MY BEST ALLOTMENT FIND OF ALL TIME / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

That is my best find at the allotment plot of all time. So he tells me that's just not going to work. I just want to ask it, are you pasty? Good morning everyone, Welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are the allotment diaries. We are well and truly in the grips of October now. I actually haven't been down to my allotment for about five or six days, which is quite a long stretch of time. We had some really good weather, but I just couldn't get here. I had deliveries coming in I had some work to do so I couldn't get down here then yesterday the entire day from start to finish it rained um not just a little bit I mean it literally cats and dogs kind of rain for the entire day so everything is very wet and boggy which is definitely what it needed after the previous couple of days which were very sunny and hot and then today I've come down here it's very blue skies and sunny which is just glorious but very cold very cold you can really tell the drop in temperature I think we've literally gone from 24 degrees on Tuesday today when I'm filming this is Thursday and it's 15 degrees so we've really just crashed in the temperature and I'm feeling it and I wish that I had brought with me some winter gardening gloves because I think I'm going to get quite cold today I was worried about the seedlings because I haven't been down here for like six days and we had all that heat and that sun i was very worried they would dry out and die however they are still alive as you can see very much alive and i think one of the main reasons is because the way i watered them was i filled these trays with water so they've been absorbing water from the bottom up and i can see that they are very damp even oh my gosh is this the parsley i think the parsley might have all germinated that is fantastic but yeah it's definitely kept them all nice and watered which is fantastic so these are just two different types of brassicas I think we've got some um cabbage and some whatever that stuff is kale oh gosh I can't remember I did label it but then I took the labels out when I potted it on oh terrible at stuff like that I really am these are the ones that I sort of left and didn't pot on they've sort of started to die oh gosh the lighting's really bad down here there's nowhere really I can be in my greenhouse at the moment the lighting is just terrible for the camera i do apologize i think these might be pak choy or um what's the other one pak choy or no it's not kohlrabi it must be pak choy i might just plant these out today in one of the beds to be honest um because i feel a bit sorry for them but you know things are still alive in here which is amazing and then down on the floor these are my lettuces i've got some more of this to sow today so i've got some winter lettuce to sow today winter density which i think will be a good addition and but this stuff is doing quite well this is lamb's lamb's lettuce something like that and then over here this is where i did put in my parsley i have a feeling it's not going to come up because apparently parsley is very difficult to germinate i don't have high hopes for it in here i am however getting some random spring onions and i think some tomato seeds which i'm not surprised about because i did drop quite a few tomatoes in here when i was clearing them so we've got some tomatoes and some spring onions anyway i do have more to sow in there today but the first job of the day is going to be sort of starting to sort out that water thing that i found let me show you so i found this on the plot next to mine which i believe is no longer in use it's been abandoned i wasn't 100 sure about that so i have contacted the allotment committee and I have also left a note on the shed I've heard nothing back the note has gone unread or unresponded to no one's come back and taken it so I kind of feel like it might be mine also unfortunately well it's not unfortunate but October is the month when the allotment committee send out or the council I suppose send out all of our invoices and it's also the month when they start to evict people and also to allocate new plots so October is a very busy month for them so it is likely that my email has just sort of drifted into the abyss somewhere um but however nobody's come back to claim this and I just feel like I really have given it quite a bit of time I've given it well over a week because that video was filmed about a week in advance um to me putting it up so it's been about two two and a half weeks that I've had this on the plot and nobody's claimed it we've had weekends the notes been up the email's been sent so I kind of feel like maybe I should just go ahead with making it waterproof now so what i want to do with it i've had so many suggestions from you guys as well as to what to do with it which is fantastic thank you so much and but what i would like to do with it is turn it into a water and like a dipping tank for my watering can which then is attached to the guttering of the greenhouse so it can be topped up and also i thought maybe i could create a little wildlife pond there within it as well so like have some pond plants in there and stuff and yeah just make it a really nice nice feature i did have a lot of excellent ideas from you guys of what else i could do with it um a lot of you said to turn it into a planter and put things like carrots and root vegetables in there because they would grow really well and i agree they would grow excellent in there however i've got a lot of growing space and i am actually managing to successfully grow carrots i don't know how but i am, this year has been the year of the carrot and um the year of the carrot they have just done so so well for me so i just kind of feel like i want to use this for something else and i've wanted a dipping tank for the longest time i just think it looks so amazing somebody else mentioned that maybe it would block out light for the seedlings i don't think so and here's why the sun comes from that direction over there and comes down this way so anything here doesn't cast a shadow into the greenhouse it casts a shadow this way and that's why I think it won't cast too much shadow over anything that's growing in the greenhouse I really just think