HUGE POTATO HARVEST ON THE ALLOTMENT / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

I just had a little look on her collar and her name is Mavis. Like a summer house here would be really nice with a little kind of decking area. Oh it must be vegetarian day. Good morning. Good morning guys. Very hot and steamy in here today. I'm actually going to take my jacket off because I have just carried a massive bag of compost to the allotment plot. I didn't carry it the entire way from home. I lived 25 minutes from my allotment plot walking. Much much quicker in the car. My husband dropped me outside the gate, had to rush off to work and I've just carried it through the allotment site. But I'm absolutely knackered. I'm so unfit. I think I need to like lift some... Maybe not. I was going to say I need to lift some weights but maybe not. Maybe I should stay well out of the gym. I've got some compost with me today. I want to start some seeds. I think there are a few seeds that you can start this time of year. And also I want to mulch over one of the beds that we're going to completely redo again. And it doesn't need like a heavy mulch this bed. So I'm hoping I can just use sort of three quarters of the bag. I think it's 100 litres because I think the bed is actually quite good. I just want to make sure I'm topping up everything that I'm taking out. I can hear Einstein already. How sweet. Anyway, I'm going to start sowing some seeds. I was having a little look last night on the Readly app at some of the gardening magazines. And at the moment they've got lots of advice of seeds to sow and things to do for the autumn time for your autumn garden. Readly, if you haven't heard of it before, I do go on about them. They are fantastic and I have a great discount, a great offer for you. Readly is a magazine subscription service. You get access to thousands and thousands of magazines and newspapers. All different categories. You can backdate editions of all of the magazines that you find. So it's not just that copy that's up at the moment. You can backdate them. They've got a great gardening category. They've got cars and motors. They've got food and drink. And they've got home and interior. They've got like so many different categories. You are bound to find something that you like. You can bookmark articles. So if you find an article on your autumn garden and jobs to do, you can actually bookmark that article. It goes into a list of bookmarks and you can just access it at any time. You can also access your magazines offline. So you can download them. And then if you don't have access to the internet, say at your allotment plot you don't get good access to the internet, or I don't know if you're going away somewhere, you're on an aeroplane, you can't access the internet. You can still access the Readly app and those magazines that you have downloaded, which is fantastic. And the offer is, if you go below and click my link or click the QR code, you get two months free with Readly. Two months free. Don't have to pay a thing. And you can cancel at any time. It is so, so easy to cancel your Readly subscription. But you might as well click the link, click my QR code and just get it for two months for free. Just try it out. Just have it. Anyway, that's where I've been getting a lot of my inspiration for the autumn garden. So I really wanted to sow some seeds today. I think we will start with sort of having a look and see if we can feed the bird. I don't have any mealworms for him yet. Einstein, I'm so sorry. I just don't have the mealworm because he ate them all, didn't he? Broke in and ate them all. I've only got seed. We can give him some seed and see if he takes it. He's singing away. He knows I'm here because he heard me chatting away to myself in the greenhouse. He's not going to be happy with this. I promise I will get him some more mealworms too. But at least he's got something to eat. And these are specifically for robins, you know. It's not like I just picked up random seeds. These are robins. Robin seeds. They're supposed to love these. You're supposed to love it, Einstein. Yeah. It's not like I just picked up random stuff for him and thought, oh, that'll do. You know, this is a robin mix. They're supposed to love it and be really excited by it. I'm surprised they don't have mealworms in this. Because sometimes the seed packs do have a few mealworms in there. But it doesn't have any. It's just literally seeds. It does look like... It does look like another animal's sort of been nibbling these in the pack. Like a mouse or something. Maybe the mouse has taken all the good bits. I don't know. I can see him. I can see him hopping about. He seems quite excited. Yeah, he seems quite excited. I think he's going to be quite disappointed when he sees what's on the bird table today. I promise I will get him some more mealworms. I will. I've just been busy. We'll see if we can dig him up some worms and stuff anyway. He'll like that today. We got quite a lot of rain yesterday. It rained probably all night long. Probably for hours and hours. I mean, I've come out today... I don't know exactly because I was asleep for most of it. I've come here today and everything is soaking wet, which is fantastic. I mean, the soil is soaked through. All of the soil looks really dark, which is just brilliant. I mean, I haven't seen the soil this dark since the start of summer. Because it's dried out, it's gone a really light kind of grey colour. Everything looked very grey this summer. And now it looks nice and dark again and it looks fantastic. Oh, he's there. Hang on. What do you think? Oh, he's eating him. Oh, yeah. Oh, it must be vegetarian day. Do you like those, Einstein? You