AN EXCITING GARDENING DISCOVERY / MAY 2021 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Morning 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 for lots more allotment diary vlogs. What a difference a day makes, yesterday was 18, 19, 20 degrees even, brilliant sunshine, today is probably about what 16 degrees it's going to get to but it's going to rain. I already got caught in a rain shower which is why I'm looking a bit of a state but it is nice to have some rain. It's also quite quiet here because it's been raining which is excellent for me filming and doing this thing. But also I just love it here after the rain because everything looks so green and lush and happy. One of the main reasons I've come here today is to check for slugs and snails. Now I had a massive kind of planting out day yesterday where I just put out sunflowers, runner beans, courgettes. Now I just spent the whole night worrying about slugs and snails because it's obviously been raining all night long and that's when they come out. And I can see that they have actually got to my sunflowers which is a bit of a bugger because they weren't doing very well anyway. So I've brought some eggs with me and I'm going to try and think of some slug and snail defences because they're eating everything, bloody things. This is the problem with planting everything out you see, you get really excited about it and then you come back the next day and it's all been blooming eaten. But yeah it's my sunflowers they seem to have gone for this time. Some of them might come back because they've still got some leaves, I'm hoping they do. They've had a good old munch on this one, you can see, but he has still got some leaves in the middle so I'm hoping he comes back to life. And this one's had a good old go on that one, I don't know if there's any hope for that one. They're okay, that's okay, where's the other one? That one's okay, but that one around the corner it's completely gone, I don't even know if you can see it anymore, it's gone. They seem to like sunflowers, they seem to be very very delicious to them, however the courgettes seem unaffected as do the runner beans, so either they've not found them or they just don't like them as much as sunflowers and just thought they'd eat the sunflowers. I didn't get time to show you that I actually planted out two runner beans yesterday as well as the three courgettes because the film was just too long, but yeah hopefully these will wind around some sweetcorn if I can get some and if I don't manage to get sweetcorn obviously I'll just stake them. Luckily they left the dahlias alone as well, thank goodness, because I think I would have actually cried if the slugs and snails had eaten them all, but this one is just it's just doing so good. I get so excited when dahlias start to grow because I never think they will, they look so dead when you put them in the ground, it's always just such amazing sight when they start to actually grow. All they needed was a bit of sun, a little bit of warmth, that's all they need just to get going. Right, snail defences, that is my task of the day. You probably can't see a bleeding thing down there, oh well, you are balanced precariously on a peanut butter jar, please do not move, hold your breath. Right, I've brought some more eggs with me so I'm supposed to smack them up. I've got a couple of comments from people saying that the egg thing doesn't work for them. It works for me, I think the thing with slugs and snails is that you just have to try a variety of different methods until you find one that works for you and normally you have to you have to like use three or four different methods together, so as well as the eggs I'm going to use coffee grounds and I've also got copper tape around all of my raised beds and I keep everything cut back so I'm sort of doing like several methods to try and stop the slugs and snails. I think you need to use lots of different methods to work together, but eggs for me I just found just really worked. So let's go and put them around these sunflowers, see if we can save some. I didn't eat the Californian poppies did they? Why didn't they just eat all of them? I wouldn't have minded. I haven't dried those eggs as much as I should have so they're not as spiky but I hope they sort of dry today in the rain. Oh yeah that makes sense Emma. But it was a bit of an emergency egg collecting this morning from breakfast because I knew, I knew they'd be after them. I haven't checked on my zinnias seeds for a while and I just direct sowed these into the ground in this raised bed so let's see if anything's actually coming up. Oh yes it is. I think that's a sunflower. It's a sunflower too. This is where I had my sunflowers last year. I think I've got a couple coming up. That's a sunflower I think and over there just by the old daffodils that I think that's a sunflower too and this is where I had my sunflowers last year so it makes sense that a couple of seeds might have self-seeded themselves and also look these are my zinnias and I can tell they're my zinnias because I've done them in rows so I can see the little new seedlings that are coming up in nice neat little rows. Parakeets over there. Oh my goodness there's hundreds of them. There's a wood pigeon up there. We're not interested in you. We're interested in these. I was trying to get closer to film them but I think I scared them away. Not very good