PLANTING UP THE WILDLIFE POND / SEPTEMBER 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my lotment diaries. If you're new to my channel I would love for you to hit the subscribe button just below. There are also some other ways to follow me, the wind has just really picked up. I was just about to say I love this time of year, and I still do, but it's because the weather today was so nice and sunny and I can just see literally now it's turned windy and cloudy and looks like it's going to rain, but hey that's autumn in the UK isn't it? Unpredictable as ever, but I still do love this time of year, I think the plot is magical at this time of year. Everything looks a little bit overgrown, everything's starting to die back and sort of relax a little bit, but at the same time it still feels so alive and so magical and ready for planting and picking and stuff, so it's just a great time of year. I've got some plants with the wildlife pond today, I'm actually redoing my wildlife pond because it kind of got a bit overgrown and a little bit out of hand, so I've got some new plants for it which I'm going to be whacking in today, and then possibly picking some more pumpkins and maybe even my cauliflower, I don't know yet, but let's get on with the pond I think, that's the first job of the day, exciting! Frogs will be happy, if there were any, I've yet to see a frog, in my three years of being at this allotment I'm yet to see a frog. So I brought these plants from Amazon, they come in like a bag like this and they're all kind of pond plants and they're designed for small ponds, and I always buy my pond plants from Amazon because I don't know where else to buy them, they don't do any water plants in my local garden centres, so I don't know where to go to get them to be honest, I don't really know what I'd be looking for either, so I've never had a problem with them, buying them from Amazon, so I just keep doing it, do you know what I mean? But they sort of come like this, so it looks alright doesn't it? Got a little root, so this is a Rumix, oh gosh am I gonna really try and do this, I'm gonna try and do this, this is a Rumix sanduinius, Rumix sanduinius, looks like that basically, it's got these little red leaves which are quite pretty and interesting, so I'll whack him in. Also got this one, he looks lovely and healthy doesn't he? Considering they came in a box and in little bags as well, they're quite good aren't they? They remind me of Finding Nemo, have you ever seen that? With all the fish get in the little bags and then roll themselves out into the ocean and then they go, now what? Kind of reminds me of that, okay right, anyway this one is a Saururus cernus, it's a green one basically, it's a green one and this one looks suspiciously like the plants I've just yanked out the ground and had a go at, it's like a reed kind of one and it's called a Garrix pseudocyperus, pseudocyperus I think and it's like a reedy one, so I reckon this one will multiply, I've got to keep my eye on this one because like ones like this, they just like, like they just spread like wildfire basically and they're really annoying, so I'll keep an eye on him but he can go in for now, so now he's in my pond for now and the last one they sent me is this, it's Veronica becabunga, Veronica becabunga, what a name, who named that? And it's like little, I think it's little clovers, little clover flowers with it as well, he doesn't look as healthy but I think he'll still live so he's quite pretty isn't he? Right so we've got four plants to go in, let's do this, so this is what we are working with basically, you can see that I've just taken everything out and then in its place I just threw in a load of old pots, brilliant, yeah this is all rainwater, basically it rained and it filled it up a little bit so I have to top that up with some more rainwater now but this is the size we're looking for, I might just clean it up a bit actually, so in this plant pot here is a load of bricks that I basically found and rocks that I found around my allotment plot that I've just put into here and I'm gonna put around my plot so it's a great big chunk of I don't know what and then here's loads of rocks which should be quite good so I'm gonna put them around the outside to kind of keep the lining down basically, you'll see what I mean when I do it, you'll see when I first did my pond I was looking up where to buy rocks and I was like looking at cheap ways of buying rocks and I thought buying rocks, I've got enough rocks around my plot as it is, I keep digging them up so something I didn't really want to buy, I think I'm gonna do another rock hunt and try and find as many as I can, the rocks are really there for creatures and insects to be able to get in and out the pond and they're also there to cover this liner, this pond liner and keep it down and secure basically, I know it's got loads of creases and this is as straight as I could get it but it's like a little hideout for insects and it also does a practical job as well so let's find some more we've got these little aqua pots which are basically pots with loads of holes in, unfortunately I don't have any aquatic soil left so we're just going to use normal soil and what we're going to do is top the soil with little pebbles and that should hopefully keep some of the soil in the pot, I'm not completely convinced it will but I think it should be okay, so we'll put the