I mean the greenhouse is sort of see-through the whole way on the roof as well so I really don't think that's going to be a problem anyway because of the amount of rain we've had the dipping tank is starting to fill with water and I thought that is actually a brilliant thing because this could technically fill up for me with rainwater without me actually having to fill it with anything so I've also bought this blue water piping because because lo and behold it actually fits onto the guttering of my greenhouse and I just need to cut it a little bit and then that should hopefully drip water into here which is just brilliant that's why I brought that over what we need to do is make this thing waterproof not waterproof but it's got holes in it basically so I have to fill the holes up at the bottom anyway I need to tip that water out to be able to do that so here are the holes as you can see they're probably used for something very specific because the size the size of the holes are very very specific it's just i cannot work out what it was used for i really can't i can't think of anything that that would be used for okay i've had a lot of advice on how to cover those holes and make the thing be able to contain water um i asked on here i asked on instagram i asked on tiktok the general consensus was to try to fill the holes but also to line it as well so it's kind of like a double whammy so i've got myself some of this Gorilla waterproof patch and seal which is supposed to stick underwater if you can see there stick underwater and it's to patch holes cracks gaps and tears I mean that's officially a hole and it's going to be underwater so I felt like this was the right thing to buy the only thing is I don't think once the whole tank is filled because it's so big the pressure is going to make this fall off I just know it is it's not going to hold the water so i'm also going to line the entire thing with pond liner it reminds me very much of the tape that i've been using on my greenhouse it's like a polycarbonate tape but it feels like plastic kind of feels like this the only thing is i don't i can't work out to open this i've never used this one before but it seems to be sort of sealed i'm absolutely making a making a pig's ear of this what is that saying making a pig's ear of it why would i be making a pig's ear of it a pig's ear is really messy or something so then the next question is should i try to cover them all together as a collective whole or should i do it individually i think together and i'll do it in the inside and the outside so then we've got to dry it it has to go on a dry surface so it tells me that's just not gonna work about the inside yeah it sticks a bit better to the inside okay so i think it's pretty obvious that that didn't work at all um we're gonna have to line the whole thing I think that's just going to be the more sensible option but at least I've sort of plugged them a little bit because I don't I just I think it's good that I've done both yeah they're just sort of not sticking that well I have dried the area but it's just not going to work I can just feel it's not going to work so let's get the pond liner well I've definitely ordered enough one of my biggest worries then was that I hadn't ordered enough and it was just going to come halfway up no worries of that I've definitely over ordered so I feel like logically the best course of action would be to fill it up with water before um cutting any of that liner to make sure that it's um it doesn't pull it in or anything and then what i can do is once it's sort of because the water will hold the liner down and then i'll be able to kind of cut around the edge of it and i really just think that's the best course of action what do you guys think i just think that liner is just so the right size as well i don't know how i ordered the right size but i actually did i ordered something correctly for once in my life i really think that's going to work now i'm quite excited about it pretty good all right I'm really happy with that so far I think that's going really well and the liner is genius I'm still glad that I plugged the holes just because I think it gives a little tiny bit of extra protection um it just feels a bit weird having open holes at the bottom but at some point they probably will be open holes again I need to cut the blue water piping a little bit I need to fill it up with the water I'm going to wait for it to rain basically this is not a project that i'm going to rush into um now that the liner is in if it rains a lot we should it should start to slowly build up so it's a slow project um it's not going to be it's not going to happen overnight I will put some sort of mesh over the top of it to stop any creatures from falling in I'm so chuffed with it I really am I really am it's probably my best find at the allotment plot of all time just looking fantastic right looking so professional I know I know oh I can't wait for it to be filled up that has really lifted my mood actually just while I'm standing here you can actually see that it's not blocking out the seedlings light too much okay it looks like it's casting a big shadow but it's actually it's not too bad there's a lot of light in this greenhouse and I think everything's going to do fine I really do I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem if anything I think all the overgrowth behind this side is more of a problem then putting something the other side anyway another job for another day um I think I'm going to spend a bit of time clearing the flower bed because all the flowers have died and it looks very very sad so I think I'm going to get my wheelbarrow put my gloves on just clear a section of the allotment plot and then go from there and see what else we feel like doing I did bring with me today some spring bulbs and I was hoping to get a few in but I've also brought some seedlings with me so I have to decide which one of those I'm going to go for today it might be seedlings I've only got time to do one um but let's start with clearing that bed look how sad it's looking all the sunflowers have pretty much died completely I don't see any of these coming back again even these buds here have died um I know there's one sunflower there but the whole plant is dead the whole thing I'll see if I can sort of