with birds, not very tactile. I just sort of walked over like I was marching. They don't like that obviously. If they come back I'll get them again but there are lots of parakeets around here and they're eating everyone's bird food at the moment so oh wow there was loads of them. That was really cool. Right one of the reasons why we plant things in rows is so that when it comes up you do know what is the weed and what is your actual crop so you don't accidentally weed it and also the rows make it easier to weed in between them because you can just run your hands along or a shovel or something and then just rake all the weeds up. There's a little tip I've learned. Yeah I'm happy with these. I think these are coming up really well. Yeah they look quite healthy to me. They'll probably need a bit of thinning but then last year I didn't thin them and I just let them fight to the death. I just let the the strongest one survive and that seemed to work fine so I might just leave them to be honest. I'll keep them covered It's Sally. I could see the reflection of Sally. I thought it was someone standing behind me. I just thought I'd better quickly check my cabbages because I expect if they like the sunflowers they're going to love the the old cabbages. They don't seem to have been affected at all and they just all look really happy and fine so I'm going to keep them covered. Yeah they look really healthy actually. They're lovely green aren't they? They're a lovely green colour. That's a good sign. It's a good sign when plants are green isn't it? I don't know what I say half the time. This is my salad wheelbarrow and it's an old wheelbarrow and I filled it with compost and I planted some salad things so we've got lettuce here. Nice green lettuce and some beetroot in the middle but I am going to have to thin this beetroot now because it's all too close together so I'm going to have to be really ruthless. Thinning plants is just the job that I hate the most because I always feel like I'm killing them and I always feel like the one that I pull up could have been the one that survived and the one that I leave is like weak and dies so I always get really really panicky about doing this but I am learning that if you don't do it they all die anyway or you don't get a good crop so you're damned if you do and sometimes you're damned if you don't. So I'm just going to have to be ruthless and whack them all out. Whack them all out? Pull them all out. Oh god. That's the idea. I don't know how to thin them because I haven't done them in lines. It's the thing about not doing it in lines. It's really hard to like know where to thin them to. Could I move them maybe? Maybe I can move them. Hang about. Hang about. Hang about. Hang about. I've got an idea. Let's see if I can move a couple. Instead of killing them, I'm like pricking them out. Look, he's got all his roots. If I move him, I wonder if he'll grow. Then I don't have to be so blimming ruthless. Ah, this is a good idea. I like this. Ah, this is excellent. So I should have my own gardening show you see. It's like I discover everything that everyone else has already discovered but I sort of discover it on my own. That works. That is genius. Instead of just throwing away plants and just pulling them out, discarding them, I've pulled them up as if I am, um, what's that thing called? When you, um, you know when you prick out. That's what it is. When you prick something out, it's almost like this is a giant seed tray and I've pricked things out and moved it about. So now they're sort of spaced evenly but I haven't actually lost any. I wonder if I can do that for the lettuce as well. I'm going to do it for the lettuce as well you know. I'm going to do it. I think I've discovered something that probably everybody else already knows but I've discovered it on my own. This is exciting. I bloody love gardening. Seed tray. There we are. All the root. It's a nice little healthy plant and then I'll whack him in a space. Yeah, I like this. This is so clever. All right. I've given it all a drink. Not because it's not raining because it's about to rain but, um, because I'm hoping that would be like a peace offering to help out its roots a little bit because I've moved them all and disturbed them. So I'm sort of hoping by doing that it's like, oh, it's, she's helping us out. You know, she's not trying to kill us. Yeah, there we go. All nice and evenly spaced and I have barely lost any plants. I think I had to pull up like two or three lettuces and, um, hopefully that works now. Tough with that. Brilliant. Things are planted out on my plot now. Things are starting to grow and so it's time for me to be an absolute anxious wreck. Um, my vlogs from now on will be me panicking about slugs and snails, birds, foxes, cats, things are dying. That's got mildew. That's got a fungus. So I do apologize in advance, but I get very anxious at this time of year because I really want things to grow and it's obviously really important to me. Um, and I find it hard to sort of switch off. So I'm going to go home tonight and just research and research slugs and snails deterrents again, um, in the hope that I can keep little buggers away from my sunflowers long enough for them to actually grow. I hope you enjoyed the vlog today. If you did do subscribe to my channel. I will see you in my next vlog guys. Have a lovely week gardening despite the rain. See you later.