LOOK WHAT I GREW! AND A SPECIAL GUEST FINALLY SHOWED UP / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Look at those! Oh, look who's turned up. Look, look, look, look. My watering can. Look at this. When I'll be coming home Then I'll be at your door When I'll be coming home I plan to let you know Good morning, everyone. I know, I know, I'm still turning up in a coat. It's because there's kind of showers on and off and first thing in the morning it's quite chilly. It's actually been quite a chilly few days, actually. I think we're starting to see the temperatures rise again. But this happens pretty much every year at the beginning of June. I always get really surprised when the weather kind of clouds over again, goes a bit colder, and I have to put my coat back on. I'm always like, what's going on? It's June. But this happens pretty much every year. If I look back at my videos, I'm usually in a coat at the beginning of June and then the coat comes off again by the end. So, okay, I have a few jobs to do today. The first job that I'm doing is in the greenhouse. This greenhouse does get very overgrown and I noticed this the last time I was here. This is going to make you laugh. I've obviously been working. I mean, if you follow this channel, you'll know. I've worked really hard at keeping the back as clear as I can. Well, look what's happened over here. It's like the Triffids. Is that what it's called? The Triffids? Oh my goodness me. Look at the state of it. It's literally covered one half of my greenhouse which is not letting any light in. And then up here, it's starting to go up onto the top of the greenhouse. So I think the first job is going to be to clear the side of my greenhouse. Honestly, I don't think it's enough to massively impact any of my crops in here. Everything's doing really well. Last year, it was all overgrown at the back as well and it grew fine. I think the glass roof helps a lot and the sun moves and stuff and I think it gets enough light. But obviously, it's not ideal for your greenhouse to be covered in foliage. So, let's see if I've got any nice thick corduroy gloves. Yes, I have. Don't forget to use my discount code if you want one of these, by the way. It's Emma Glove and it'll give you 20% off. There's a link below. Also, I completely forgot to tell you if you like my wellies. I get so many questions about my wellies. They're muck boots. Muck boot wellies. I've also got the new Rainscape muck boots as well which are really great and they're black so I can kind of wear them as a boot out and about when it's raining and go shopping and then go to the park in them. If you want these, they've very kindly given me a discount code of 20% off and the discount code is... I will link it below because she sent it quite late to me last night because I was just like, oh, everybody always likes my wellies and asks where they're from and I always tell them muck boots and she said, oh, here, have a discount code. It is Emma20 and it will give you 20% off all full priced items. Emma20. I will link that below as well. If you do like the wellies that I wear, they are muck boot. They've got loads of colours. I can't show you anymore. They've got loads of colours, loads of different styles and you can get 20% off. Emma20. Right. Let's go sort out the foliage. What's that? What's happening? It's bin day. Oh dear, look at this. An array of different things, different plants that have just grown up over it. Right, I can see some bindweed, some brambles, some of those big purple flower weed things. Right. I hope the bees don't hate me too much for this. It has to be done. Oh yes. That's better, isn't it? Look at that. Look at the difference. It's not on the roof anymore. We've got a lot more light coming in now. We've sort of kept it at bay. I think the fox lives in there. So I don't want to remove all of his den. I just want to keep his den at bay a little bit because I can't have it going over my greenhouse. Okay, so that's the good job done. The next job I want to do is feed these tomatoes. Like I said, I'm going to feed them once a week and this is the day I'm choosing to feed them. So I've got my tomato feed. I'm going to go fill up my watering can and give them a feed and then I'm going to see if they need any work. So like I said before, with feeding if you just choose one day of the week where you're going to feed your crops and do it consistently on that day you can't really go wrong. And you just start feeding as soon as you start to see flowers or significant growth when they get going basically then you can just start helping them out a little bit giving them a feed. Shall we mix that again? I think we probably need to. The wicked witch of the allotment is back. Do we have to do that every time? I don't know. Probably not. So again, just watering right at the base not over the top of the plant just all around the roots. Tomatoes are one of those plants that are at risk of blight. Blight is a horrible fungal or bacteria, I always forget. But it's basically, I think it's brought down in the rain. It's in the