A DAY POTTERING IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN / MAY 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Morning everyone, welcome to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I would love you to follow my YouTube channel for lots of allotment tips and inspiration and probably more what nots to do's than what to do's, that didn't make sense but I think you know what I'm saying. There are lots of other ways to follow me just below as well in the description bar so go and check it out, go and check it out. Not my finest intro but there we go it is what it is. I'm just staking my tomatoes in here which didn't die overnight, always a good thing when a plant doesn't die overnight and you've just put it in. I know a lot of you are quite nervous about putting out these sort of like semi hardy annuals, such a child and yeah a lot of you are quite worried about putting these out. I always used to get really nervous about putting plants like this out because I was convinced that they would just die straight away, like just plonk them in the ground dead and sometimes they do do that but this time they haven't and I think the point is you just need to whack it out because plants want to grow. Thank you for all the tomato advice as well, there is so much tomato advice out there like you can grow tomatoes in like a thousand different ways I think. This is just the way that I've done it, I know I've gone through the cardboard, I know I haven't planted them deep enough but you know what with tomatoes normally they just survive so fingers crossed they'll survive. There we go so you can see they're all staked now so hopefully they'll grow up stakes. Like I said last time I did do string with them but I just felt that the string went a bit loose and tomatoes are quite big heavy plants especially when they get all their tomato fruit on them so you've got to sort of stake them really well I think. A lot of you also mentioned about the fact that I put this weed membrane down means that there's not a lot of um I'm like wasting a lot of space around I think I will probably put some things like marigolds in and stuff like that around it and maybe even some basil because basil grows really well with tomatoes and I will do that I'll just cut more holes that's what I'll do so definitely feels a little bit odd cutting holes in order to plant something but I really just think this will keep the weeds away and at the back of my plot here there's just so many weeds so fingers crossed and then we'll see how this goes without it really. It's all one big experiment gardening anyway isn't it so we'll see how it goes it's really hot in here and I'm getting a lot of flies as well like a lot of flies um a lot of people saying to put sticky stuff in here to catch the flies but I don't really want to catch them like I just want them to go do you know what I mean like I don't want like a fly I don't know like a fly massacre there's just loads of them they just love it in here they just love it I don't think they'll damage the plants if they do start to damage the plants then I'll I'll have something to say about them then. We had rain yesterday for the first time in a long time I think it's been one of the driest aprils in the UK on record but we actually got rain last night a really good amount as well so everything just has just been doing really well everything looks really happy and healthy do you know what I mean and these peas have really shot up I think it's probably the rain that's done it unfortunately all the weeds have also popped up but we'll have to sort those out that's just part of life I'm afraid but yeah finally I feel like the peas are finally getting off getting off the starting starting spot whatever it's called the starting step but yeah they're really really like going for it now and they're getting really tall and they look a little bit healthier I always say a lot of like growing your own is basically slug and snail like protection and just protecting your plants and stuff and but it's like when they're the smallest that's when you have to protect them as soon as they get going they can sort of withstand a little bit of attack so doing really well now I just wanted to show you this prime example of a piece of bindweed and what bindweed actually does and if you have it your allotment pot it's a pain in the neck you have to get rid of it because it just kills your plants so you might be able to see how the bindweed has just literally wrapped itself around this pea plant and that's what bindweed does it uses other plants to pull itself up wraps itself around the plant strangling it and it tries to get up towards the light and take over the whole plant so it'll just strangle and smother the plant basically see never be fooled into thinking the plant world is kind or like just beautiful and pretty it's not there's a really deep dark evil like underground world to the the world of plants excuse the pun in that i'm sure there's a pun somewhere as soon as the sun comes out all the tools come out don't they all the power tools god sakes i believe this here is californian poppies and i'm inclined to leave them alone because they are beautiful flowers i planted them a couple of years ago and now they're just popping up everywhere they're a bit weedy really because they just grow anywhere but they're really good for bees i think that's what this is i'm pretty convinced that this is basically yeah it is look i can see that's the flower that is the flower yeah brilliant so i'm going to leave that it's californian poppies there that's a really good bunch i might take these ones up though because these are in the middle of my turnips which are doing really well i might have to thin these i'm not very good at thinning things that's the thing the thing is i'm not good at thinning but i really think they need thinning if they're going to turn into turnips because turnips need quite a lot of room um i'm going to try and thin them ie kill them so i think we're turnips they're about that big i think like that big so i think they probably need like that much room in between each one that's the logic anyway so what we'll do is we'll just start i hate doing this i feel like i'm killing them i mean i am technically i am killing them because i'm pulling them out and saying you're in the wrong place sorry mate you're dead it's quite cruel world i say plants can be cruel but we can be quite quite cruel to them as well i think i think you can replant them when you pull them up and if you pull them up with all the roots i know they don't like the roots being disturbed and they might die but i might just try and replant a couple i don't feel like being a mass murderer today somehow like intentionally you know sometimes it happens i just realized i don't have a working shovel so i have to work with what we've got so what i do have is this so we're gonna have to work with this all right so think about it so that's there that's a weed you're a weed mate you're out of here somebody told me that this is actually a trowel not spade but i called it a spade because it's just like you know what i'm saying when i say spade don't you i'm saying this but with a handle normally it would have a handle i broke it all right that's quite a good root system so maybe i can replant that i've got quite a few roots on that so i'm wondering if i can replant it that's the idea now i mean they'd probably die but if i was a doctor in hospital and i was like operating on someone i wouldn't be like oh you'll probably die we won't bother you know i'd probably just do it anyway so that's what i'm doing really not that i'm a doctor but i do have these plants lives in my hands so we're quite similar really just thought i would show you that my dahlias are coming back up i didn't dig them up last year because i couldn't be bothered to be honest and i thought i'd kill them and so what i did was i mulched them instead and now they're starting to grow again so it definitely worked they're doing the same thing in my back garden at home as well so this one's coming up and then just over here through all the weeds this one's coming back up too which is really good and then i did have a third one but i can't see that one just yet there's still hope though because these two have come up amazing so healthy as well i think dahlias get bigger every year as well so they're going to be some big plants i've only got three in here and i think that'd be plenty and then all my gladiolus are coming up at the front as well which is so beautiful and these are definitely multiplying every year they're just i'm just getting more and more um but yeah they're fantastic i've got so many of them coming up all along the front here so could do with the weed but it's going to be beautiful right that's me done today so i'm going to be heading home now i hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did do subscribe to my youtube channel and i will be back again on monday with another exciting allotment update um i'm going to be planting out my pumpkins next month next week as well and so stay tuned for that if you're following along with my grow a pumpkin archway um and if you want to whack them out this weekend feel free it's now may it's beautiful weather hopefully we're going to be on the up with the temperatures so feel free to whack everything out now guys don't be afraid and i will see you again on monday see you next week guys bye