WORLDS SMALLEST TURNIP / JULY 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. If you're new around here my name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries, they are happening right now, you are watching one and if you enjoy the video as you go along I'd love for you to click the subscribe button down below. I'm quite close to 12 000 subscribers now which is pretty amazing and I'm very grateful for every single one of you who are sticking around and catching up with my allotment plot. It's going to be a really beautiful couple of weeks in the UK at least, they're actually predicting it's going to be one of the hottest Julys on record in the UK, so that means a lot of watering and a lot of maintenance on our plants and making sure that everything stays alive. I'm actually quite lucky that half of my plot tends to be in shade for quite a lot of the day and a lot of people see that as a bad thing but with the changing kind of like global warming and the changing temperatures and stuff I've actually found it to be really helpful because I can water at this time of day and it's about nine o'clock in the morning now, a lot of people have to get down here at kind of 6 6 a.m to be able to water and then for the sun not to like evaporate it all straight away whereas I can kind of get down here leisurely at like 9 and just water everything and know that the shade is still here so everything's going to get good watering and that is the first thing I'm going to do this morning, I am going to give everything a really good water because the next couple of days it's really hotting up and I just want to make sure that they're all basically fed. My pumpkins are looking better, I gave them a feed yesterday and I just want to do a quick update because I can't believe how much better they're looking already after one feed. So yesterday when I showed you my pumpkins on this side, they were very yellowy and just looked not very healthy, I think green leaves is always a good sign that the plant is doing well, it's such a simple thing to say but then when your leaves do go yellow you do look at your plant and think oh my god what's wrong with it because greenery is obviously like photosynthesis and everything and the and then when anything happens that stops that kind of greenery you just immediately panic about your plants but the greenery is coming back. I definitely see more green in this plant here in particular and he's got these little green, new green leaves coming through in the middle, he looks better already, even this one here which still does look quite yellowy but I can definitely see he is looking a little bit better, I don't know what all this blue stuff is, it looks like plastic, might have had some wind last night and some plastic has blown everywhere which is annoying but yeah he is looking better and he's still got the middle of him so this one over here is still very very very small but again even he looks better because he's more upright now, is that an insect or a no it's a stick, okay don't have stick insects in this country, yeah he looks better. I actually brought some nasturtiums from home a couple of weeks ago because I can't remember what the reason is but something about nasturtiums and slugs, either slugs really love nasturtium plants and will leave your pumpkins alone or they really hate them and it repels them, either way I needn't have bothered because they've self-seeded themselves from last year and there's just so many of them and they're all flowering and it's just beautiful. These are all self-seeded, I haven't planted any, I think the one I planted is this one over here and then all of these ones have just self-seeded themselves and you can eat these, you can eat the leaves and you can eat the flowers and they're really nice, they kind of remind me of rocket, you know that kind of really peppery taste which I really love, they're really nice, I'll pick some of this today. They've all cottoned on to the little trick now haven't they, look look at this one, look at him, completely cottoned on to the trick of the other little one, the little, unless it's the same one, oh I've lost him in there now, you little rascal, what on earth do you think you're doing, who's given you this idea eh? Snails are all in cahoots with each other, I know they are, they all think, right that was a really great idea, did you see how Martin ended up on that plant there, we're all going to copy him as well, little buggers. Oh god, it's just like when things like this happen like twice, it makes me think that like the snails know what they're doing and they've got like intelligence and they're all like in cahoots with each other and they're just like hiding, like they're doing it on purpose, unbelievable. Those bloody doors open, what more do you need me to do, the way out is there, that's the way out, honestly, stupid flies. I'm going to do a little bit of tomato maintenance today, it's quite funny, people often ask how I work at the allotment plot and basically what I do is I rock up here three, four times a week, I scout the plot and decide on just a few really important jobs and every day when I come back I think what are the most important jobs that I need to do today and if I get nothing else done what would I like to get done and today it's going to be tomato plants because I've just noticed that here in tomato city some of the some of the towers are falling down, they're growing so well in my polytunnel but they're literally outgrowing themselves, they've got away with themselves a little bit and they're just, yeah, they're falling over so we need to do a bit of maintenance, right, I don't know if you can see is there, I think you can see, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to tie them up and then start chopping them where I think they need chopping but the first thing we need to do is stabilise them all because they're all flippy flopping all over the place and that's just not good, so they've just done extraordinarily well and they've just done a lot better than I ever imagined tomatoes to do because I've always grown tomatoes outside, this is my first polytunnel that's remained standing in the allotment plot, it's actually my third polytunnel here because the first two blew away before I had a chance to grow anything in them, I was going to say something else then, blow anything in them, honestly, I just didn't realise that tomatoes could get to