A MORNING AT THE ALLOTMENT PLOT / JUNE 2021 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Absolutely bursting for a wee and I'm gonna have to go in a bucket in my shed. Oh the glamour of an allotment plot. Anyway, hello, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, keeping my voice down a little bit today because there's quite a few people here. It's Wednesday, it's beautiful weather, it's about nine o'clock in the morning and it's just perfect time for allotmenting because it's gonna get too hot later. Plot's looking okay, the slugs and snails are still after my sunflowers, I don't know blooming why, but they just can't seem to leave them alone. Even now they're even bigger, you know, they're like a foot high now and the slugs and snails are still going for them so I really don't know what to do about that other than just slowly watch them die I suppose. What else can you do? Luckily everything else is sort of looking all right. I've actually sown some more sweet corn at home, I'm sure I've told you that, and I've sown some more pumpkins as well because I'm just so worried that they're all going to be eaten. Even though they're not at the moment, they're okay but I've sown some anyway just in case. Always better to just hedge your bets and just sow more I think. But yeah I'll show you around, I'll show you what's been going on. These are the marigolds that I didn't get around to sowing out, like to planting out, and look they've just been completely demolished by slugs and snails. Even though they're still in the packet and they're literally sitting on this pallet, they're all dead but the ones I actually planted are all alive. See these ones here that I planted in front of my tomato plants, they're all fine, they've all been completely left alone. So maybe that's the thing, maybe they just like to be fed, maybe they think that I was literally feeding them by giving it in a little packet and they've just left these ones alone which is excellent. But I actually didn't know they ate marigolds because I thought it just deterred all pests but obviously not slugs and snails, they'll eat anything apparently, like my husband. But yeah so I'm glad that these ones are okay though, these are doing excellent. Tomatoes are a little bit small, I'm sure they were a bit bigger this time last year but then I did think they had died and I wasn't even going to plant these out and I thought I killed that one but look I haven't. So I always think I've killed everything, if you haven't cottoned on yet then you must be new. Carrots are doing really well, this is the new rows that I've sowed and these are the old rows and they're doing great. I don't think they're ready yet but yeah they're doing good, they're doing excellent. You shouldn't do that to carrots by the way because it attracts carrot fly, I don't know why I'm doing it. But yeah they can smell carrots from ages away but this is a carrot fly resistant variety but I don't know how resistant it actually is, they say that but you know if a carrot fly wants to eat a carrot it will find the carrot. Leeks are sort of doing alright, I mean the main thing is they haven't died which is always good and there's always hope when something hasn't died, there's always hope that it will grow into something productive but they still look like strands of grass. I've never grown leeks before, sorry my shadow you can't see properly but yeah look they're all still very flimsy like little blades of grass. I've never grown them before and they didn't work for me a few times but I don't know, I think there's still hope for them, they're alive. I think this poor bee, can you see him? Oh he's gone, he's over there now. This poor bee I think is looking for the sprouting broccoli that had flowered that I've cut down. I didn't know this before but bees have actually got memories and if they like a flower and they come to it a lot they'll keep coming back to the same spot so I think a lot of the bees are coming back and like where's all the flowers gone but they were all dying you know I had to get rid of them and I have sown some cosmos there now, there's two cosmos plants and the bees will love them when they eventually get going. I've got quite a serious pest invasion on my broad beans, it's that black aphid things and they have completely smothered it and I was sort of waiting for something else to come along and eat him but nothing's coming along and eating him and now I think I'm gonna have to handle this situation on my own. I was really hoping nature would help me out but it doesn't always help you out but look at this, this is insane, look at this. They have literally covered the entire plant and every single bean that's growing is covered with these black aphid things. Look at this plant, look at this one, these are all aphids, I think that's what they're called, are they black fly or something? There's something, something not good, completely smothered, look the whole plant. It is the job I was sort of hoping to avoid firstly because it's disgusting but secondly I was really hoping there would be some ladybirds or something to come along but nothing's come along so I'm gonna have to help them out a bit or I'm gonna get no broad beans. I just wonder if I've got a cloth or something to wipe them off. Now you can spray them with soapy water, just put a little bit of washing up liquid into water and shake it up into a spray bottle and just spray it because they can't cling to the