MORE FLOWERS FOR WILDLIFE / WILDLIFE MEADOW / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Hi guys, 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've put up lots of videos on gardening, allotment, growing my own fruit and veg, growing flowers, things like that, getting it all wrong. But there you go, that's what happens. And I'd love for you to subscribe and just follow the journey along and hopefully get inspired to grow something of your own. I've just got here and I've just checked my pumpkins and they are still alive. So that is good news, isn't it? I did go looking for more zinnias seeds yesterday because I think the slugs and snails have got most of my seedlings, which is not great news. But I couldn't find any zinnias seeds. So I think everyone is growing zinnias this year for some reason. But I did find a wild flower mix and I thought this was really good. And I got this from Wilkinson's, Wilko's for £1. It's not that many seeds, but it has a really good variety of different annuals for pollinators, butterflies, bees. And I thought what I would do is my little grass area at the back, I thought I would scatter some of these and turn it into a bit of a wildlife meadow and just see how much wildlife I can attract to the plot this year. I thought it might be quite a good experiment. It does say that you have to sow it between March and May, but then we haven't really had a March and an April. So I kind of think we're kind of having April's weather in May. So, you know, it's not great weather, but I'm going to go and sprinkle these and see what happens really, as with any seed you sprinkle. Right, here's my grass area on my plot. It's at the back where I built that teepee. And I've just allowed the grass to keep growing really. I know that long grass is really good for pollinators and for wildlife and things. So I figured I'd just scatter some of this around here, but I might just break the soil up a bit first. Make sure the seeds have got somewhere to land. Oh gosh, there's birds here. Yeah, I'm just trying to keep it all long and wildlife friendly here. And obviously where I've cut down all my blackberry bushes, I've piled them up, which is a really great habitat for bugs and things. So I'm just going to continue the theme really and make this whole area wildlife friendly. Friendlier, you know what I mean, friendlier. I'll just break some of the soil up under here and make sure that the seeds have got somewhere safe to land, so the birds don't just eat them all straight away, which they probably will anyway. But you know, what's that? It's a piece of wood. It's only cost me a pound, so if it doesn't work and nothing grows, then, you know, it's no problem. But if it does grow, it'd be just fantastic to have some flowers here. So, you know, I'm not bothered. I started to do that from a height and then I thought, no, I'd better make sure that the seed actually hits the soil, otherwise it's going to have absolutely no chance of growing. But I don't know if it will grow. But, you know, wildflower seeds, they spring up everywhere, so hopefully one or two will take off. And if one or two take off, they might sell seed and spread everywhere. So I only need a few to take off, you know. Yeah, it's quite a nice little area for wildlife really, isn't it? I'm quite pleased with it. I'm glad I've left this grass nice and long. I've just seen that I've got my first Californian poppies springing into life. It's a little tiny little pop of orange coming up over here, which is just beautiful. And it's not even in the place where I thought it would come up. But look, he's just waiting to uncurl himself. Oh, focus. He's just waiting for him to uncurl himself now and be a beautiful poppy flower. How gorgeous is that though? A nice big bright orange. And then hopefully we'll have lots more over here, over here, and also loads over here too. I'm happy just to let the poppies sell seed this year and see what kind of damage they do and what they do. Because a lot of people call them weeds, but I actually sowed these from seed. I mean, what is a weed? A weed is a plant you don't want to grow, but I actually want these to grow everywhere. So I'm quite happy with them popping up all over the plot, adding some colour, getting some more bees in. I have added some calendula seeds to the pond a few weeks ago and they are all springing up everywhere, which is just amazing. But down here in particular, they're doing really, really well. There they all are coming up, calendula seeds. So what I will do is just make sure I keep this sort of a bit clearer here so that they can get some light and grow. So I will sort of cut back things if I have to, just to allow the calendulas to come up. And I've got some here, which hopefully I haven't just stepped on. These are all coming up. Oh gosh, look, the ink's falling. These are