WHAT IS THAT?! / AUGUST 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries, and I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you are new to my channel, there's also some other ways to follow me just down below, and without further ado, let me show you and introduce you to my wonderful allotment blot, which is looking a little bit dishevelled as usual, but then whose isn't it this time of year? That's what I want to know. Who are these people who can keep it pristine all year long? I'd like a word with them. Got my kids here with me today because it's the summer holidays, but look, it's, you know what, I said dishevelled, it's actually not looking that dishevelled at all, is it? I'm actually super proud of it, and oh yes, I think you might have spotted the pumpkin. I sowed over nine pumpkins this year, nurtured them from a seed into a plant, took them from their pots, put them outside, tried to grow them on, one has succeeded, one. That's how many pumpkins I've got this year, that has done really well, but saying that, it is doing particularly well. It is just absolutely flying up this archway, and do you know what, I've not even had to tie it in at all, it's literally just clinging on itself, and oh yes, oh yes, we've got ourselves a little pumpkin. I'm pretty sure that this is a Jack Be Little, and they tend to grow the best out of the baby boos and Jack Be Littles. I've always found Jack Be Little is the one that grows the biggest and the best, but I'm just so relieved that it's alive. I've got loads of flowers in there, and then I've got this one trailing here, which I wish I could tie onto the archway somehow. I really want to tie him on, but I don't want to bend him too much and break him, like I think I might have just done. I've got another bit coming here, he's tying on, and then if you come around here, you can see that he's sort of coming up here as well, and then this one here, he's flowered, but he's just not getting any bigger. Do you know what I mean? It's really annoying. I don't know why he's not getting any bigger. Just get bigger, just grow. Do you know, it's just an ongoing stress as to why these pumpkins are not getting any bigger. I've never known anything like it. I always just assume that plants will get bigger, or they will just crumple up and die, but these ones, they've grown, and then they've just sort of stopped, and for the life of me, I cannot work out, I cannot work out why it's not growing. Any ideas? Same situation going on the other side of the archway, in that they've grown, they've not died, but they're not getting any bigger. It's like they've just stopped growing, and I don't understand why. They've sort of had this mass of leaves, this mass of leaves, and they're getting flowers, but they're not getting any bigger, and it is just the weirdest, strangest thing. I've just never known anything like it. I just don't understand why they're not continuing just like that one over there, which is just growing up the archway, but it looks like I am going to have part of a pumpkin archway to show you this year, which is amazing, because I've got all these little reels and stuff ready to go with the pumpkin archway. It worked last year, but like everything in life, what works one time might not work the next time, and sometimes you just don't know why. Don't know. Oh my god, there's two of them. Yeah, the baby. Duck baby. Something attacked me when I did that. I don't know. Did it bite you? No, it's like a bite, like it flung itself at me. Don't come near guys. Oh, maybe it's the seeds. Oh, that was really weird. Hang on, let me get a stick. Oh, look at them. They're popping like popcorn. Ah, hey. It's like little flies in here, and they're like popping like popcorn. I can hear them snapping, and then they're like pinging themselves at my face. I think they're attacking me. What are they? They white fly. Right, watch this. What is that? There's two things it could be. It could either be seed pods popping literally in my face, because there are a lot of seed pods here, or it could be like flies that are just jumping up and snapping and just exploding. Exploding flies? Does that happen? I don't know. That's so weird. I don't actually know what this plant is, but oh god, it's really... Is it seed heads popping? Oh, look. I think it is. Look at all these little seeds. Look at all these little seeds everywhere. I think it's seed heads popping, literally exploding in my face. I've literally never known anything like this. Yeah, look. Oh my goodness, that is fascinating. It's seeds popping, guys. It's seeds. It's not an insect. If they ping at you, it does, but can you hear that? I'm genuinely fascinated, because I really am. I've never seen seeds do that before. It's like popcorn, and the thing is you can hear them. You can hear them popping. It's so surreal. Good old-fashioned weeding session at the plot today. Done about four beds, and I feel really good for it. When I get down here, I normally kind of focus on the big, fun, exciting jobs, like making structures and tying in the pumpkins and picking things, and I often