DIRECT SOWING BEETROOT / APRIL 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I would love for you to subscribe to my channel if you're new. I put up everything to do with allotments and this year I'm growing my very own pumpkin arch, which I'm doing a bit of a grow along with you so you can grow your own pumpkin arch and you can find those videos. I'll link the first pumpkin arch video below, well I think I've got two up haven't I, and then I'm going to be doing some more so you can grow along with me which is really exciting. If you want to grow a pumpkin arch of course, if you don't it's probably the most unexciting thing you've ever heard. Sorry for the lack of video on Monday, it's actually Easter half term right now. My kids are at their grandparents on the Isle of Wight which means that Dave and I are alone and I've decided to do some decorating in the house. I've been decorating my daughter's bedroom which has been all consuming really I have to say, but the weather's so nice and I just wanted to get down here this morning so I thought I'd film a little cheeky vlog. Right there's a couple of jobs I want to do today and just get things organised. This is kind of a funny time of year actually in April, I think to be honest this is probably the time of year that a lot of first time allotment holders start to give up or get really panicky because I think your plot can go very quickly from looking quite organised and neat over the winter when you've sort of done all the new raised beds and stuff to all of a sudden bursting kind of like overflowing with weeds and looking really quite shabby and I'm going to show you mine and prove it to you. So on the whole I would say that my plot looks relatively okay I think you'd probably agree with that but then we start to look a bit closer and you can see all the weeds starting to come up which is sort of happening in almost every bed. This is a no-dig bed and this is doing significantly better I have to admit but then look around my pumpkin arch can you see what I mean by it's all starting to look a little bit dishevelled a little bit sad and then the back is sort of starting to grow as well. I think it can feel quite off-putting actually at this time of year when you come here and it's like this and this will be an ongoing thing now so you just have to keep on top of weeding and my first job of the day is going to be a little bit of weeding but I'm not going to tackle all of it in one go because all that will happen is that I'll become really annoyed with it and bored of it so I'm going to do one bed at a time so this time when I'm here I'm going to do this bed here just under this pumpkin arch. So all of these weeds here I'm going to take up today and then I'm going to leave it. Most of these weeds are just pulling out really easily but some of them I know I've got to be a bit careful with because they are what is known as perennial weeds which means that they will come back year after year if I don't get all the root out so this one over here for example the little dandelion flowers and things this is a perennial plant and it means that it will just keep growing back year after year if you don't get all the root system out so I have to be really careful with this one and this is what happens to the flowers they turn into these things that you blow as a kid and they spread all around your allotment so you've got to get all of that out also I don't know if you knew this but on dandelion plants you can eat the roots you just um I think you just boil them and you can actually eat them they're supposed to be really good for you you can make dandelion root tea and stuff like that I mean I'm not getting because it sounds disgusting but my guinea pig might like that um I think I've got all that out but I'm just going to check because the roots go down really deep that's a different way there that's that one I think I got it all I think I got it all yeah that's where one of my pumpkins is going to sit just there right there we go it's taken me about 25 minutes to do this little bit of a bed here and if I just every time I come do 25 minutes on a different part of my plot eventually it will all be weeded and by the time I get around to the first bed again it'd be full of weeds but you know it's an ongoing process isn't it what I really want to do to this bed is mulch it over with a big fresh bag of compost and create more of a no dig kind of bed because I do think it does keep the weeds down and I don't want to keep digging in it all the time definitely looks a bit more with it now doesn't it and those big perennial weeds are out which are the most important ones to get out and then I reckon a great big bag of mulch over this and then this area is sort of ready for pumpkins I'm going to put one two three pumpkins in there three on the other side happy days brought with me today some beetroot to sow which is this one looks like that basically it looks like pretty normal beetroot I'd have to say not an exciting one or anything it's called Detroit 2 Crimson Globe and it came through with Kitchen Garden Magazine so I'm going to sow some of these directly into one of my beds I'm actually going to try and sow as much as I can this year in at home in the greenhouse first and then plant it out when it's a little seedling or a plant and that's just because I had such a big slug and snail problem last year I'm trying to not direct sow so I've already sown some of these in modules at home but I thought I'd just whack some out because I've got loads left and I thought if they do work at this time of year that'd be great so I'm going to whack them in one of my beds that's what we're going to do now the bed that I've chosen is just behind where the pumpkins are going