soil and the rain comes down and it splashes onto the soil and then it gets onto the plant. I think that's what happens. And that's why you have to water around the roots of your plant, not over the top. Because if you water over the top you're splashing all the soil and you're getting the soil onto the plants. Also, another way of avoiding it is by mulching around your plants. So you can see here that I've got some straw all around the bottom, just hiding the soil because I think the spores of blight are in the soil and so by mulching over with some straw or something, you're stopping the soil from being able to reach the plants. Does that make any sense? I think I'm sort of explaining that quite badly but basically, blight is something you don't want. You normally get it on tomatoes and potato plants. You know you've got it because you get these kind of black spores, like these black marks all over your plant. Not just on the leaves, on the stems and eventually on the fruit and that's how you know it's blight because I think it starts on the stem and then it moves to the leaves and you'll just get these sort of black patches and once you've got blight, it's very difficult to get rid of. I think at this time of year if you get blight, and I might be wrong again, this could be absolute rubbish but I think early blight is something you can sometimes get rid of. So if you saw very early signs of blight on a plant at this time of year you could snip it where the blight is sort of starting and you can reduce all the leaves mulch over it, give it a feed and hope for the best and sometimes they can kind of overcome it. But late blight late blight which happens later on in the year that is absolutely catastrophic for a plant. Once you get late blight you have to pull all of them up you can't compost, you have to just burn all of your crops or just dispose of it somewhere else because it is a disease and it will spread. I think there's conflicting advice now that actually you can compost blight some people say you can, some people say you can't. I prefer not to. Anything that's diseased or looks unwell I probably wouldn't put in my compost heap just out of precaution. But yeah, two different types of blight. Early blight late blight. Late blight is the killer. Early blight sometimes you can sort it out, most of the time it's gone. But the best way of dealing with blight is prevention. Prevent it from happening. Can't always do that but there are things you can do to help. I am starting to get teeny tiny little tomatoes on my plants that's an excellent sign. That means the plant is actually doing what it's supposed to do which is always a good sign. Right, I think I'm going to take out some of the middle stems and I'm also going to tie them in. So, because tomato plants want to take over the world and take over your entire greenhouse or garden we have to keep them at bay. You see this stem here in the middle. It's going out at a 45 degree angle. So you've got your main stem the right angle stem and then this one at 45 degree. That's the one we're going to take out. We're going to take it out because it's not putting all the energy into the plant. It's trying to expand its life and get bigger and bigger and bigger. We want it to give us lots of tomatoes. You can keep a couple in and I will keep a couple in. This one can come out as well. I can't get it out. There it is. Right, we got it out. That's what she said. Some of them I'm going to leave in. This one here has got quite big so I'm going to leave this one in but I will prevent him from creating any more because you're not allowed to get any bigger than that mate. So you can leave a couple of them in. You don't have to take all of them out but most of them I will now take out. What's so funny is that garden advice is always changing so when I'm doing this there will be people in the comments saying you don't have to do that anymore. It's a myth or like you don't have to do it now. It's always always changing. I think ultimately people tend to grow how they've grown for years and years so whenever I've spoken to anyone on my allotment plot, the advice they give me is always advice of what they've done for years and years or what their granddads did or what their grandma did or generations before them have done and that's one of the beauties of gardening is that we kind of pass down this generational knowledge but of course science is changing all the time and people are experimenting on things and challenging these methods so quite often I'll say something and then you might see a load of comments of people saying oh no you don't have to do it like that anymore. Actually you can do it like it still but it's probably just some new research that's come out suggesting that maybe it doesn't matter as much as we thought. Anyway ultimately you have to do what you want to do. They're your plants. So I will continue to take out these middle stems because that is what I've been taught, that's the way I've been taught, that's how everyone's told me to do it and it works for me. I'm also going to