kind of neglect the little jobs that actually make up some of the most important jobs on the allotment plot, like weeding. Like weeding, which can just completely overtake a plot, and I'm just determined not to let it completely swamp me again, so I think I've done a pretty good job. I don't know if you can see behind me, but the beds are looking a lot better than they were before, and then every time I come down, I'll just choose another bed to weed, so yeah, it's good. So I'm going to collect up these apples now because I think they are just attracting too many wasps, and I'm going to put them in a bucket and put them in my compost, I think. Someone said about making cider with them or something, but I don't think these ones are the ones that you're talking about, right? I think these ones are unedible or undrinkable. Let's see if we can rescue this dahlia. It's gone a little bit crazy. Just noticed that one of my gladiolus has started to flower. So beautiful. So I've got all of these ones along the front, which will hopefully all flower. I don't know if the heat has sort of stopped them from flowering this year, I'm not sure, but hopefully they follow this one. And then this dahlia has just gone crazy behind. I absolutely love him. He is a, I can't remember what he is, a speckled variety. So he's got like speckled, I keep wanting to say speckled frog, speckled petals, and he's just beautiful, isn't he? Lovely. So healthy. Into the land of tomatoes. I was supposed to bring a bucket, like a little pot today, to collect them in, so I'm just going to have to put them in a bag now, but wow, it's like a jungle in here. Oh my goodness, look at all these tomatoes. That's a bit of a tomato glut, isn't it? Oh my goodness. I've never seen so many tomatoes on a single plant. That's absolutely insane. And these ones are starting to go red. Look at them all, they're like little Christmas decorations, like little ornaments. Amazing. And then obviously some of them have gone really red. The plant that I wanted to show you that I'm most excited about is this one, because look, look who's decided to wake up and start turning, start changing colour. Oh my goodness. He's so healthy, so big. I literally cannot wait to eat him. I am so excited to eat that tomato. I'm just literally waiting every day for him to go red and he's finally starting to turn. Isn't he amazing? The size of him, the size of him. I know I've only got three on the plant, but oh my goodness, they are three whoppers, right? Now, unfortunately it looks like my peppers are no more. I did kind of expect this because I've got one growing at home and I have to water it every day and I'm not here every day. So I had a feeling these would die. What I'm going to do instead is sow a row or two of carrots behind here. So let's do that. So I know I just said carrots, but I've actually sown all my carrots. So I'm going to sow some radishes instead, which is by my favourite seed subscription box, Seedcraft. If you haven't heard of them, they're a monthly subscription seed box that gets sent to your door. And the great thing about them is that all the seeds that they send you are to be sown that month. So they're not kind of like sending you seeds that you have to hold onto for months and months or weeks. They can be sown immediately. So I've been sent some China rose radish seeds and I'm going to give them a go in here. I've never managed to successfully grow a radish before, but I've heard they're really easy. What's easy for one person isn't necessarily easy for me. So we'll give it a go. I'll do a couple of rows. Hedge my vets a little bit. Hedge my vets a little bit. Come on, we're going to get one radish. I'm determined to get a radish. Is there anything more exciting and wonderful about life than harvesting your own food after you've painstakingly spent months and months trying to grow it, protecting the plant, stressing over the plant, re-sowing the plant, taking care of the plant, and then finally you pick the produce. I mean, is there anything better in life than that? No, is the answer. No. The thing is, it doesn't matter about the size of the harvest. Never get worried about how many you harvest and the size of it because it's not about that. It doesn't have to be about that. I mean, unless you're like a farmer and growing on a commercial scale, but if you're just like me, like a home grower or have an allotment plot, don't get caught up on the size of your harvest and compare it to everybody else's because it doesn't matter. Even just growing one or two fresh tomatoes is amazing and it's such an achievement. You should be so flipping proud if you've managed to do that. And I tell myself all the time, size doesn't matter. Size does not matter. It's the work that went into it and the fact that you've got anything at all, to be honest, that matters. I hope these vlogs inspire you to get out there and get growing. Grow something, grow anything, grow some lettuce on your balcony, anything at all. And I'll see you in my next vlog guys. I hope you've enjoyed the vlog today. See you next time. Thanks for watching. Bye.