to be but hopefully the beetroot will sort of be thriving by the time the pumpkins go in and hopefully I'll have a harvest before then anyway but I just want to show you the difference because I have no dug no diggity one side of this bed and the other side has been left and I want to show you the difference so this side of the bed has had diggity I haven't done anything to it and this side of the bed has had a layer of cardboard down topped with some compost so it's a no dig bed officially and you can see the difference now the weeds are coming up this one has just got absolutely no weeds it's a little bit dry it's a lot a bit dry and this one's probably more moist but yeah you can see the difference I would absolutely love for my entire plot to be no dig the only thing is it's so expensive and I haven't mastered my own compost yet so it's just a really difficult thing to do when you've got quite a big plot but I'm getting round to it and I'm really impressed with the beds that are no dig so first thing I'm going to do is water this because it's too dry to put seeds in of course now it's too bleeding wet to put seeds in isn't it I have to wait for it to soak in a little bit so I'll just sort of sit here and stare at the tulips for a bit I suppose Rocky come on I'm trying to stop doing Rocky I'm trying to my camera hey it's always got to get involved isn't it always got to get involved Rocky Rocky not in there not in there no no no no out out out that's my turnips get out out Rocky Rocky I'm not playing anymore come on shoot bloody cat bloody cat Rocky come on I've got things to do rocks oh naughty you're so naughty get out of it right he's just gonna eat all this no no it's not food it's beetroots Rocky get out of it shoot seeds don't eat it stop stop stop everything is a game Rocky what's it doing Rocky I'm sowing these a little thicker than I want to because I think they won't grow do I seem like an animal person have I ever enticed Rocky and made him feel like I'm a person to be around you know what I mean obsessed right okay I need to take some staples home better just check on my turnips actually because he was just walking all over them um I think they are still growing and I think the slug defences is working I put down these slug things these like little pellets um and let's have a look there they are these are turnips that are planted I'm gonna have to um oh gosh pull some of these up I think but yeah some of them have been eaten by slugs but I think I've got enough to actually get a couple of oh no wait this whole row's gone there's only a couple left in this row all right not to worry I've still got this row left so there's still hope for the turnips I might actually replant them I think you can do that I might try and do that now actually just re dot them along but then they're quite protected here in numbers aren't they it's quite hard to tell what to do I might leave them a little bit longer because I think they're quite protected in numbers like that um slugs don't seem to have gone for that little patch so I'll leave them to grow a bit longer and then what I might do is replant them so I've got more basically but they're doing all right so got a few early potatoes coming up out of the ground over here which is exciting I've already earthed them up once so I'm just going to leave them to grow now I think um but there's a couple coming up I know what they look like because I've got them growing in buckets at home so it's this one here that one there that one there so exciting times I have actually given a few of my smaller seedlings of water at the moment just because they dry out very very quickly in their heat and the sun and it is like 21 degrees today so um they're going to dry out quite quickly a lot of them I haven't bothered to water but just some of the smaller ones I have but I just want to show you my turnip my parsnips even turnips have shown you and my leeks as well turnips doing really well and parsnips oh my god I keep calling turnips I'm so sorry guys please don't die on me because of that that is not a reason to die um yeah they're doing really well I can see the rows really clearly I mean that's fantastic this is another no dig bed by the way no weeds um and then my leeks that I sort of gave a haircut they're sort of still sticking up and because they're sticking up right I think they've still got a chance of living do you know what I mean I think if it's sticking up like that then it's probably alive if it's flopped over like this see that one's probably dead because it's like flopped or maybe it's not and then maybe it just got stuck why do they get stuck like that you need so much human help you do you're a plant sort it out anyway yeah I thought I'd just show you those because they're doing really well as well um and this is my sort of miscellaneous bed where I don't really know what to plant in here but everything that I have put in there has done really well so yeah just need to get a couple of bags of compost I think and just do a couple of no dig beds because I really just I really just do believe in no diggity it's just brilliant isn't it right that's me today um I'm off home now to feed the rabbit um and make sure that he hasn't peed all over the sofa again which he seems to do they say you can litter train house rabbits I don't know how because mine is not litter train but then he's not been neutered yet because he's only four months old um so hopefully after he gets neutered he will just magically start peeing in his litter tray anyway um I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did subscribe to my channel I'll try and have one up for Friday as well and um yeah happy gardening everyone and and um have a nice rest of the week see you later