start taking off some of the leaves that are touching the soil or are bending down and again this is like a blight thing because if your leaves are bending down touching the soil they're going to pick up disease and stuff and I don't want them to do that so any of these lower stems I'm actually going to just start taking off so that the plant essentially starts higher up all the leaves start higher up all these lower down ones I'm just going to pull them off. Notice how I'm, oh you know what look that's rooted oh these are my tomato seedlings that I'd left in the, oh my gosh they're starting to grow I can't believe it. Do you remember ages ago all over the winter I had all these little baby tomato seedlings growing and I was like I don't know what's going to happen to them, I don't know if they're going to grow they've all started to grow into tomato plants, this one is particularly doing really well, look at this one I think that's two there but they're doing really well so they have actually survived the winter in my greenhouse so I have had tomatoes growing all over the winter look at this this is because basically I harvested my tomatoes but I dropped a load of them into the ground and the tomatoes that I dropped the seeds started to grow, that's why they're kind of in clumps like this and they've continued to grow, I actually can't believe it I can't believe they've survived, look I didn't need to buy any tomato plants or sow any seeds they're all just growing we'll just wait and see what happens to them I think look how quickly the weather has changed, actually I can feel rain, it was really sunny a second ago and quite warm and now it's like this right these are my early and second early potatoes, I think these are early potatoes and these ones are my second early potatoes and I think they need a little bit of tidying up because they're getting quite weedy so I think we're going to start with that oh look they're starting to get flowers so one of the ways you can tell if your early potatoes are ready to pick is when they get all their flowers a lot of people say it's when they die back but actually you can start harvesting them when they start getting their flowers because they will be kind of ready to pick but if you want the ultimate kind of harvest as good as it can be it's when all the plants die back and all the foliage dies back but with early potatoes they don't tend to store very well so it's best to pick and use them as you need them so flowers is a very good indicator that there are some potatoes under the ground that you can use and then it's best just to pick the ones that you need to use, take them home and use them because they don't store brilliantly and that's just the best way to use them I've found I used to pick all of them, take them all home and then within a week they were kind of rotting so best to pick as you go this is another one of our mates just chilling these are all around my allotment now I hope they're doing something useful I hope they're like a useful moth or something because I've got so many of them around now right these beds are now looking a bit better don't you think just a little bit neater so you can actually see the potatoes in there I think I need to sort my strimmer out and charge my battery and then I can strim all around the bed here because we are getting quite a lot of slugs and snails hiding oh look who's turned up look look look I've got my watering can oh my goodness it's Einstein I haven't seen him in so long I think he's looking for me do you know what I don't think he's going to come for his food with all of this sort of overgrown because I think they like to be able to fly away and see their predators and stuff so I am actually going to cut this back a bit then we'll feed him do you know what that high pitched sound is is that my spaceship has my spaceship finally arrived oh no have I got to go home not yet surely I'm not ready anyway look I've um oh my goodness it is here it's here I've cut all this down so let's feed him and see if he comes I think he probably won't now that he saw me hacking that with some shears he's probably terrified of me but you know what we'll feed him right I think I'm going to go around and do a little bit of harvesting we're going to harvest as much as we can I think a lot of things are ready to be picked and I've just not been picking them and then I did want to plant peas up but I think I'm going to do that next time none of my pea seeds have germinated I'm going to start sowing peas directly what happened to my voice then I'm going to start sowing peas so I'm going to make the structure and then plant peas out but that will be in the next vlog it's just starting to rain so we've got to get a move on we've got to get a wiggle on I think we're going to start with the peas yeah to talk with the peas to talk with the peas it's time to pick the peas I think they might have gone ever so slightly over but I think when they're cooked they'll be ok I'm not sure if I'll be able to eat them sort of raw oh my gosh that was a pea I thought bird had