FIRST TOMATO OF THE SUMMER! #AD / JULY 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries, they are happening right now and you're watching one. If you are new to my channel I would love for you to hit the subscribe button down below. I'm also very honoured today to say that this video has been sponsored by Green Chef and I will tell you a little bit more about them now. So Green Chef is a new recipe box for healthy eating your way. You can order meals depending on your diet plans, they do things like ketogenic and low carb and vegetarian or flexitarian or even vegan and then you just get your meals delivered to your door and everything is portion sized. That's something that I love as well because it massively reduces food waste. There are loads of new recipes to choose from every single week which just makes it really exciting. All the meals that I have tried from Green Chef have been absolutely delicious and so much fun to cook as well. It kind of puts the fun back in cooking because you're not having to spend hours and hours measuring out ingredients and trying to find things or buying too much of something and then not knowing what to do with it again. And I love how you can just order it all online, not think about it again and then it turns up at your door and you just take it all through and you've got all your meals for the week planned which is just such a time saving thing and we all need to save time these days don't we? And of course you can pause or cancel at any time you want. And as if this wasn't amazing enough you can get 40% off your first box and 20% off your next three just by clicking on my link which I have just put up now somewhere popping up on the screen or it will be in my description box which you can find below this video. I would definitely definitely recommend Green Chef if you're someone who wants to save time, save money, you enjoy cooking, you want some new recipe ideas and you just kind of want to take the whole drama and stress out of cooking. So thank you very much to Green Chef for sponsoring this video. Let me know if you do try them out, I'd love to know what your thoughts are on some of their meals which do look incredible and have tasted great. I have since cooked quite a few of them and they are all delicious. It's really hot in the UK today, it's like probably 33 degrees it's going to be today. At the moment it's already 26, it's nine o'clock in the morning. I know if you live in a hot part of the world this is kind of quite normal to you but to us in the UK this is like unknown territory, we're all panicking right now, we're panicking the UK over it, it's just not normal and our houses and stuff are just not equipped to deal with this kind of heat so we're all struggling a little bit and I thought I was panicking that my plot was struggling, actually it seemed to have done quite well and that brings me on to a talk a little bit about water. So let me show you around my plot at the moment and just give you a little a little scoot around really. I did have a little bit of a panic over the weekend because I didn't come here over the weekend, we were just too busy, that everything would have just died in the heat, however everything seems to have survived. It's quite lucky that I don't have that much growing actually, it's one of the good things about not getting your act together. But yeah, pumpkins looking greener. The thing is when you do so much, because these were going a little bit yellow and I was getting a bit panicky about them, now they are looking so much greener, so much greener and they're actually getting quite big. When you have a problem with a plant and you throw everything at it, so I did the compost underneath it, I've watered it, I've fed them, I've done pretty much everything you could think to do and you like you throw everything at them and then they start doing better, you don't know which one of those things that you did is the thing that made it better. So whenever a plant now gets yellow leaves I'm going to literally have to do everything because I don't know which one of those things I did made them better. Or it could have been none of those things and it could have just been the heat and the sunshine and they were just waiting for a bit more sunshine, I really don't know. Anyway the point is they're going green and the little one down here, he's going green as well. So those leaves that went yellow, they've sort of died off naturally on their own and now the leaves that are coming through are very, very green. I mean this is absolutely fantastic, they're looking so green, so vibrant, so happy. So hopefully they'll climb, I reckon they'll climb, I reckon they'll be all right now, absolutely brilliant. Here he goes, trying to get in, ruining my life as usual, bloody cabbage white butterfly. Yeah that's it, you just, oh there's a spider there, you just keep making your eggs everywhere, that's fine, don't mind me. Anyway all of this bed here doing amazing and this is the bed I was most worried about because it's fairly new and I haven't been here to water it but look at it, absolutely thriving, absolutely thriving, so blooming exciting. Let me just check if he's laid any blooming caterpillar eggs. These are getting quite big now so I reckon they might survive a little mini caterpillar attack anyway, what do I know. Yeah all the lettuces looking so good, I'm going to have to harvest some today because they just look too amazing and then over there again the sprouts, sprouts are sprouting, doing really, really good and all the onions doing okay, they probably need a bit of a water to be honest. Right back to the watering, watering thing, it's a communal one, it's not my one, it's like a communal one for everyone so if it's open it's open, I don't want to mess with things around here, you know what people are like. Yeah I do feel like sometimes my vlogs in this time of year they do get a little bit samey and repetitive because it's just a lot of jobs are repetitive and samey but that is just the way that the jobs are, they're just the same. You've got to water everything, keep it all watered, you've got to cut things, you've got to you know collect seeds and stuff so what can I say, I can't see the duck today. Yeah so I was going to say, interesting little thought on watering and I'm not an expert by any stretch of a mile, whatever the saying is, we like to play about with sayings on this channel but it's just something I came across a little while ago and I've never really truly understood it but I'm sort of starting to get my head around it a bit more now and it's the idea that basically over watering and watering your plants exactly when they need it. Do you mind? Find a flower, get on with it. Watering your plants exactly when they need water all the blooming time consistently actually stumps their growth and it doesn't