ABSOLUTE DISASTER! / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / JUNE 2021

Good morning guys, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I've come back to the plot today after about four or five days of being away and during that time we had really nice weather which means that my plot is now completely overgrown mess and I am just gutted. So I have my Covid vaccination and my arm is absolutely killing me. I had the Pfizer one which is notorious for making your arm really sore for a few days and I've just got back here and the plot has just been like, it's just like a jungle and I can't believe that in four days of nice weather it's turned into this and my arm hurts so much I don't know how much I'm going to be able to do. It's just devastating. Yeah they say to stay on top of it otherwise it gets on top of you but oh my god and one of my pumpkins has been eaten by a slug or a snail or both. This one in the middle is no more. It's so sad, it's so annoying. I've still got the two there so what I'll do is I'll put some runner beans in the middle and the three over there are still okay. Some of the sunflowers are gone, the cabbages are just demolished. So annoying. Oh someone's pulled that off but Sally's disintegrating into nothing. Sorry Sally. Look under here, look at that. They're being eaten, eaten to death. I feel really downhearted about it but I'm going to try and pull myself together and do as much as I can to get it back to workable kind of plot but it is such a shame when you've worked so hard on it and you take four days off and then this happens. What are we going to do Sally? Why can't you do some blooming work around here for a change? I still haven't got any broad beans. I keep looking for them, the plants are just beautiful. Look how tall these plants are. They're massive now, they're full of flowers but I've got no beans. Hang about, is that a broad bean there? Have I just told a porky is there a little tiny broad bean growing there underneath a flower? Is that where they come from, from flowers? Oh yeah I think it is. Oh look, that's a little tiny baby broad bean. It's exciting. I have managed to grow broad beans. I thought these plants must have to give me something because they're so healthy and happy and they've survived the snow, the ice and everything. Yay, I've grown broad beans. Okay, that's good. At least something's doing well. Dahlias are doing good, they're just covered in weeds. You can just see the amount of weeds that this bed has now got in it but the actual dahlias, they're looking fine and that one's regrown again since I've covered it and that one's fine. So they're doing really well and the gladiolus are doing really well as well. It's just the weeds, it's just covered in weeds. This is just a weeding job here, that's fine. Courgettes are looking a little bit yellow. I'm wondering if they're nutrient deficient. That's normally what yellow means, doesn't it? Yellow normally means it's missing something. I have got a seaweed feed I could give it or I could give it my nettle feed. I think it's missing something, I don't know what. Maybe nitrogen or something. I have got my sweetcorn to go in today. I wonder how long that's going to live. Yeah, but I think they're missing something so I might give them a feed. Right, okay, I've sat down for a little bit. I've done my inspection of the plot and I've had my little moan about it all. It's all my own blooming fault and this is just what happens to an allotment plot if you're not here enough and it can be really disheartening because you feel like you put so much work in and you come back and it's all overgrown and things have been eaten. You're like, oh, but I've had my moan. Now I'm going to get back to it and just do the work and get it sorted. That's all you can really do. It's not all bad. Loads of things are growing. I'm just being, you know, you know what I'm like, moany. I am going to put my sweetcorn out. I have to balance you there because my arm is killing me and I just can't hold anything. I had, I grew, I started about 45 sweetcorn seeds and out of that I've got about six or eight left. How many have I got? Two, four, six, eight. Eight sweetcorns and they're not that great. Here they are. I don't know if they're going to survive or not. They've been outside in my garden, so they are accustomed to the outdoors now, but I don't know how they're going to do. They are the Swift F1 variety, which is apparently really easy to grow. Definitely didn't find it that easy, but I'm going to go plant it now. So let's just get it in the ground. They're going in this bed with the courgettes and the runner beans because I'm trying to do the three sisters approach, which is where you grow courgettes, runner beans and sweetcorns because they all help each other out. The runner beans create nitrogen in the soil, which helps out the courgettes and sweetcorn. I don't know if you can hear me. There's a football match going on, so I'm just going to clear it a little bit and I'm just going to dot them about. They need quite a bit of room between them, but I don't know how many is going to survive, so we'll see. It's amazing how quickly weeds can grow and yet all my crops seem to have stunted. Why is that? You're supposed to plant sweetcorn in a grid because they pollinate each other by floating in the wind. Someone scored a goal. But when you've only got eight plants, it's quite difficult to make a grid out of eight without making it two rows. So I've done two rows of three and one row of two. Does that make any sense? I don't know. I'm not really good at sweetcorn. Right, let's just whack them in, I think. We're just going to whack them in and hope for the best. What's the worst that can happen? They all die. You can probably see a couple of my runner beans here doing really, really well. And I love runner beans, so I'm going to plant them in the middle where the pumpkin has been eaten by the slug or the snail or both, a combination of both probably. And then I've got some nasturtiums coming up too. I have to plant those out soon as well. Yeah, that is my new plan of action. It's just when the slugs and snails demolish something, I'm just going to plant something else, draw a line under it, get on with it, plant something else. I love runner beans, and they're fast growing as well, so that'd be really good. Right, let's get them out. I'm wondering if it was the smell of the garlic that I'm growing here that kept the slugs and snails away from these ones, because they don't like the smell of certain plants, do they? And these are really close to my garlic and they've sort of been completely untouched. So I'm wondering if growing pumpkins near garlic or growing anything near garlic is a really good thing like keeping away slugs and snails. Whereas this side, obviously that one's been demolished. This one's okay because I've got the copper ring around it and that one's got quite a lot of eggshells, and this one was sort of slightly undefenced, if that makes sense, unprotected. But also, I remember I was talking about my chard being like a slug and snail hotel. I think that is pretty much a hotel for them. I think I'm just going to get rid of it, you know. I think it just needs to go. Sudden change of plan because I've seen that they've eaten all my new bloody sunflowers and they're the last bloody ones that I've bloody done. And they've got them, they've got them. That chard is going. If that's their home and their hotel, I'm getting rid of it. I'm exterminating them. I've had enough of this. I'm just going to hack as much of it down as I can with my covid arm. That's what I'm going to do. I think that's where they're all living. I'm going to get them. I've just had enough now. Oh, bloody camera. Look, they're all in here. Look, look, they're all hiding in there. I knew it. That's another one snail. I knew they were all in here. They're going down now. I'm destroying their house. They eat all my crops. I'm going to eat their house, eat the house, destroy their house. That's what I'm going to do. Oh, buggers. I will win the war. Right, guys, that's all I can do today because my arm is absolutely killing me. But I've just had enough of coming here and the slugs and snails just destroying everything. So I've destroyed their home now. So hopefully that sends them a little message. I don't know what it is, but hopefully they get it and they leave my stuff alone because I'm just sick of it now. I hope you're having better luck with your allotment plot. Try not to get too disheartened if you do leave it for a while like I have. I'm gutted because I just feel really annoyed at myself for letting it go. Do you know what I mean? I just feel like slapping myself around the face sometimes, but it's OK. I will get it back under control and things will grow. And the weather's getting better now, so it's all good. So I hope you're enjoying your allotment plots and I'll hopefully be back soon. Thanks for watching, guys. Bye.