THE FROST GOT THEM ALL!!! / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Oh no! No, no, no, no, no! Got it! I know. It's cloudy, but it's warm today. It's warm today. Good morning, guys. How you all doing? Welcome back to my Allotment Diaries. My name's Emma. This is my allotment plot in South London. These are my allotment diaries. I'm trying to get down here whenever I can at the moment because we are sort of in the middle of May. So there's a lot that needs doing. There's a lot of upkeep. There's a lot of weeding, watering, planting out, just watering seedlings, making sure nothing's died. May is always quite a busy month in the garden and in my home garden as well because I also am looking after my home garden. So there's always a lot going on and a lot to juggle. And sometimes I do end up getting a bit flustered at this time of year, and I'm sure you're the same. I'm sure lots of people get flustered at this time of year. It is important to try to enjoy your garden as well, as do all of the work. So I'm doing my best to take time out when I can. I feel like I'm lying when I'm saying that because recently I've just been go, go, go. So I do need to take some time out very soon, which I will do, I promise. I don't want to get burnt out from my garden because I do love it and I want to continue to love it and not hate it. So come down today to check everything over, make sure that nothing needs watering. I don't think it does. Surprisingly last time I was here, I planted out marigolds, which are a great companion plant for tomatoes because they fight off whitefly and amazingly they survived the night. So that was yesterday that I planted them out. I'm not sure when you saw that video, but it was yesterday for me and they are alive. Always a big bonus when something survives the night on the allotment plot, because if it's not instantaneously eaten, I have high hopes for it. And they've all, they've all survived the night. They've all done really well and my tomatoes are doing okay. This one's not got much bigger, but they are all alive and an alive tomato is a tomato that can give me tomatoes. So I'm very happy with all of my tomatoes. I am just using the old pole in the ground support this year and I'm going to keep tying them in and I'm going to hope for the best because they do seem very sturdy, very strong. And I think if I just keep on top of it, they should be okay. Anyway, we shall see how they go and I will keep you updated of course. So today, much of the same, I want to do some planting out again. And what I want to get out is my sweet corn. A lot of people I know have got their sweet corn out already and mine seems big enough to go out. I think, I think it should be okay. A little bit of protection. It should be all right. We did have some frost the other night, which was a little bit of a shock. It's a May shocker of frost, a shocker frost of May. And a few people did lose some crops on my site. So there's been lost potatoes and lost squashes that went out early. Um, so I sort of feel like it's a risk putting anything out now. And that's actually, you know what I haven't checked? My courgettes, because I put those out and then we had that frost and I haven't even looked at them. Oh God, let's go and look at them. The courgette should be over here. Oh no. Oh no. Oh dear. Oh dear. I think the frost got to my courgettes guys. I think the frost got to them. That is such a shame. You know what? I really thought they would be okay planting them because it is May and I just thought I'd get away with it, but I don't think I have. They've died in the frost. Oh no. So I did have a casualty in the frost. I thought I got away with it, but obviously I haven't. That's such a shame. The courgettes that I've got here are not really, not very, very healthy. Um, they're not getting much bigger and they look yellow because they've sort of run out of nutrients in these tiny little pods. Um, I might just whack, whack these out. Let's start by putting out the courgettes. Right. I'm actually going to plant them out right next to their dead mates, which will either terrify them into submission and make them grow, or it will spur them on and motivate them. One or the other, but I'm just going to put it right next door so they can sort of talk to each other. Hopefully that'll give them a bit of motivation there. Also, I don't want to take these out yet just in case they miraculously come back to life again. You're allowed to be hopeful when you're gardening guys. It's a rule. You can have as much hope as you want. No one will tell you off for it. Right. We're just planting them next to them. I think I've got another one here, which doesn't look too healthy, but it has got some leaves on there. So we'll whack him in too. Right. There we go. Like nothing ever happened. Look at me covering up my tracks, honestly. But they'll either thrive or die. We'll just have to wait and find out. You know what? I better check my potatoes because I don't know if my potatoes are okay. Oh God. I thought I got away with the frost. I thought I got away with it. Oh no. Guys, this has never happened to me before with my potatoes. Oh God. What do I