this size and I didn't, I wasn't prepared basically, I was not sufficiently prepared and I got these thin little bamboo canes and they're just like toppling them over, the next thing to do is to basically prune them and I think I've said about this before, it's just anything coming out at a 45 degree angle you just cut off basically, you can regrow them, yes, you can stick them in water and they will develop roots, tomatoes are so easy to regrow, to grow from cutting, you know, they're so so easy but I've got enough and I don't need any more, so I'm just going to snip them off and chuck them away really, so just to show you one more quick example while we're here, while we're doing it, so we've got the main stem, we've got the branch coming off and this is the 45 degree angle, this little guy that's sticking out like that and we just pull him out like that and what that does is that just focuses the energy on these little guys, the flowers, because we want fruit, we don't want more leaves, so you produced enough leaves mate, all right, you've got, you've done brilliant okay, but we don't need any more, relax and then the other thing that I'm going to do is start to remove some of the leaves that are lower down or are covering fruit because I've actually got tomatoes growing guys and these are my favourites, look at these ones, whenever I see something like this growing at my allotment or I manage to grow something that looks like quite impressive like this, I always feel like a real gardener, I feel really excited like I've achieved something, this is like such a sense of achievement and then I've even got some like little ones here, I've got a little vine one growing here which is so exciting, I think they're all like cherries and gardeners delights and things like that and they just look amazing, so many flowers as well, so many flowers, so basically any branches that are covering any of the fruit I'm going to remove so that the sun can get to them and they can ripen better and any lower leaves I'm going to remove as well so that they've got a bit of airflow because this has not got much airflow, they're all just kind of crashing into each other and getting annoyed and going get out the way, move, get out the way, like if tomato plants could talk they'd be having a right little paddy with each other, just yelling at each other get out the way, I'm just pulling up my turnips and my turnips actually bolted which basically means they're flowered and these were the flowers that they produced, these little delicate yellow ones which the bees really liked but they didn't last very long and they've all sort of gone to seed now so this pointing all round really weren't you guys, but yeah so I didn't get any turnips but I've just pulled some of them up and I just want to show you this the world's smallest crappiest turnip, it's so funny because this is exactly what the turnip looked like on the seed packet except that it was a lot bigger and it's just quite funny I've got the exact colours and everything, so you could say that technically I have grown a turnip, I'm pretty sure it will taste awful because the plant bolted and I think they taste funny when the plant bolts but yeah it's just quite a funny little turnip really, that's all I got this year out of that harvest, I have sown some more down there so fingers crossed I get some bigger ones that I can actually use but yeah a bit disappointing the turnips this year, they did not work at all, that's really tiny, there's another one right broad beans are going now because I think I've had enough, firstly I've had enough broad beans, I've run out of recipes, I have got recipes coming up on Thursday if you've got a glut, I'm going to harvest as many as I can and I'm going to rip the plants up because they just are looking a complete mess and I think they're just finished, so no idea what's going to go here next but there we go, we're just going to get rid of them, there we go broad beans gone, it looks so different now, so different, so funny how architectural like plants can be, it's like I've removed a piece of furniture or something, it's so funny and you can just see straight through now so hopefully I'll find something else to go there, look guys here's a caterpillar, I mean a caterpillar flower, I mean a cabbage white butterfly, he's trying to get in, this is quite good for me to observe whether he can actually get in or not, it doesn't seem able to at the moment, this is good the netting seems to be working, oh crap how did he get in, he's in, he's in, how did you get in, oh my god I've literally trapped him with what I don't want him to be with, this is insane, for god's sakes, come on get out, get out, get out, oh the cat's there too, oh god it's all kicking off, it's all kicking off, bloody butterfly, you see that rocky, he got in, he got through my net, that is ridiculous isn't it, so the net obviously, what do you want, the net obviously doesn't work then, I'm gonna have to rethink this because obviously he just got through, did you see that, that was just like magic, how did he do that, why don't you eat butterflies, no, no, no, no, not you as well rocky, no, no rocky, oh crap the cat's got in as well, the cat's got in as well, brilliant, brilliant and he's back, unbelievable, what's happening, why are you all doing this to me today, bloody cat, bloody butterfly, back off, why are you on there, get off, rocky, rocky, rocky get out, rocky's under there now, why are you under there, why has he gone under there, get out, sitting onto my net, out, out, bloody cat, rocky this is not funny, I'm going home, I'm not having this today rocky, I don't know why you're just like trampling on everything, what if I came to your cat house and started trampling on all your stuff, would you like it, no it's not nice, it's not all right, no I'm your seniority, I'm human, I've got rights, rocky, I don't know what's got into that cat today, he's being all weird, I don't understand cats, I sort of don't mind him when he's walking around but he got right under my bloody butterfly net and so did the butterfly as well, I can't believe it's advertised as a butterfly net if the so I'm off home, I hope you enjoyed the vlog today, if you did do subscribe to my youtube channel and follow me other ways down below and I will see you next time, see you hopefully Thursday for a cooking vlog but we'll see, we'll see what happens, happy gardening everyone, bye