just landed on my arm that was a pea yeah I think when they go over I think maybe I'll be able to cook them I might have to investigate one of these because they've gone a little bit rough and wrinkly on the outside so I feel like they're just sort of going over which means that when you eat the pea it becomes a bit gritty but the other ones, some of them are ok I'm not very good at getting to my crops on time I always either get there too early and then I go oh I'll wait a little bit and then I wait too long and they go over so it's a very fine line between being ready and going over it's a really good harvest though peas they do give you a lot so I really do want to grow some more some of this broccoli might be salvageable I know a lot of it has flowered but some of it hasn't what's that, is that bird? I think the birds can sense it's about to pour so they're all kind of like hurrying into little spaces they can hide this one here that looks harvestable which is really good news and I think there's another one just over there so let me just grab my shears and we'll just cut those off broccoli really is one of those crops that when it goes over it just goes so fast and then it's just gone and you can't use it anymore so I'm just going to cut it there I think that's just about savable oh my gosh Einstein did you just land on my back oh my gosh what's up with the birds it's a shame I didn't get this a little bit earlier because you know what I absolutely love broccoli and I eat it all the time at home pretty much with every meal so this is such a great crop for me to be growing and I never harvest it on time I'm so terrible at it what is that all about and we're fast running out of time because it really is starting to rain but I did just want to check on my carrots and just see where we are with them because they've been growing for quite a long time they're looking really healthy the other ones that I planted in here that I sowed from seed haven't germinated which is a shame but I want to see how far off we are from proper carrots I have to say it's shaping out to be quite a good year for carrots because they're growing quite well here but they're also growing really well in my home garden, I've got them in a raised bed so if you watch my Sunday diaries you'll know that they're doing quite well at home as well shall I have a little bit of a dig? right, I see a carrot so we're going to pull this one up oh wow ok, we're getting carrots guys that is so exciting is that not so exciting oh my goodness me you know what, I'm going to take a couple more and then me and Pippin can eat them Pippin is my house rabbit and he loves carrots that's a tiny one let's see if we can get another good sized carrot for Pippin and then we'll leave the rest after I pull this one up because I think they need more time oh yeah yeah that's a pretty good little carrot my house rabbit will be very happy with that ok good, so you are growing carrots well done, please keep growing I'm sorry I've removed a couple of your mates but you know what, they're going to a better place come on, keep growing look at those they're fantastic aren't they so fantastic god right let's get in the greenhouse I'm utterly thrilled with those I'm so blown away, I love growing things like carrots the thing is about carrots and also like potatoes and parsnips it's like the mystery of them because they're kind of under the ground you get an indication of what they're doing by what's happening on the top so you see their foliage and you're like, oh yeah they're looking good, they're looking healthy but you never really know what they're doing under the ground so it is a little bit of a mystery and I just love it, I find that so exciting also, and I say this every year I say this every year, but I will say it every year they are the most carrot-y smelling carrots I have ever smelt buy carrots from the shop even a farm shop because they've been lying there for so long they don't have that really intense carrot-y smell when you pull it fresh from the ground and you've got all the earth on it still and you give it a sniff it's the most carrot-smelling carrot I've ever smelt and that's the only way I can describe pulling carrots and eating fresh carrots that you've grown it's just the most carrot-y carrot so, not a bad harvest I did want to pick some sweet peas I might go and do that, but I won't be able to show you because it is raining but we've got some broccoli we've got some carrots we've got some peas it is really raining now so I'm going to have to end the vlog there I hope you've enjoyed it today I hope it's been informative and interesting YouTube keeps telling me that you guys like it when I tell you facts about the garden and I talk a little bit more so I'm sort of trying to do that in these vlogs I'm sure you've noticed I'm trying to spout more of my knowledge onto you so I hope you're finding it helpful and interesting I will be back on Sunday with a home vlog or Monday on my lotment plot hopefully with some nicer weather at last see you next time, thanks for watching bye!