encourage them to send their roots down further so there is so much information on this online I literally don't know the exact science behind it or exactly how many times you should water or whatever but it's just a really interesting idea that if you just leave your plants a little bit longer than you normally would you kind of encourage them to send their roots down deeper to try and find water for themselves and fend for themselves a little bit and then it kind of encourages them to grow bigger and grow stronger. Obviously a lot of us panic like me and we just water them as much as possible because we don't want them to die which is I mean a fair point really but oh he's got under again little bugger yeah it's just a really interesting idea oh there's two of them now there's two of them brilliant bringing their mates. Word is out in the butterfly world come to plot 74b there are cauliflowers oh he's got under, little bugger. Possibly one of my lowest moments at the plot kicking a butterfly but sometimes it needs to be done tomato I've got my first red tomato um I've just noticed him I did think he'd be the first because he'd already gone orange I don't want to get stung again by another oh look at the flies there's really not on guys really ridiculous now what on earth is their problem seriously they're all here and just behind us the doors open so I really just don't know what to say other than they're just not the smartest creature are they anyway on to the tomato here he is now I don't know what this uh this tomato plant is I think it's either a cherry or a gardener's delight kind of looks like gardener's delight to me but yeah look at him isn't he just beautiful absolutely beautiful and then I've got another little bunch growing here which is amazing and then just through here I just want to show you these because these are getting massive I don't know what the heck they are I can't remember I think they're blue one blue something but yeah they're massive they're looking amazing and then I'll just show you the plant that I plastered and this is really interesting actually because where I plastered him here and I plastered him because it snapped a little bit everything seems to be sort of dying a little bit but then at the top we have got some tomatoes growing and also we've got a little bit just around here new growth so I think maybe he'll live maybe he'll live um and then underneath him he's got more tomatoes so he doesn't look like the healthiest of tomato plants but I he's still giving me fruit so I feel like I'm sort of farming him a little bit do you know what I mean like just he clearly needs to die and be put down but I'm going to keep him alive because he's giving me tomatoes so I'm going to pick that one and eat it now and see what it's like I'm so excited it's my first tomato of the season all right off you come little guy I hope this don't scare the others and stop them from turning red I know what's going to happen to them now oh I am so excited I'm so excited to eat this tomato and that's so funny isn't it and that's the thing about growing your own food is like I've never been excited about eating tomatoes before like you just buy a packet in the supermarket get it home eat it if you don't eat some of them you chuck them away you don't think twice about it but when you like go through growing your own food from a seed and nurturing it and getting to this point you just you feel so excited to like eat a tomato and it's such a strange experience to be excited about this but it really is just the best feeling ever better taste it first day might taste awful that is the best tasting tomato I've ever tasted in my life and I've tasted a lot of tomatoes that was the best tomato I've ever eaten and it was only tiny I've got some big ones to come wow nothing saves summer like the first taste of a freshly grown tomato it really does just change the season in your head I can't wait for these to be ready to pick I really cannot blooming wait now come on guys I want to eat you oh look I'm just on my way out the polytunnel and I've just found a load of decapitated marigolds must be from these I thought slugs were eating these but I don't think slugs can decapitate and then drag marigolds something's coming in and eating this is this the birds the birds eat marigolds why do birds eat marigold flowers the amount of things they've got to eat god you could open a restaurant for birds couldn't you you'd have like so many things on the menu I think this is the bird this must be the birds coming in and just picking their heads off not even eating them not even eating them or making tea or anything unbelievable it's always the birds isn't it it's always the birds oh wow I didn't even notice this my first daily has opened up and it's my absolute favorite one and I'm so glad that this plant survived no offense to any of the dailyers that may or may not live this is the one I was really hoping would survive because it's so beautiful look at her isn't she stunning I can't actually remember oh there's a little worm in there bugger off everything wants to eat everything isn't she just stunning I can't remember what what um what one she is I just got from Wilko's a couple of years ago the thing that I love most about this flower is all the little the darker pink in it it's like speckled oh my gosh I just love her so much she's just my favorite flower I think of all time I'm so glad that you survived I could kiss you I've got a bit of a confession to make I was a little bit relieved when I got down here today and saw that I don't actually have that many crops to look after this year I think I've sort of limited myself to how much I'm growing and I think it's really helping me I think it's helping me to feel on top of the plot and I've got something growing in every single bed so there are things growing um so I'm utilizing the space but I've definitely not over like pushed myself too much this year I've also got some pots at home as well with stuff in that I'm not growing here like carrots and stuff so I think not having too much growing has actually really really helped this year and it's making the plot feel more manageable and I felt a little bit ashamed to sort of admit that because like it's my third year and I feel like things should be easy and I should be able to manage more but actually it's so much more fun not having so much growing I find that I'm enjoying it a lot more just taking a little bit of the edge off and a little bit of the crops like just just not growing quite as many um and I'm really really enjoying it this year and I'm so proud of the plot and I think it's looking really really beautiful I hope you enjoyed my little allotment vlog today if you did do subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and I will see you in my next vlog thank you for watching everyone bye