A RELAXING DAY WEEDING / APRIL 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone and welcome back to My Allotment Diaries. My name is Emma, these are My Allotment Diaries. I'd love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and there are lots of other ways to follow me below as well which I will leave in the description box just below. First time I've been here in over a week just because it's been Easter weekend and I've done lots of family things and my light pink tulips which are planted within these dark purple ones have just started to bloom. They're a little bit later this year than they usually are and some of them have been eaten as well which is a shame. It's the first time that my tulips have ever been attacked by anything at all but they're looking so beautiful. This would definitely look even better if there weren't hundreds of weeds behind but I'm going to tackle that today but yeah absolutely stunning. These ones you can see they're starting to sort of finish already and these ones haven't even bloomed yet and I normally get them at the same time so it's quite a strange year really for tulips but yeah still so stunning. The ones that I planted behind me in pots as a bit of an experiment did not work at all and they have all died. It's definitely a phrase you'll be hearing a lot this year on my plot, they all died. Yeah just not happy. I think maybe I've just not been able to water them, they've dried out, they've just died, they've not been happy moving, I don't know, a whole host of reasons that they have just not worked at all. Don't know if they're at all salvageable at all whatsoever, I don't know, I might just leave them for the squirrels to be honest and then we'll just see what we can put in there for the rest of the year really. I'm thinking strawberries actually but then again I'm afraid they'll just dry out. I need something that's very very hardy and doesn't need much water, I don't know. This tends to be the time of year where I have to play guess the crop and guess the weed because I just allow the weeds to come up and I can't bloody remember which one's the crop and which one's the weed and here is a prime example of that. It's not the funnest game in the world I have to admit, I can sort of see, I can sort of see where they are because I've sort of sown them in a line, so like for example this here must be a weed, I hope, and this is just a random parsnip that's coming up, I don't know why that's But if you keep on top of your weeding you won't get in this situation, unfortunately I don't heed my own advice and I end up with just weeds everywhere so it's quite difficult to tell which is a crop and which is a weed so I will end up pulling something out that I shouldn't but that's life isn't it, that's just what happens. I'm giving everything water because it's been quite warm, I think I've planted beetroot over there so I'll go water that too. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to weed as much as I physically can today, I think it really just needs it now, it's been neglected for over a week in April, not the most ideal time of year to neglect your plot to be honest and now it just needs so much work so I'm going to get on with it and do some weeding. Dinging nettles, something that grows really really well on my plot, you can use this as a fertilizer, you can sort of make your own what's it called, like feed, like a feed and you put it in a bucket of water and cover it and leave it for a week and then you can use it to grow feed for your plants, you can also eat it, you can cook it, you can make nettle tea. I hate the stuff, I can't stand it at all, tried nettle tea, disgusting, tried eating it, horrible, tried making the the feed thing, stinks and didn't really do any good to my plants, I can't stand it but that's the thing you see, it's okay for me not to like stinging nettles and not want to eat them and it's okay if you do want to eat them and you do love them. People say that dandelions are really good for you as well but I don't particularly want to eat a dandelion, I give them to my guinea pig, my guinea pig loves them but that's it really and that's just the beauty of allotments, you like what you like and you learn to love what you love and hate what you hate and that's it really and that's just something that I've decided that I hate and there you go. Right, blooming knackered but I've done a really good job I think on the weeds, I've weeded most of the main beds, they're going to have things going into them pretty soon including the flower bed. You can see I've already got patches of gladioli coming up which is amazing, there's three dahlias planted at the back, we'll see if they come up or not and the calendula, I kind of let set seed last year so we'll see if any of those come up or maybe I've just pulled them all up. So again that's the game isn't it, is it a weed, is it a plant? I've got my potatoes and peas down here, peas doing okay, still alive, potatoes all coming up, you can see them even from here, amazing and then I've done this bed here with the garlic in, this bed here which is going to have my sweet corn in this year and then the pumpkin ones are done, there's Tommy trying to fix my raised beds and that's going to need another bag of compost on and then down here we've done the onions and garlic and we've also done the tulip bed down there, so a lot of weeding but I really just wanted to get it all done because the plot was just looking really messy and then tomorrow my polytunnel is coming down to the plot at long last, I didn't want to put my polytunnel out until I'm ready to