plant when it's all soapy so you can do that and I will bring some but I didn't bring any today and I need to get rid of them. I think I'm just going to put gloves on and then just manually remove them. Oh icky, oh god, get an allotment they said. Grow your own food they said, it's good for you. How is this good for me? Oh there's hundreds of them, I don't even know if this is going to work. Just covering it, absolutely covering it, I think they've claimed it. Not sure there's anything much I can do. They're literally all over it, they're under the leaves as well, they're under every single leaf. This is such a shame, this is such a shame because I feel like I'm losing an entire crop because of these tiny tiny little bloody bugs, bloody bugs. It's so frustrating because there must be a bug somewhere that this would be like dinner time, do you know what I mean? They'd be like in absolute food heaven eating all these things but where are they all? I've got enough of these bugs here, where are the other bugs? Do you know what I mean? I've said it before, I'll say it again, there should be a universal bug, just one bug to conquer them all that just eats everything, that you can just fight with one method but there's not, there's a bug for everything and the bugs that eat the bugs don't ever come, it's always the bugs that eat the bugs don't arrive at your plot, it's just like the bottom bugs, it's so annoying. I think that's just a losing battle, I'm gonna have to bring some washing up liquid tomorrow, I'll come back tomorrow and spray them all, I mean that's my only method. Why don't birds eat bugs? That's a thought. Yeah it's a losing battle, I'll bring some washing up liquid tomorrow and hope I'm not too late to save at least some of the beans because that'd be a real shame, I've been growing those since December so that would be annoying. Anyway I'm going to give everything a good feed now, I'm going to feed my pumpkins because they're very hungry plants so I'm going to give them a seaweed mix. Somebody told me ages ago that some stinging nettles are quite good to keep and that I shouldn't be chopping them all down so around my water bar I've actually left a load of stinging nettles to grow quite high for the bees and the wildlife so there you go, I do listen. It's like my little wildlife corner, mainly because I can't be bothered to chop it all down, let's just be honest about that, but that's what I say, it's a wildlife corner now, it's not laziness, it's for nature. Right, it's got a child lock on it and I can never do it. All the icky jobs at the plot today, all the disgusting jobs. The spinach that I planted here a little while ago now is doing really well and I think I actually might harvest a few leaves today just to try and encourage it to get bigger, do you know what I mean? Sometimes when you pick things it encourages them to then like have a growth spurt and keep going and it's doing really well. It's hardly been eaten at all and most of the leaves are actually fine and you can see they're quite a good size now so I reckon I could pick just a few just to have in a salad maybe for lunch but yeah it's really happy and healthy. Also just wanted to show you my spring onions because they're doing really well and I've never grown these before, I tried to grow them last year but really really late in the season and they never really got going. Gosh I'm like spinning around all over the place. Look at these, I'm so excited about these because we've really been eating a lot of spring onions recently and I really love them and they're actually looking like spring onions which is a stupid thing to say but I'm always really surprised when you sow a seed that looks nothing like the vegetable and then it grows into the vegetable but anyway or is it salad? Salad yeah but look at these, they're just looking fantastic. Oh sorry I can't get the shadows right today yeah look they're looking really good I mean this is sort of what I wanted my leeks to look like you know nice and big and pencil like and yeah they're just doing great. I could literally spend all day here just literally just sitting here just staring at it all it's just one of my favourite times of year when things start to actually get growing and they don't need constant help and you don't need to be doing sowing and planting out and stuff it's just lovely just to sit and just look at it all and I always forgot to do that last year I spent most of last year working the plot and not enough time enjoying the plot so I think I'm probably going to sit here for a little bit longer and just soak it in and just enjoy it because it just fills you up being in nature and just sitting surrounded by green stuff it just it does so much for your mental health and you don't think it will but when you get home you do realise oh that really really helped me today you know I really needed that. Don't forget to enjoy your plots especially if you're a new first time allotmenter because it's very tempting just to get stuck in and just do all the work straight away and actually it's really good just sometimes just to sit and just enjoy it enjoy the process. I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did do subscribe to my channel I'd love to have you here I'm going to be doing a few collaborations with some other allotment vloggers soon which you might recognise so subscribe and look forward to those and I will see you in my next vlog. Thanks for watching guys, bye!