save the cosmos um hopefully i can save them a bit longer but the sunflowers have got to go I've just found a very small pumpkin growing on one of my pumpkin vines but I had to take the pumpkin out because it's completely dead it's green underneath look at that, it's so pretty I thought these were patty pans it still might be a patty pan and it's just underdeveloped but I don't know, I thought it was a patty pan now I'm not entirely sure what it is it's a very beautiful looking pumpkin it's just very small and it's just not grown has it i'm wondering now as i'm taking these sunflowers out do you think it was the sunflowers that maybe stunted the growth of the pumpkins because sunflowers do have an amazing ability to suck up all the goodness in soil um in fact after the nuclear disaster in chernobyl they planted loads and loads of sunflower fields i think in ukraine to suck up all of the nuclear waste from the ground because sunflowers can literally suck up poison from the ground or something like that i mean don't quote me. My facts are usually all over the place but I'm pretty sure one of the advantages of planting sunflowers is that they kind of clean the soil and I'm wondering if it just took away all the goodness from my pumpkins and stopped them from growing. That's why they do say that you're not supposed to plant sunflowers and vegetable crops together in the same bed because the sunflowers take the goodness away so maybe that is it then. Maybe I've literally just answered my own question i don't know anyway what i do know is that is probably my best looking pumpkin to be fair i will take this home wash it and use it as a little ornament a little decoration it is very cute we didn't have much luck with the pumpkin archway this year i'm afraid i think this is probably my worst year we didn't even really get any runner beans and i kept re-sowing those over and over again this is as good as it got this year even the nasturtiums didn't really get going because of the drought most of them died and these are new ones that have come up fairly recently and I'm so glad that they did because I've missed them this year I think I will leave the spring bulbs for another day um I've got a lot to sow and I'm quite excited about it I didn't bring them all okay all right I sowed some of these seeds in my home garden as well I sowed the winter lettuce and mizuna and I was going to bring them with me and I forgot but I will bring them next time unless they're in my pocket no that's turnips oh the life of an allotmenter why have I got a turnip in my pocket um okay so I've got some cabbage Mozart I will sow that directly also got through some peas and I wasn't sure if you could sow peas at this time of year let me just have a look at the instructions for them because I wasn't sure that you could sow you can I can't believe that i've never heard of peas that you could sow in october and it says you can sow them between october and november outside with protection and in january onwards you get an early main crop harvest i actually can't believe that i've never heard of it is this the peas douce province douce province i had no idea that you could sow seeds directly like that that's incredible so maybe next time i need to think about building a pea structure then gosh i can't believe that you can sow peas at this time of year it's great right i think what we'll do is where the parsley was i'm gonna put in some cabbage because i just think parsley is very tricky to germinate and i don't want this space to go to waste so i'm just gonna put in is that parsley though could that be parsley coming up i just want to ask it are you parsley are you parsley are you a tomato i think it's probably a tomato right i'll do three rows of cabbage and i'm only going to sow it directly because it's in my polytunnel otherwise i would be putting it into pots but i do think if you've got a greenhouse not polytunnel greenhouse but if i had a polytunnel as well i think cut your losses and just sow them directly because it does get quite warm in here and you don't get that kind of ground frost so i think that'll be okay oh there's not many seeds in here oh so i won't be able to do three rows oh i might be able to if i do it thinly me so thinly who do I think I am one two three one two three one two three four five six seven eight nine ten there you go guys do you know what I've just remembered a story when I first got this allotment plot in one of the beds at the front I wanted to grow um purple sprouting broccoli from seed and the way that I sowed the seeds was I put one seed into the ground where I wanted the plant to be and I covered it with a half a plastic bottle that I'd cut and with the top open so I put one seed in covered it with the bottle watered it every day looked after them and I tell you what I got the most fantastic purple sprouting broccoli plants one seed didn't over sow didn't have to do anything to them they literally just grew into plants and I remember thinking growing from a seed is so easy and somewhere within the last six years I've decided that scattering a million seeds is better than planting one individually and I don't know why when it worked so well in the first the first time I did it it worked so beautifully and yet my brain has gone that's not the way to do it maybe i need to go back to just planting one seed where i want it and just see how far that gets me i mean it would save me a lot of seeds do you know that fox i keep filming he's been back four or five times and i think he's waiting for me to go so he can get into his den um so i don't want to keep foxy waiting i'm gonna leave the vlog there i hope you've enjoyed it today it was just a few little odd jobs anyway join me again on wednesday i think i'm going to be doing a walk around my allotment plot on wednesday and so you can come with me and see the allotment plot in all its glory we'll see if we can get some inspiration and ideas i like doing little walk arounds the allotment plot i think it's really fun and i think it's great to know what else is growing what other people are growing what's growing well and what ideas they might have so join me on wednesday for an allotment plot tour and um and then i'll be back on friday again i suppose anyway i will see you when i see you thanks for watching Bye.