do? We've definitely got some significant frost damage on these. Oh no. Oh God. Look at that. Are these going to recover or have I lost them forever? I really don't know. They do have some good leaves on there still though. So maybe they will come back to life. I'm going to have to seriously Google what to do. Thank goodness I earthed them up. I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but I feel like it's a good thing I earthed them up. Oh, I can't believe that. I have never, ever had frost damage before on potatoes and I planted them out quite early, but we got a late frost and it just, it's just gone through them all. What about my, these are my second earlies I think. Yeah, these don't look as bad, but we still do have a little bit of frost damage. These are okay. Oh guys, I really don't know if they're going to be okay or not. I'm absolutely gutted. Oh no. I think these are the second earlies, you know? I think these are the second earlies. So the second earlies were not as hardy as the first earlies. First earlies seemed to have fared okay, but these, please let me know if these are going to come back. Please let me know what to do. They still have some good leaves, so I'm really living in hope. I am living in hope with these potatoes. Please cross your toes and fingers for me. Please let me know if you think they're going to survive. I'm gutted. So guys, this is not my usual time when I go down to the allotment plot. Normally I'll go very early in the morning because no one's really there, so I can just chat away to myself. But this was about half past five, six o'clock at night, and it was very, very busy. So my lovely plot neighbor arrived and started doing his plot up. And the last thing I wanted to do was start chatting to myself. So I'm going to do a voiceover for this part instead. So in this bed here, I had my turnips, which had actually bolted and flowered. And I left the flowers for as long as possible for the pollinators, and they loved them. But the flowers had started to die, so I've cleared all the turnips. I also found a couple of leeks in between the turnips, which is amazing, but they're not quite big enough. So instead of harvesting them early or getting rid of them, I've replanted them into the bed where all my leeks are. And you can do that with some crops. They don't always survive, so don't assume they're definitely going to live. But you can move crops about if they're not ready yet. And that's what I've done with these leeks. Right, so I've been busy clearing this bed, which is where my sweetcorn is going to go. Definitely too early in my career as a gardening influencer to say that I am a sweetcorn expert. I am not a sweetcorn expert, but I have managed to grow it successfully one or two times. So let me share with you the limited knowledge that I have about sweetcorn. First of all, what I'm doing right now is a huge mistake. So take note, everybody. Sweetcorn hates having its roots disturbed. So when you grow it, if you put two seeds into one module, don't separate them, just get rid of the weaker seedling. I'm keeping them all because I'm a rebel and that's just what I do. I mean, you can try, you can try and be the same as me, but they might not survive. So, you know, there's that. What they actually need is a really deep root trainer because then their roots can go really far down and you don't disturb them when you plant them out. The other thing I know about sweetcorn is that they have to be planted in a grid, not rows. And that's because they're wind pollinated. So you just need to make sure that if the wind blows in any direction, they will blow into each other and pollinate each other. And that's pretty much all there is to it. The plants are quite small that I'm putting out, again, because I'm just a rebel. You should really wait until they're a bit bigger than this, but they will need some protection and I don't have any. So I'm using some brambles. The brambles at this time of year are super spiky, especially the tops of them. And slugs and snails can't go over them, supposedly. So they are quite a good protection against slugs and snails. So that's what we're whacking down here. Right, so there is all my sweetcorn in. Hopefully I managed to do a voiceover for all of that. But they are in and they are looking good. Right, I've been thinking long and hard about where to put these hollyhocks because I hadn't really planned for them. So they were sort of a bit of a spontaneous buy because I didn't realise you could buy them as plants. I thought you could only get them as seeds. I'd never seen them as plants before. Gosh, I keep dropping it over. Sorry, mate. I'm thinking here in this little corner. Was that the ice cream man? Does anyone want an ice cream? It's a good day for it. The sun has finally come out. I'm thinking here in a little cluster. And if they sell seed here, all the better, because I think it would be lovely to have some flowers here. Not that I don't have enough flowers on my allotment as it is, but you can never have too many. Oh, excuse me. Allergic to my allotment. One of my neighbours grows hollyhocks and they come back year after year and he says