BUILDING A BEAN STRUCTURE / MARCH 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Hello everybody, welcome to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries, it's happening right now, you're watching one. I hope you enjoy them and if you do enjoy them please subscribe to my YouTube channel and come and follow me on Instagram, come follow my blog. I'm also, I'm always putting up really good blog posts about, basically I'm trying to explain what I'm doing at the plot but in a more coherent way and the written word seems to be a little, like come out a little bit less jumbled like, well you can probably tell right now my words are coming out a bit jumbly, this is no gardeners world. But what it is, is a very real representation of a human being taking on a piece of land from my council, an allotment plot, and attempting to actually grow their own food and flowers and things. So that's what this is, it's very real, I like to document the highs, the lows, the ins, the outs, the ups and downs and all the roundabouts as well. So if you enjoy them, like I said, do subscribe to my channel. We're here today and I've got a couple of jobs that I want to do. The first thing I want to do is check if any of the seeds are coming up, because I have actually scattered quite a few seeds recently, even though I keep telling you all not to do it. And that's the thing, is that I will say one thing and do the other, because I'm just a human being and unlike birds, I've got many many flaws. Birds, they seem perfect don't they? They're so perfect birds, like they just know exactly what they're doing and they get up in the morning and they eat worms and they go to bed. But obviously human being lives are a lot more complicated than that. So anyway, let me check on the seeds. It's always like this by the way, just absolute rambling, incoherent crap, so welcome. I can't believe I can remember where I planted any of them, can I? I think I planted some turnips and carrots under here and I'm not expecting them to be up yet, because I think I literally just did that the other day, didn't I? But let's have a look anyway. I'm searching for signs of life, we can't see any right now. Actually, you know what, I can see a little bit, but I think they're all weeds. I don't think there's any carrots coming up just yet, and definitely no turnips. What's that? What's that? Oh, it's a bit string. Sorry folks, thought that was going to be something really interesting then, like a snail poo or something, but unfortunately it's a bit string. No, I didn't expect those to be up just now, that's a shame. Anyway, the garlic next to it is doing fantastically. I really should weed this bit actually, I think I might actually just weed it quickly now so that you can actually see it looking nice, but yeah, this garlic is fantastic and it has survived pretty much a frost bomb, which is an alternative way of saying really, really hard frost. Also the storms as well, I've had two storms and everything, it's just survived the whole thing and now it's actually thriving, I actually can't believe it. I actually might get to harvest garlic this year, I mean only a few, I should have planted more really, I didn't realise they'd do so bleeding well, to be honest, otherwise I would have planted up the whole plot of garlic. Hello, hi, hello. Who are you up to today? I haven't seen you for ages. Yeah, are you going to walk all over my garlic now? Oh, look at it. Why do you have to go in there? Why have you got to go in there? You don't have to go, you don't have to go in the garlic, do you? Hey, yeah, I just haven't seen you for a while, be careful, it's not very safe, my plot, Rocky, it's not very safe, my plot. Oh god, it's got to get involved, didn't it? Right, anyway, I was going to say, I'm going through these weeds on here and I think in terms of weed selection, so if you can't be bothered to weed, like me, the ones that you should be doing are perennials, like this one, which is the one that guinea pigs like, you know, the dandelion-y ones, like that, and they're perennials and that means that the roots are really deep and if you just pull the top off, like I always do, they will grow back because the roots will grow back. Rocky, it's not a toilet, but the other little ones you can kind of leave or you can just cover or whatever, this is not a no-dig bed, that's why I've got weeds, but I think I've got some Californian poppies coming up, so this here, I believe, is a Californian poppy and I think that one is as well and I always get these confused with carrots when they first come up because they do look very much like carrots, oh here, look, can you see the little ones there? These ones, they're Californian poppies and I always think they're carrots when they come up, but they're flowers and I planted these purposely by my pond about two years ago and now every year they just come up everywhere and they've just floated into all the other beds because the flowers are quite floppy and they float in the wind, so I'm guessing they just scatter their seeds everywhere and now they come up everywhere. I am going to leave some of them because they are great for bees and they bring all the pollinators in, but yeah, they have become a little bit of a nuisance, so if you're thinking about scattering Californian poppies, just be warned that they will overtake your entire plot and garden. There you go, that's my warning. This is where I planted my parsnips in this bed and I conveniently put two little sticks to show where the rows were so that I would know if it's a weed or not. I don't know, maybe it is a weed, I don't know, but I think I've got a couple coming up. This could be, this could be a piece of grass or it could be a parsnip. There, in there, there's a bit