THEY HAVE TO GO! / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, this is my first allotment plot, I'm in my second year now. I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel, follow my journey along, let's do this together, let's get gardening. I know lots of people are now really into gardening and my approach is very much whack it in the ground, don't think too much about it. I think there's so much information out there about gardening and how to do it right and how to do it wrong and all the mistakes that you can make and I'm very much about let's not worry about those mistakes, let's just get on with it and just whack some seeds in the ground and see what happens. So it's my second year doing that and I'd love for you to follow along. Beautiful day here in the UK today, lots of people here as you can imagine so I'll see how this filming is going to go today because we all know I get a little bit self-conscious but I've already made a bit of an idiot of myself like numerous times here so hopefully I won't matter, I won't mind too much. A couple of things has happened this morning, I wasn't here yesterday, it's amazing what can happen in one day in allotment and I will show you some changes that have happened, not all good. Firstly, I'm not sure if this is going to pick up on camera but I've planted out my salad seeds, lettuce and I think, did I put beetroot in here as well? I think there's beetroot in here too. It started to grow at long last, I say at long last, it's only been like a few days but yeah, so the ones around the outside which I think is the green lettuce has all started to come up around which is exactly what I wanted because I've made a bit of a pattern in here so this is going to be really excited to see and then the ones, the micro ones in the middle are coming up, it's not going to pick up on camera but they're more yellowy when they're coming up. No sign of the beetroot just yet but that's okay, we can wait, I'm aware that will take longer but yes, the lettuce around is just amazing. This is going to need quite a lot of thinning I think, I did do them too close together but that must have been a bit of heat, a bit of rain, it's just all started growing. I haven't checked the spring onions yet, let's have a look. These are notoriously easy to grow spring onions, if you want to grow anything at home, in a pot, on a shelf, anywhere, grow spring onions, they just pop up everywhere. I can't see any sign of them yet, no I can't see any, unless these are them and they've just died, that might be a spring onion seed you know, I don't know but I have very high hopes for them, like I said they just pop up everywhere. Okay, on to the not so good change, my broccoli's fallen over, I think we must have had quite a bit of wind and some of it's blown over which is not great, I've managed to prop some of it up this morning but I'm worried it's going to die now. I know I say this about everything, I've started putting these little bottles on here, someone said I might impale myself and I was like yeah you're right you know, I better put some bottles on there, but yeah it's fallen over. This is also going to flower now I think, this is starting to go to flower because it's gone from purple to green, yeah it is about to flower. I'm wondering if I should just pull this one up because it's sort of blocking my tulips a little bit, the tulips are just looking amazing and this one also fell over. I'm going to pull the middle one out and I'm going to have a look I'm staying quiet because I'm trying to debate what to do about the situation, I'm going to do it, I'm sorry, I'm going to be ruthless, I'm going to do it. I'm sorry guys, if you are new to my channel you might be aware I am a little bit ruthless with plants sometimes, I do just yank them out so I apologise if you're offended but we're going to right, I've pulled two up, two of the smaller ones that I just think need to go. When a plant flowers it means it wants to go to seed, once a plant starts to go to seed, you're buggered, you're not going to get any more good food off it and if you do it's going to taste awful, so like rocket, if rocket flowers it goes really bitter. It doesn't look as healthy as it did before but I'll leave it for a little bit longer and just see how it goes, also the slugs and snails have sort of had a bit of a go on it too, those little buggers are back but we'll see. I don't know what's going to go there, I know these might last a little bit longer but I'm not sure what's going to go there. It's one of those beds I just haven't planned for because I just didn't think the broccoli would ever die but it's dying now but the tulips are coming up, tulips look amazing, so flipping excited to see these all flower again, I love tulips. The other thing I wanted to show you is that fox he's been about, I know it's foxy, he's actually been digging in the pathway like an idiot, see he's got little little holes, that's how I knew he'd been here but worse than that he's dug in one of my bloody beds hasn't he, look he's been here digging for something and this is where my parsnips are and he's been right here so he's just missed him, thank god, they might have stood on him I don't know. Now I'm wondering if I need to put some kind of parsnip protection on, I might actually do that just so that he doesn't dig my parsnips up so I'll get my staple gun out, I love my staple gun so it's staple gun day today, that's excellent, I love that. Sorry I should have explained that a bit better, I'm not going to attack the fox with a staple gun, I'm going to staple some chicken wire over the bed to stop the fox from walking on it, I'm not going to attack a fox with a staple gun, that's not the whole plan, I'm not going to sit here waiting for him, god's sake, can you imagine? Right here we go, chicken wire is really great for stopping foxes and things from like and even squirrels from digging in your but it's really hard to weed the bed so that's the only disadvantage of it, you have to really reach in to try and pick out the weeds but I'm not much of a weeder so it doesn't bother me. See a lot of gardening is just protecting your crops from things trying to interfere with them but this year more than ever because I'm on an allotment plot I'm more aware that actually I've got to protect my stuff from people as well because last year my pumpkins got stolen and a couple of cabbages got stolen too so I'm sort of quite aware that it's people as well that I've got to protect from and I didn't even consider this before and my plot doesn't have any kind of fence or anything so I can imagine that people just can kind of wander on, maybe they do I don't know about it but it's annoying isn't it because you always think it's the animals and the slugs and the snails you've got to watch out for and actually it's people, they're the worst. The sweet peas have survived, no slug attacks at the moment. I have got a little bit of this, this is a bug like a worm thing that likes to eat leaves of sweet peas, I've got it at home as well. The only thing I can say about this, you can buy sprays and stuff to try and stop them there's a little bit here too but to be honest with you it's best just to leave them and plant new ones because they don't normally attack all of them, you might like lose a few but I don't think it's worth losing sleep over, do you know what I mean? So I'm just going to leave them to it and hope that I've got enough sweet peas here to keep growing, give me some flowers and if not I'll just plant some seeds around when the soil warms up so I'm not bothered, I'm not bothered by them but that's what that is. Right, major job to do today and I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to and I really should have done this in the autumn but I've got to tidy up my strawberry bed because look at it, look at it, it's a mess, it's got weeds in it, they're all together, I just didn't sort out the runners and stuff and they're going to get diseased and die, they already are to be honest. So I don't know if you can do this at this time of year but I've got to do it because it's just going to die, I'm not going to get any strawberries so what I'm going to do is take them out, replant them and weed it and stuff, I'm just going to sort it out as best I can, that's what I'm going to do. The ground is so hard to dig in, I'm actually worried I'm going to kill them all, should I get my fork maybe, try and break them up a bit, I'll get my fork, this might really be the end of them now but hopefully not. It's all right isn't it, it looks all right I think, it's got quite a good root system on it, I can replant that, I don't know if I'll get strawberries on it this year or not now but I think it's more important to sort it out, when plants are too close together, excuse the bird, they can spread diseases and stuff and you can see they're not looking that healthy so I think it's more important that I sort this out than don't sort it out. Right this is like half an hour of hard work, I didn't realise how long this job would take, all the strawberries are now out, I can't believe how many I've got, way more than I thought and the bed has been weeded and sort of broken up a bit. What I'm going to do is sort them all out but look how funny they look, like they've all lined up, strawberries assemble, they all go all the way around there. What I'll do is I'll go through them all and cut off any dead leaves and stuff and just neaten them up and then I'll replant them.