TIME TO SAY GOODBYE / JUNE 2021 / 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 are new. I vlog all things to do with gardening, allotments, plants, sowing seeds, whacking it in, stuff like that. So I'd love for you to just subscribe to my channel, share it with your friends, share it on Facebook, share your favourite video, what have you. It would mean a lot to me. I'm very sweaty today, I've just walked here after the school run and it's already quite sticky and sweaty out which is good, that's what we want really, we want the good weather so I'm not going to complain. The half term is over so now I'm able to get back here more, do more vlogs, do more gardening work. I haven't been here all weekend and it's always interesting to come back and see what's happened. I can see a lot of the Californian poppies are blooming, the broad beans are doing really well, one of my pumpkins has been eaten by slugs and snails but the others are all doing very very good and loads of my sunflowers are like getting to a good height now which is excellent. So things aren't all bad now, I think we're sort of over the worst of the slugs and snails in a way. Touch wood, touch wood. I shouldn't say that, never say that in an allotment because something else will come along like the bloody fox. So I'm just gonna get out there and just see what he's doing today. Something's on my shed roof, can you hear it? It's a pigeon, it's Percy, he's back. Right, just a little overview of the plot for you. You can see that around it it's looking quite overgrown and stuff but look at the pond, that's where we want to get to. Look what's happened to my pond, all the Californian poppies are starting to come into bloom which are adding great pops of colour. I've got all the forget-me-nots down here, these are water forget-me-nots and these look like little buttercups, I don't know what they are. What is that? You all right mate? I don't know what these are but they're like little buttercups, really cute. I've also cut down a lot of these and just left a few, I don't know what they are but they are adding a lot of coverage for the pond which I'm really loving but I have just got rid of a few of them. Down here, through here, you might be able to see I've had to cut a little bit of this back and you can see my calendulas all coming up here. I planted some calendula seeds from my flowers from last year, I collected the seeds and they're doing really well and then you can see in the pond everything just doing great, just looking big and happy. Still no frogs but you can't have it all, you can't have it all and I'm just so happy that the pond is looking so established and so pretty and this is the kind of time of year where it really comes into its own, it just looks beautiful and that's good enough for me to be honest, no more complaining about frogs because to be honest if they don't want to come here I think they're mad frankly. This is my three sisters bed where I've done sweet corn courgettes and runner beans together, all at completely the wrong time but there we go, I've actually started a new batch of sweet corn at home, it's my fourth attempt to grow bloody sweet corn because it's just not cooperating with me for some reason but I have started a new batch because some of these are just not looking that healthy. Though having said that they are alive and you know what, if they're alive there's hope, there's always hope when they're alive but yeah I don't know what these are, I think these are nerines coming through in the middle, I need to get rid of those really but yeah like I said I've planted some more and the courgette's doing okay I think, I'm just going to leave them, some of the leaves are being eaten but the majority of them are okay, some of them are going yellow but then some of them are bright green so I'm just not going to panic about them, I think courgettes are pretty easy and then in the corners to deter slugs and snails I actually planted loads of nasturtiums and they've all decided to come up and so I've got one, two, someone's dug that one out, brilliant, thank you foxy, four, five, fox obviously didn't want six, no wait that was four, that's four, did I count that right? One, two, three, four, I meant to say four and this should have been number five but obviously foxy's got a problem with odd numbers and decided to take care of that one for me and I'm sure it is a fox, it's probably one of the fox family so that's fine, okay I've got four, I'm sure four would be enough, I'm really glad I left all these Californian poppies around the place because they're great for pollinators and if I can get pollinators there then hopefully they'll come here once the flowers are in bloom so that's excellent, garlic looks great it's probably ready to pick soon but the problem is is because I'm growing garlic here the slugs and snails are leaving the pumpkins alone so I sort of don't want to remove them now, I'm sort of worried that once I remove the garlic you know slugs and snails will be like oh grubs up, you know food time so I don't really want to do that yet but yeah they are probably ready to pick because the leaves are starting to go a bit brown, maybe I'll pull one up, should we pull one up? I'll dig it, this is definitely not ready yet it really smells of garlic, I always find it really strange when like plants actually smell like the plants that you buy in the shops even though it's a really weird thing to say, yeah it's far too small I wonder if I could just plant that again, I might just plant it again and see what happens, bloody ages garlic didn't they, I'm just going to replant it, nothing happened, nobody will ever know unfortunately my broccoli, oh hello, were you on my roof earlier too? I bet you were, where's the bleeding fox when you need him? unfortunately my broccoli which I've allowed to flower for the bees has finished and I know it's finished because it looks like that now and that's not something I want it to look like so I'm going to take them out now and I've got some brussel sprouts to go here but they're not quite big enough yet because I put my cabbages out quite early and this is what's happened to my cabbages, they've sort of been demolished by slugs and snails, I think they'll be okay I think some of them will be okay, that one over there probably not yeah I've learnt my lesson and with the brussel sprouts I'm going to wait for them to be quite big before I put them out give them a bit of a chance but I'm going to pull all that down now always a bit sad when a plant comes out that's that big you know because it's sort of earned its place and it's massive but it really is done, it's been in since last March I think and I'm not growing it this year, I'm growing brussel sprouts instead right I'm going to trim back these tulips as well, give me a bit of space now because all of the leaves have all died back look at this little geyser, where does he think he's going Nene? quick, he's very slowly getting away, sorry mate, don't want your kind around here, where was I, oh yeah wild rocket because it is delicious first and foremost and secondly I'm going to allow it to flower because it's really good for wildlife and also the flowers are edible and absolutely delicious and because it's such a shallow rooted crop I don't think it'll affect the tulip bulbs at all so we're going to put some wild rocket in, right these seeds are going to be flipping tiny aren't they, I can feel it there's 3 000 seeds in there god 3 000 seeds why would I need 3 000 plants right okay yeah they're minuscule oh my god they're the smallest seeds I've ever seen in my life oh my gosh look at those, cute well I've way over saved that my god so I guess we'll have about a thousand rocket plants that is impossible to sow thinly that is mental, right last job of the day at the weekend I went to the garden centre and I brought a couple of trays of marigold flowers you can grow these from seeds but I just find it really hard to grow flowers from seeds as you can see with the zinnias all being eaten and these were only a couple of quid each and I'm going to plant them sorry I'm going to plant them around my tomato plants because they make a really good companion plant for tomatoes because they ward away they keep away whitefly and because they don't like the smell of them I don't know if you've ever smelt marigold flowers but they've got quite a distinctive smell and lots of pests don't like it so I'm going to plant some around my tomatoes as a companion plant that's what I'm going to do right I hope you enjoyed the vlog today there's so much to do now I think I'm just a little bit surprised that things aren't as big as I thought they would be I think last year everything was quite big but then we've had quite a difficult spring haven't we so things are starting to catch up now and I'm quite happy with it I'm feeling quite positive about the plot today which is excellent I hope you all had a really nice week and I will see you again in my next vlog which will hopefully be soon so do subscribe to my channel if you are new thank you for all your comments I will do my absolute best to reply to them all and I'll see you next time thanks for watching