green, that could be a piece of weed, grass or it could be a parsnip. We won't know until much, much later on, but anyway, I don't think much is going to grow in this weather. Everything I put in was an experiment anyway. I've got an idea of something to do today because over here, basically, I've got these pallet things that I painted pink and said I'm going to put pots in them with pretty things and I'm going to put pretty things in them today. So these were basically, because I made this fence, I was worried that no one would be able to see it because it's quite invisible really, it's like it's camouflaged in. I didn't want people falling over it, so I put these pink pallet things here and here and the idea was I was going to use pots and sort of slot the pots in and have pretty flowers and things. So I'm going to dig up a few of the tulips and put them in. I don't know if you can dig tulips up, I mean you can dig tulips up, you can dig anything up if you want, but I don't know if they live when you dig them up, but there's only one way to find out and I ain't got anything else to put in them and I can't bother to go and buy flowers now because it's so expensive and I just don't want to spend money. So I need a spade or shovel, whatever you call it, someone's, I think it's a spatula, is it a spatula? No, it can't be a spatula. A troll or something? Anyway, this thing is really good for digging and I'm going to use this. Oh, does it really matter what the names are of things? Like seriously, does it actually really matter what the names are? Right, so I've got some pots up here. I'm trying to keep all the pots circular. It's got some kind of structure and we'll just whack them in. Why is this so bleak and complicated? I thought this would be the easiest thing I could possibly do. That's actually quite easy. Right, okay. Oh, there's a worm in there now. Enjoy it little buddy. I don't know if that will live. I don't know if that will die. And there's a worm in it, so that might help it out. I don't really know how. There's weeds in it too. Sort of is what it is. If that blooms and turns into a tulip, you know, I have all pretty tulips along the front of my plot. I think that'll look quite nice. I'm going to keep doing it. What do you think? No one else is doing things like you are. Why am I the only one jumping up and down on the soil and spinning around? Like, how do people do things without doing things like that? Anyway, I'll just carry on because no one's here to watch, except all of you. It's amazing how strong just a bit of dirt can be. Who needs concrete when you've got dirt? That's what I say. Builders and architects, that's who. And building control. So you know, this is no kind of tutorial. It's why I'm not talking about it, because I don't want people to copy what I'm doing. Everything I build here falls down. It doesn't even need a storm or wind or anything to bring it down. It just falls down. But Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm sure that they made loads of mistakes when they were building buildings. You know, I'm sure they built a building and it kept falling down. They were like, why does this keep falling down? I'm just doing the same thing. I'm just learning. You know, I'm just checking it out, figuring it out, tying it to string, tying it to wire. You know, that's just what you do. It's called trial and error. It's called being an idiot. Right. Behold the beginning of the bean structure. I've decided not to go with the supports this year. I'm being a rebel. I've just dug them in really deep. When I say really deep, I mean like not as deep as they should be. I've got this pole across here to keep them aligned with one another or something, some other fancy word. And then what I'm going to do is put netting across here and the beans will grow up the netting and I will eat them. And that is my bean structure. Pretty happy with that, actually. I'm just going to get the netting and fix that up. And then that's my beans done. So brilliant. Great. Because that part of the plot was looking really messy and sort of like I didn't know what to do with it all. And since my sweet pea archway fell down, I was just feeling a little bit deflated. But I'm going to get another cheap archway from Wilko's to go here for my sweet peas. So this will be my sweet pea archway just across here and the pumpkin one down there. Beans on the left, sweet corn on the right. Everybody's all right. My next job here will be to support the broad beans. I've ordered some more twine for that, so I'll have to twine them up a little bit. I'll show you the technique for that because I've been Googling it and also finish the pots down there because I've still got some more pots to do and finish my bean structure as well. And yeah, things are coming together. Things are feeling a little bit more together on the plot now and things are starting to grow. Oh, Robin's back. Yeah, if you've seen the worms, the worms come up. So just a little bit of pottering around on the plot today. That was the video really. I hope you enjoyed it. I've got to get home to my new bunny rabbit now. We've got a rabbit, a house bunny, and I'm trying to litter train it so that it can basically have full reign of the downstairs of the house. He doesn't like being cooped up at all, so I need to get home and let him out for the rest of the day now. I hope you enjoyed the vlog. If you do, do subscribe and I hope that these are everything that you're hoping they will be because I'm just literally coming down here and just figuring out what to do and generally pottering about on the plot and that's just what I do. So like I said, I hope you enjoy them and I will see you in my next vlog which will be on Friday. So I'll see you Friday guys. Bye!