rest up, it's all we've got basically, it's the only thing I can do so we're just winging it somebody did once tell me that with pond plants I think you can just throw them into the water and they usually are okay and obviously that depends on what variety but you know if they die they die and I've potted them up but I don't know if this one actually needs potting up or not to be honest when I pulled the other ones up the roots have come completely out and they were just in the water sucking up nutrients so I think they'll be okay but anyway we're going to whack them all in now and just see what happens God don't fall in, don't fall in, I mean you fall in plant, oh that's good, I like that, maybe needs to go a bit shallower, where do you need to go mate, there, oh God oh no, he's going for a swim, that's good, this one will go there I think, no, a bit deeper, we'll go over there a bit God this water's freezing, okay good, obviously to make things even more complicated because what would gardening be without complicated and each plant has its own specific depth that it likes in the water however my pond is just two depths it's either shallow or deep and that's it there's no in-between so I put them in and they are where they are I think they'll be okay all the leaves are just kind of coming out a little bit so I've got plenty of room to grow this one is really beautiful I didn't think I'd like this one but this one is really lovely oh it's starting to rain now just when I've topped the pond up and then that one there he needs to grow a little bit to be okay but I think they're quite nice I think that should be quite quite good and then if I stand up that you can see I've got all the rocks around now so it's looking a lot more wildlife like the next job for the pond is going to be to plant around the outside and round the outside round the outside and but I'm going to do a lot of research on that at the moment I've got a lot of these reeds and I do not like them because they just pop up everywhere I say putting one in my pond and paying money for it but these reeds here or whatever they are grasses reeds they just multiply like crazy and they get really out of hand and also these weeds here I don't know what they are but they're popping up all over the place they're really difficult as well to control and sort of envisioning my wildlife pond being full of flowers and full of pollinators and frogs and little hedgehogs coming to have a drink so I'll try I'll try my best and do some research on that but that's it that's the pond sort of sorted now for the autumn winter so I'm really happy with that I wanted to show you one of my dahlias which has finally flowered and it's flowered really late this year even though everyone says this is a normal time for them to flower I think mine just always flowered early and it's this one is beautiful red one I cannot remember what variety this is I'm afraid but it was just a pack that I got from Wilko's I'm like a three pack of dahlia dahlia tubers and these ones are just stunning aren't they and they've all like I've got loads of buds on them and they're all starting to flower the one behind has done the best this year and it is just stunning I think this is a speckled variety because the leaves are a little bit speckled with different pinks but together they just look so so so beautiful and then the third one just didn't grow at all but hey we won't hold him we won't hold him to that it's okay and the what are these called gladiolus haven't really done anything this year but in my garden at home they have started to flower so I'm hold I'm holding out hope for them I think there is still time for them to flower if they want to it's up to them really and but they've done so well and there's so many of them they've multiplied and they've grown really tall and they look really healthy so I just don't know why they've not flowered so far but maybe they will I don't know plants are always a bit of a mystery to me but the dahlias are just stunning I'm gonna have to plant some more of these next year I think because I just love them I follow someone on Instagram called Haley Haley's Lottie Haven and if you're an Instagram I'm sure you follow her too because her allotment plot is stunning gives them so much inspiration and she made a like pesto pasta but she used like a pesto sauce but she used nasturtium leaves in a sauce and I thought it was really interesting I've never thought to cook with these before and I have had them in salads and they're quite spicy I sound like my kids when I say that but they're a little bit like sharp a bit like a rocket leaf and so I've never thought about turning it into like a sauce before but I'm gonna take some of these home and see if I can make the sauce that she made online and see if it tastes any good because it looked amazing so I'm gonna try it basically and I think it would be like pesto but a little bit spicier so we'll try it it sounds nice and I've got enough nasturtiums to make about 15 tons of it right getting really noisy here now because it's so windy today it's definitely I'm feeling very autumnal I'm gonna take those nasturtium leaves home now and try and make that sauce for my lunch and I'll let you know how it turned out and let me know if you enjoyed the vlog if you did do subscribe to my youtube channel and I will see you next time see you on Wednesday guys thanks for watching bye