that they would just spread and just do their thing and I wouldn't have to bother with them and that's the only excuse I can find as to why my strawberry bed is so bad this year but it's time, it needs sorting out now because strawberry season is one of the first seasons that we have and the first like crop that I harvest here so it needs sorting out now. This is the hidden truth about the strawberry bed, it's never been this bad before and there are so many strawberry plants hidden among all these weeds, it really needs sorting. What we'll do is we'll weed it over, sort out the individual strawberry plants, make sure they're all okay and then we'll give it a really good mulch. Look who's shown up to help, he's like thank goodness she's finally tackling the strawberry bed. Go on then, get it, you can get it. Right already looking tons better but already looking like I've got much less strawberry plants than I thought I had. Maybe I've accidentally pulled some of them up, who knows. So now we'll go to each individual plant and what we'll do is we'll just sort of trim back all of these woody bits which is sort of dead like that and then we'll take off any brown or discoloured leaves and that should keep them nice and healthy and then hopefully they'll just sort of magically come back to life. I think they will, like I said strawberries are very strong plants, so I've got my scissors now. They're very strong plants, I'm pretty sure they'll be fine. Right that is so much better than it was. I actually don't think it does need a mulch because I think the soils pretty good and it seems pretty happy. I might buy a smaller bag of compost a little bit later on to put around it, a little bit like, the only compost I've got at the moment is the B&Q one and it's not that great. I might buy a smaller bag of like Westland or Silver Grow compost just to put around because I think that's got more nutrients in it, it's just a bit better and I think they need a good feed and I don't think the B&Q one is that great for sort of feeding your plants. I'd rather spend a bit more on a smaller bag but that's looking good, that's a job I really was dreading and I'm very happy that I've got done today. This is the other bed that's in dire need of some help. It's got my fruit bushes in it, I think I've got a black currant, red currant and a blueberry. They don't do very well but they're sort of growing here so I'm sort of going to give them a chance this year. But what is this? Look at this, whatever that is, that is absolutely beautiful. It looks like a shrub but it sort of feels like a weed. I don't know what that is but I'm gonna leave that there. I love unexpected crops that just pop up out of nowhere, they're so fun. But yeah, this needs a proper sort out and maybe a mulch as well. I might actually mulch this today instead. Right, this soil here is not very good. I can tell it's not good straight away. I know it's been raining but even so it's very clayey. You see how that's just sticking together and not breaking up and even if it's been raining it should still sort of be a little bit looser than that. This is not good soil so this desperately needs a mulch just to sort it out but that's just not good. It's like mud and it's sticky and it sticks together and it doesn't break apart very well. But, but, but, I do want to sow some seeds today so we're gonna use the compost to sow some seeds first and then anything I've got left in that big bag can go straight over this bed and it will really help. But let's go sow some seeds. I also need to take a break because I'm exhausted. Einstein's waiting to seek out some worms. You can now, yeah. I'm finished. Yeah, I'm gonna take a break. Yeah, go on, you can go for it. Go for it, it's all yours Einstein. So we'll let Einstein get some, get his brunch. Brunch for you Einstein and we'll go sow some seeds. Oh, he's there already. Right, seeds that I'm sowing. Number one, purple sprouting broccoli. Can you see, can you see anything? Okay, I think you can see now. So, purple sprouting broccoli. I really regretted not growing that this year. So many people at my allotment site have grown this. So this is gonna go into this one. Is it though? Because I can prick them out better than that one, can't I? We'll put it into this one because we're probably gonna sow multiple seeds per module and I have to prick them out. So I'll put them onto the big, into the bigger one. I'm just using whatever containers that I can find, to be honest, at the moment. That's where we are with seed sowing. So we're gonna sow all of these. Such a fantastic crop, especially for winter harvesting because you can just harvest it like all winter and it is just great. So do a couple of seeds per module. And the other thing I'm gonna sow today, you're all gonna tell me off about, I know you are, but I'm actually gonna sow some sunflowers. We are pretty much in March. It's the very beginning of March. It does say you should sow them in April. I'm gonna sow them now, the very beginning of March. I just have a really good feeling about them and I think when you start them in a greenhouse, I think you can just start things a bit earlier. I think that's just the way it works. So I'm just gonna put one into each of these. And this variety is the sunflower, flower house sunflower, what is it? Uniflorus giganteus. So really really big. It's also a hardy annual. It says it's quite hardy. I'm guessing it'd be all right. Let's do it. What is there to lose at this point to be fair? I can always just sow them again later if they don't work but I think they will work. And the thing with sunflowers, I like to get them quite big before I plant them out because the slugs and snails do absolutely love them. So now we'll use the rest of this bag just to mulch over that bed because I think it really needs it. There we go, mulched over, ready for spring. Looking good. Still got quite a bit of compost left there so I'm gonna mulch over something else I think. I mean all the beds sort of need a mulch so it doesn't really matter which one I choose but which is going to be the lucky bed. What just happened? Why has this done this? This is metal as well. This is the metal bit. Why did it just do that? Why has it just snapped? It snapped. It snapped. What? Why has this done this? What am I supposed to do with this? Oh for goodness sake. And it was going so bleeding well wasn't it? It was going so well. I can't even work out how or why that would have happened. It's literally metal has snapped. It's not even the wood. I'd understand it if it was the wooden handle. I was kind of expecting that to go but oh that is really annoying that is. It's such a good rake as well. Is that my favourite rake? That's my only rake but it's also my favourite rake. That is so frustrating. I don't know why that did that. Oh god and that's not exactly got any use is it? What use is that? Nothing, that's what, nothing. Right well other than a slightly unfortunate ending I do hope that you've this vlog today. It's just so beautiful out. I just had to get down here and do some jobs. It's just been so nice and all of my seedlings are growing and yeah it's really feeling like spring. I know it's not spring, we're very early so maybe don't copy anything that I'm doing because I'm doing everything very very early like the sunflowers and stuff but I just can't seem to help myself especially when the weather is like this. Anyway I will see you again on Wednesday. Thank you so much for watching guys. Bye.