plant into it and my tomatoes are quite tall now so I think they're probably ready to go outside. This is where my polytunnel is going to go, you can see where they used to be something down, it's obviously blown away, so that's where it's going to go, this is going to be a lot of work, this is going to be a full day's work tomorrow, sorting out this area for the polytunnel, tomatoes will go in there, lovely, this area here we just will not talk about ever, but this is like a reality moment of allotment plots, there you go, you're welcome. Not all allotment plots look perfect and beautiful all the time, I'd say my plot is pretty in good nick really, I've neglected it for a couple of weeks because it's been Easter but actually it's not done too badly. You alright Tom, happy? Good, and the last thing I want to check on today is my pond. You can see just how overgrown the pond becomes at this time of year, I do allow quite a lot of weeds, weeds to come up around here because it's really good coverage for animals and things, not that we actually have any animals but you know, and then we've got the irises, I can see a little bit of pond weed forming on the top, like algae stuff, but I think that will be okay, I think it'll be okay, but yeah it's looking really really lush and lovely at the moment. I mean it's the perfect place for frogs to come and hang out but they just won't hang out, it's just not the cool place to be, my pond I'm afraid, for some reason they're just not interested, I don't know, I don't know, but it is perfect for them, there's loads of hiding places and stuff so they'd love it. Put the word out guys, send the frogs, send the frogs. I am both, what is that, oh it's a bit blossom, sorry Tom, I thought it was a bug, um cloud, I am both surprised and shocked and also happy in equal measures to say that my leeks have not completely died yet, they've not completely snuffed it, which is amazing considering what I did to them, but I not completely died, I mean they're still sticking out of the ground and therefore must still be living in some sense of the word, so this is really good, I can't tell you if they'll become leeks or not because I have no idea, I'm not good at growing leeks, they just always die, but this one in particular, look, it's growing up, up, up, amazing, just when plants grow up and that's probably been a bit burnt, looks like it's been scorched by the sun, oh god, but yeah they're sort of growing up, which is amazing and obviously my row of parsnips doing really well as well, quite happy, just can't believe they've lived through what I've put them through, it just goes to show you see, if a plant wants to live it'll live, that's what they're designed to do to live, so you know, you can't muck it up too much. We're home now Tommy and I've had to change because wearing a white top to an allotment plant was just a really big no no, I don't know what I was thinking, um I wanted to come home and just show you some of the things I've got growing on my windowsill, because these are the things that are going to be going outside pretty soon, because they're getting too big basically and they're taking over the entire house, so I've got my tomatoes here which I think are doing quite well, they're very tall, very bushy, very exciting, I can't believe like the size of a tomato seed is so small and you get these massive plants out of them and these are still babies, the good thing about tomato plant is if they're looking leggy, like mine are, which is when they've got a long stem and the leaves are at the top, you can actually bury them to there and they will form roots, so it's absolutely fine, so tomato plants are just the one plant so you don't really have to worry about becoming leggy because you just bury them, um but yeah doing really really well, really really happy, um so they will need to go into my polytunnel pretty soon and then over here I've got my pumpkins and I wanted to show you these if you're following along with the pumpkin grow Jack belittles, doing okay, still quite little, this is my um patty pans, really happy, got my ukiki curry, um baby boos, got a couple coming up there, another baby boo, this one's looking actually particularly healthy I think, um another couple of jack belittles, patty pans and ukiki curry, so you can see they're getting quite big, um and a few of them are now going to need to be potted on, so I'll do a specific video on how I'm going to pot some of them on, um you know that I put only two seeds into each pot because I basically wanted to like hedge my bets really and make sure that at least one of them grew, um so now I'm going to have to pot some of them on, I am going to grow one of them in my courtyard vegetable garden which is just below us, um because I want to prove that you can grow something like a pumpkin even in a small space and actually climbing pumpkins are perfect for smaller places and and for containers as well, never grown a pumpkin in a container before but I have heard it does work and like I said the smaller variety is perfect for that, so even if you've only got a small courtyard garden I want to prove that you can grow pumpkins even if they are little ones, you can do it, um and that's what I'm going to be doing in my video for Friday, I hope you enjoyed the vlog today, sorry it's a little bit sporadic, um I've still got the kids at home so I'm like having to like look after them and stuff and do all my work as well and do the vlogs, so bear with me, bear with, bear with, um I will see you again on Friday guys and thanks for watching, subscribe to my channel, see you Friday, bye!