know what? He doesn't seem too angry. Look. Oh, I'm so pleased you like them, Einstein. I was actually a little bit worried. Yeah. Hey, nice. That's good news. So he has eaten a little bit of it. But I think probably because all the insects are on the surface now because of the rain. So I think the birds are being pretty well fed. We're going to start with that bed that I'm talking about. So let me go and get my gloves on. So this bed here, believe it or not, there is a growing bed here. Has been a huge problem for me for the longest time. I think because we've got all of these trees and this overgrowth here. Firstly, the weed spread. And it's never been sort of mulched over with any compost or anything to keep them down. And also it's too shady to sort of grow anything productive. It probably is the case I need to completely rethink this area. I'm actually wondering if maybe another shed or storage system or like a summer house here would be really nice with a little kind of decking area. I feel like this would be the nice place for it because it is a bit shady. Like I said, it'd be quite nice to have a shady place to sit in the sun, especially if we get like a really hot summer again. But I'm thinking this whole area here would just be really nice just to have a little, I don't know, decking or maybe a little summer house or a little pergola or something, something to sort of sit under. Yeah, I actually, the more I look at that, the more I think that would be really nice to have a little kind of decking area with a little pergola or just sort of like half a summer house. You know, there's sort of corner houses you get with the seats in. I just think that would be really nice there. I think that's maybe what this allotment and what this area is missing. Right, so now that I have pulled a lot of those weeds out because we had the rain last night, it was quite easy to pull them out. I'm going to dig it all over and get all the roots out that I can. Whether or not this becomes a seating area or remains a sort of growing bed, not that I grow anything in it, the weeds still need to be sorted out here. Otherwise, it's just going to keep looking like that. I'm a little bit knackered now. I think I got most of those weeds. The ones that you could see on the surface, I think I got most of the roots of those ones out, which is really good. I think what it needs is a really thick sort of covering of cardboard. So what I'm going to do, find some cardboard, quite a lot of it, cover over the bed really thickly. And then in the springtime, I'm going to hold it down with some rocks. And then in the springtime, I'm going to cover over the cardboard with a really thick layer of mulch. Or we'll just sort of get rid of the area and we'll just put something here, like I said, decking or a building. But ultimately, I don't want those weeds coming back. So for now, this is not something I like doing, but I'm going to cover it over with ground sheet because I think at least then the weeds won't come back up again. And this bed is so problematic. Honestly, it causes me so much stress. I think everyone's got those areas that their allotment plot that just don't work and they just get messy and you just don't quite know what to do to sort it out. This area has been like this since I got this plot about two and a half years ago. When was it? Three years ago, two years ago. It's never worked. So obviously something drastic needs to change. This is not working. OK, so this behind me is the next bed that we're going to clear. This has actually got my main crop potatoes in, which got scorched completely in the heat waves and really didn't, just didn't do very well. But I do think there are good potatoes under the ground. Oh my gosh, that sun. Can you even see me? Anyway, we're going to pull up all the potatoes, do a nice big potato harvest, and then sort of sort out the bed. Maybe potentially close it down for autumn winter and not put anything in it. Just give it a little bit of a rest. Maybe put some green manure in there. I'll have to think about it. But the point is these potatoes are done. They really struggled with the heat wave, really got scorched. They also went up far too tall because they really panicked. Because they didn't have enough water, they really shot up high because they sort of panicked. And yeah, they've just not done that well. I mean, look at those ones there. They look absolutely gone. Right, we'll start with this end because this end looks really, really dead. Let's have a look what's going on under the ground here. Nothing. Okay. Any under here? Oh, yes. There we go. And another one. There must be some under here somewhere. Let's have a little bit of a dig. Oh, wow. Yeah, we've got some under here. They look great, don't they? I think I will give this bed a real dig when I've finished pulling them all up. I feel like there's got a... Oh my gosh, is that a tomato plant? Yeah, it's just a random tomato plant growing behind this one. That's so weird. Right, there's got to be some good ones under here, surely. Yeah. Let's give it a little dig here. Oh, yes. Look at these. Wow. Oh, wow. Loads of them here. That is brilliant. Oh my gosh. Look at this. Secret tomato plant. Complete with flowers, tomatoes. It's looking pretty healthy, isn't it? I'll just leave this one alone. I had no idea this was here. It must have been from when I was composting something. And it's just a tomato must have rolled here and just grown. Just sort of goes to show how easy gardening can be when a tomato just rolls into your bed and grows a tomato plant. I mean, why do we put so much effort in? Right, what have we got under here? Wow, look at the size of that. A couple of little ones there. It's always when you dig that you find more. You've got to keep sort of digging. Oh, there's one. Little ones. Oh, there's one. That's a pretty good one. I'm surprised there isn't more here. Let's see what we've got here. Oh, yes. Look at those. They're just brilliant, they are. A little bit of a dig. Can't see any more straight away, so we'll just sort of move on. Let's see what we get here. Oh, yes. They are great. There we go. Lots more in this one. Yeah, this one's done really well. Wow. Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. They're brilliant. Oh, that one's been eaten. Oh, no. I'm glad I got in here now. Oh, look, we've got some potato damage. I actually have never really seen that much damage on any of my potatoes ever on this allotment. I'm really glad I pulled these up when I did now, because I feel like the damage will just get worse. Some of them aren't looking... Well, that sort of looks okay. But yeah, we're definitely getting some damage on these. There is sort of a potato worm or something, I think. Some kind of burrowing worm-type insect that does sort of eat through your potatoes under the ground. I did have the unpleasant encounter with one once when I took a potato home and I cut the potato in half and half the worm was sort of poking out the potato. I don't know if it's actually a worm or if it's some kind of beetle or something, but it burrows into the potato and it eats it sort of from the inside out. So something to look forward to when you harvest your potatoes. Hopefully, you won't find any. I will be digging all of this out as well to make sure I haven't missed any potatoes, which I definitely have. But I quite enjoy pulling them up because it's like pulling up treasure. Oh, there they are. I can give a little dig. There we go. And it looks undamaged. Fantastic. Quite a few here. Quite a few, quite a few. Wow! Holy smokes! Look at all them! Right, that is not a bad little potato harvest. And the thing is, as I was sort of digging with my hands in the soil, it's actually a really good bed. Even though the potato plants had all been sort of killed by the heat wave, the soil has actually really recovered. So you see the way that I'm picking it up in my hands. I'm squeezing it together. It's holding its shape and then I'm just really easily able to pull it apart. That's the perfect soil. That's exactly what you want because it means that it's going to hold moisture and it's got really good structure and it's also got really good drainage. So it's kind of got everything. This soil is absolutely, genuinely brilliant. Oh, that's the seed potato. Found a lot of those under there. I actually need to get rid of them because they will regrow. Will they regrow? I don't know. I don't particularly want them in the soil. But yeah, these are looking fantastic. Right, I hate to do this but I'm running out of time at the allotment plot today because I've got to get home. So we've pulled out the potatoes. The soil looks great. I don't need to top it up. Next time we come, we will dig over any potatoes that are still under the ground out. We're going to take these home for now. That bed for me looks brilliant. If anything, it just looks a little bit too big, this bed. But I can live with that. Right, here's a little overview of what we've done today. We have really sorted out this area down here. I'm actually really proud of it. I know it sort of doesn't look like I've done much but I've actually done a lot. And it definitely does look neater than when I started, which is the point. We've got the brassicas down here. I think that bed would be quite good for broad beans. These are looking really good in here. Leaves are starting to grow back after the pigeon damage. Anything for you in there? No, no, no. God. Not in there because there's nothing in there for you. Out, out. Come on because I'm going to have to lock you in there. Got to leave now. Oh god, that's just compost. That's really not very interesting, I promise. That's just compost. Come on, come on, come on, come on. I've just discovered that her name is Mavis. I'm just about to leave Mavis. I've got to go home now. I've ended the vlog. The vlog is over, Mavis. I just had a little look on her collar and her name is Mavis. Mavis. Doesn't seem at all bothered that I now know her name. Not at all bothered. Like I said, I'm running out of time today so I might have to leave this vlog here. But I will be back again on Friday and we're going to sow some of those seeds. Mainly things like cabbages. Want to get some lettuces started because in here, when the tomatoes get cleared, I'm going to put some cabbages, lettuces, maybe another type of brassica, maybe some cauliflower in here. Cauliflower did do really well in here. So maybe some all-year-round cauliflower too because I really want to utilise the growing space for the autumn winter. I don't want it to go to waste. I will do a big tomato harvest next time I'm here but I do think they've still got time to turn colour on the vine. So I'm not going to get rid of these just yet. I think they're hanging on pretty well. But I will do a harvest next time I come because some of them are definitely ready to pick. Anyway, sorry I'm a little bit all over the place today. I'm a bit scatty. The cat came and then just went. She didn't hang around today so I don't know what I've done to annoy her. I will see you again on Friday. Don't forget to check out Readly. It is two months free. It is a fantastic offer. You can literally sign up and use every single feature on the app for free for two months and then you can just cancel at any time. That's what I'm saying. I'll see you when I see you. Thanks for watching. Bye.