that they just self seed like crazy. But every time I've tried them from a seed, they just haven't worked. They just don't seem to germinate for me. So I'm hoping that by putting some plants in, if they manage to flower, it will sort of give them a head start. That's the plan anyway, but I don't mind hollyhocks. I think they're such beautiful plants and they get so tall. I just love them. There's such nice light at the allotment at this time of day. So it's about 5.30 at night in the afternoon, even late afternoon. The sun has literally just gone in. Oh, it's about to come out again. But when the sun's out, it just gives a different glow to the allotment. It's so beautiful. It's just that it's so busy at this time of night that I find it really hard to vlog. But it's nice to see the allotment in different times of the day. I'm always kind of here in the morning, so it's just nice to see it in a different light for once. It's like seeing it in a new way, in a new light, if you'll pardon the pun. Pardon the pun, you know what I mean. But yeah, all the sun just hits in a different way and it all just lights up and it's so beautiful. See, look at that. I never get to see it in this light. It's just so lovely. Right, seed, seed, seed. So I've got some leeks here, which are elephant, elephant leeks. And I really want to plant some of these out. And I've also got some spinach, but this is not perpetual spinach, like I always grow. This is matador spinach, which is supposed to be nicer and less bitter. So I really wanted to plant some of these out. And then I've also got some seeds out today. Where they're going to go, I have no idea. Or actually, I do. I know where the leeks are going to go. They're going to go next to the sweetcorn. So let's get the leeks out first and have a think about our spinach. Right, we'll have the leeks here in between the flowering beetroot and all of the sweetcorn and the brambles over the top to hopefully keep the slugs away. I don't think they'll go for the leeks. So because the soil is a little bit dry, we're going to make our drills and then we're going to water them. Then we're going to sow and then we're going to water again. This is the part where everybody tells me this bed is too big because I can't actually reach all the way across it. But I purposely made this bed really big because I wanted to plant things like broad beans and sweetcorn in here, which need a big space. So go around the other side. So just whenever the soil looks really dry, if you make your drill and then you water it and then you sow your seeds and cover them over, it just works a bit better because when it's too dry, they just sit in dry soil and then you water them and they kind of get washed away. So it's just a bit easier if the soil is a bit more moist basically. So I'm waiting for all of that to drain. Oh my gosh, is that a spider? Oh no, sorry, it's a bit of hair. He had a heart attack then. And then we'll sow our seeds, which are teeny, teeny, tiny. My favorite kinds of seeds, not. Right, okay. We don't have tons in here actually. I mean, it looks like tons, but for me, by my standards, that's actually not that many seeds. So we have to be quite careful. I always prefer to sow a million seeds and just get three or four crops from it, but there we go. Not quite a million today. So then we'll cover it over and we shall give it another water. We'll put a couple of sticks in so we know where they are. What's that aeroplane? Oh my gosh. Right, that bed is looking very much attended to now and not as messy as it was before. I'm really happy with that. Do you know what guys, I actually want the spinach to go in there. I think I want to fill this bed up with some compost at some point and have spinach in there so that we can have carrots and spinach. I think that would be really nice. Also in here, the next carrot seeds that I planted, sort of succession sowing, sort of panicky, just throw them all in. They're actually germinating. So the carrots are just doing so well this year. I actually cannot believe it. I carrot believe it. Oh my goodness, I'm tired. When the jokes get bad, I'm tired, but yeah, they are doing amazing. So we actually might have carrots this year. Don't want to jinx it, but this could be the year that I actually get carrots. I know. Well, we got a little bit of sun, didn't we? And I did get a little bit of talking done, um, more than I thought I would at this time of night, six o'clock now. So I've really got to make a move. Um, I do hope you've enjoyed it today. It's been so nice coming down here on a different, a different time. Um, so I can just see the plot in a different way and it's so nice. I just love it. Um, and now the sun's coming out just as I've finished, but, um, yeah, I hope you've enjoyed it today. I'll be back next time. Um, thank you so much for watching and leave me a comment. Let me know what you're planting outside at your allotment now. And, um, we can all find out what we're planting together because I'm sure I'm planting different things to you. Is your sweet corn out yet? Did the frost get any of your potatoes? Let me know. Anyway, see you next time. Thanks for watching. Bye.