all coming up here and I do have some over here. I might have to cut a bit of that back again to make sure they get light. But look at the pond, it's so clear and happy. Everything's just growing really, really well. And my little forget-me-nots, my water forget-me-nots, which I didn't even know existed, but then I don't know, a lot of things exist, they're flowering for the first time. So last year I put them in and they didn't flower and this year they are. And they're kind of one of my first flowers in the pond. You can see here, look, they're like water forget-me-nots. Absolutely gorgeous and brilliant for pollinators. And yeah, they're flowering for the first time, so this is really exciting. Absolutely beautiful. And I don't know what these things are, but these have been popping up all over the pond. I don't know if these are something that someone was saying a while ago I really should be digging up. I've got loads of these things popping up everywhere, I mean like all around the pond, which are giving really lovely height to it and stuff and creating really great coverage. So I'm glad I didn't pull them up. But having said that, I don't know what they are and if they're going to flower. I feel like they're going to flower. I feel like they are going to flower and that's why I'm leaving them. Yeah, I'm just going to leave them for now, but yeah, because they're adding great coverage for the pond. So I ain't really bothered. Sticking with the flower theme today, I think we'll just do flowers. My gladiolus are going crazy and I can't even tell you what's happening. I've got a theory of what's happening, but I'll just show you what's happening to my gladiolus. So there's a gladiolus, there's a gladiolus, there's one, there's one, and there's all the others. So instead of having one sort of shoot come up, I've got sort of like a group of them for each bulb. So I think if you remember the bulbs, they had a load of little circles, like little rock things, like stuck to the bottom of them, which were kind of like new baby bulbs. And I think what's happened is all of them started to grow. So I've got loads of multiple shoots coming up now. I have no idea if I can leave this or if it's something I have to thin out or cut down or if they're not going to grow properly this year. I have no clue, but I'm happy just to leave it because I can't believe how many are actually growing. I don't know if they're going to push each other out the way or whatever or have to divide the bulbs next year. But anyway, it's absolutely amazing to see how many of these things are coming up. I hope I just get hundreds of flowers. Wouldn't that be amazing? It's the year of the gladioli and I just get millions of gladiolus this year. After the zinnia failure, that would be amazing. I'm going to get strawberries soon. I can sense it. It's coming. Strawberry season is upon us. I've got so many flowers here this year because I've really sorted my strawberry bed out. So it's time to think about protection from the pigeons. And I think what I'm going to do is move the netting now and put it over the strawberry bed before the strawberries come, because the second the birds get wind of it, they're going to be all over this bed like a rash. So I have to make sure that the pollinators can get in there, but I have to make sure the pigeons stay away. So what I'm going to do is put sticks in and then put the netting over the sticks so the pollinators can still get to it, but the pigeons can't. Does that make sense? Actually, hang about. I've got better netting. I've got this netting. Pollinators can still get in this one, but the pigeons will stay out. This is much better. I'm going to put this one over them. Right, there we go. Strawberry is pretty much protected. I've just put these little cardboard things, but what I'll do is I'll go home and collect some plastic bottles to put over it because I think they need to be longer to stay on better. I've tried to pull the net as tight as I can. You can't really see it on camera with the net, can you? I've tried to pull it as tight as I can so that little birdies don't get stuck in it, not just because I want to protect the birds because obviously I don't want the birds to die in there or get panicked, but also because I'm terrified of finding one in there and having to free it because I have actually seen birds get stuck in nets around here and they just flap about like flying rats and it's terrifying and I just don't want to be the one to have to get it out. So hopefully they won't get stuck in there. But yeah, that's as good as I can get it really. Hopefully they leave my little strawberries alone. I'll leave it there today. I hope you enjoyed the vlog today. If you did, do subscribe to my channel for more gardening allotment vlogs and I'll see you in my next video. Thanks for watching guys. Bye!