FIGHTING THE HEAT / JUNE 2021 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I'd love for you to follow along, subscribe to my channel. I put up all kinds of videos about my allotment plot and my back garden at home. We're in June so things are really starting to grow. It's another really really hot day here. I am sweating, like I've literally just walked here and I'm sweating. So I do need to get things watered ASAP and also fill up my pond, though we are due some rain towards the end of the week so I'm not panicking too much. If things can just hold on a little bit longer they'll get some rain, so that'd be good. I wanted to show you my pumpkins quickly because they're doing really well on one side and not so well on the other side. I don't really know what's going on with them, but anyway here they are. On this side they seem to be doing amazing. So these are mini pumpkins, they're Baby Boo and Jack Be Little, so they're like tiny tiny little cute pumpkins. I've got three planted and they're all doing really well on this side. It might have something to do with the fact that that is garlic and I think it's warded off these slugs and snails, so these have not been attacked at all. Not one leaf has been bitten and I think it's thanks to the garlic. Also I've got some nasturtium here now which I'm hoping will just sort of like act as a sacrificial plant. So that side is doing really great, brilliant. This side they just seem really small. They have been attacked a couple of times but I've managed to sort of ward them away a little bit, but they're just not getting any bigger. So you can see immediately in comparison with the other side, this one is tiny and it's still alive, still growing. These are runner beans that I've had to whack in because one of them got eaten and this one here, again it's just quite small. So I'm just wondering if it was the slug attack that just made a massive difference, but anyway I've brought with me two more pumpkins that I've sown and I'm going to sow them on this side, the side that's not doing very well and hope that maybe they'll get going now better, I don't know. So I'm going to whack those out first. It's funny as well because the side that they're not doing very well in is the side that I put a load of manure and brand new compost on and cardboard, so this is the side that's actually had the better soil. At least I thought that was the case. That side I've done nothing to and they're growing better so maybe I just shouldn't bother in future. I don't know, all that hard work, for what? You might have noticed me then, I just ripped out the runner beans because they've just been eaten by slugs and snails and they're covered in little black flies as well, and I didn't really want them there. I want pumpkins up the archway, I don't want bloody runner beans. I've got runner beans over there and at home, so they're out now. I don't know if they're going to be eaten by snails probably, but one of them might survive. Always better to plant more than you think you need because one might survive. Hopefully they'll get going now and just like the other side and they'll go all the way up this archway. It'd be really pretty. Don't ask me why they're not growing and the other ones are, I really don't bloody know. I'm sure they do it to annoy me sometimes. This plot just tests me all the time, it's like a test of character constantly. My salad bowl, my salad wheelbarrow is a complete bloody disaster because I didn't water it for like literally two days in hot weather. Everything's bolting and it's all just dying. All the lettuce is just wilting and dying, you can see it doesn't look healthy anymore and then this beetroot here, look it's trying to bolt. Bolting means that it tries to flower and it flowers and then it produces seed which then it thinks it's dying basically and it panics and makes a flower. It's not good, it means the plant is under extreme stress and it thinks it's about to die. So I'm just going to pick that flower off. I can't pick it bloody off, I'm going to have to cut it off in a minute. I can't pick it off and just hope that I can save them but I thought my biggest concern with this wheelbarrow would be that it wouldn't have good enough drainage and it would stay too wet and actually the biggest problem I've had with it is that I haven't been here to water it and it's all got too dry so you live and you learn. Anyway it was a nice idea but it's just not very practical for an allotment plot when I'm not here every day. I might still get some beetroot. I'll keep watering it now. Hopefully the rain will rescue it a little bit. Stop bolting. Nobody panics. Do you see me panicking? I'm not panicking. Why are you panicking? It's going to be all right. Stramax. You know that horrible feeling you get when you think that you've planted stuff too close together and you've grossly misunderestimated how big something's going to get. That's exactly what I've done with these cabbages. I don't know if they are cabbages or if they're cauliflower actually. I can't remember what I believe I planted because I didn't label it but I've got a feeling I planted them too close together. I don't know if that's going to be a problem or not. I don't know. They might survive close together like this. They seem quite happy so I don't know. They've got a lot of holes in the leaves. I think something's eating them. Some snail. Oh my goodness there he is. Look they're just camping out in here. I don't know if you can see because of the camera but look there he is. He's just camping out in my blooming in my blooming cabbage bed or whatever it is. This is the root of all my problems this year. This right here. Yeah you heard me. Someone told me that if you throw them they find their way back to the plot but hopefully it'll take a few days so I'm just going to throw them. There it's gone. There's slugs in here and everything. They're hiding out in here. This is a little party. They found a little party where I haven't seen them. All these horrible things. Oh there's a slug there. I don't like slugs. Oh god there's a bloody slug. I think I'll do one. You're not just sitting in here are you? Look at that. You're just chilling out in my bloody cabbage bed. Hello. Hi. You look so hungry. I don't have anything. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi. Oh you're so... Yeah. Look guys I'm getting braver. I'm stroking a cat. Oh god. Oh god. It looks really thin. Someone said when it does that it wants to be stroked but I'm a bit scared of it. I know it's okay. Okay. Do you think he's sick? Oh god is it another sick animal that's found me? I'm a little bit scared of it when it does that. All right see you later. Yeah I didn't have... I did have a can of tuna but I don't know where it is. Let me have a look for tuna. Feeding all the bleeding animals again. Why does this keep happening to me guys? Why do they keep turning up here? I thought I had some tuna for it from when it came back. I must have got hungry and eaten it. Does it eat bird food? No it can't eat bird food. It's a cat. I ain't got nothing for it. I don't have anything. Sorry. Ladies and gentlemen these animals. These animals are drawn to me and I'm so bloody scared of them. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know why they keep being so drawn to me. I'm not exactly like warm to them. Do you know what I mean? Sweet corn in this bed is doing amazing. Which I rarely get to say at this pool that anything's doing amazing. But it's doing really well considering it was like flopping over when I planted it in. It's really big now. It's really tall. All of them are just looking amazing and the ones I planted at home are all germinating really well. So I've got loads more to come in this bed and they're going to go where the tulips are. I do need to get rid of these tulips sooner rather than later. I think I can probably wait till next week and I'm really hoping they just start to die down because obviously this year the tulips are taking longer because they flowered for longer. They're taking longer to die back. But I really need the space. So if they don't die back by next week I'm just going to have to yank them all out because I want this whole bed to be sweet corn basically. They need a bit longer. I really want them to come back next year as well so the best thing to do is to let the green die down to feed the bulb. But I just want them gone now. I'm just done with them. I need sweet corn out here now. You need to hurry up and die. I never thought I'd say that in my plot but you need to hurry up and die because you don't have tons to do. I think watering is my number one main job at the moment. It's probably yours too. And picking sweet peas whenever they flower because they're just giving me so many this year which is amazing. So I'll be back again maybe this week, maybe next week. I don't know. I'm going to be planting out my sweet corn and also some okra which I've never planted before. But I think that will be really interesting and I have a collaboration coming up shortly for you. We are going to get filming that soon so stay tuned for that and I'll see you in my next vlog guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.