ADVICE FOR NEW ALLOTMENT HOLDERS / JANUARY 2023 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Hi everyone, welcome back to my Lotman Diaries. My name is Emma, these are my Lotman Diaries. I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are new to my channel. I'm back on the plot this week. It's been raining so much in London recently so the plot's just a bit waterlogged, a little bit muddy, a little bit filthy but I was desperate to get here because we're predicted rain all week and this is the only dry day so I was like I'm coming here, I don't care, I need to get outside in the fresh air and just do something, something outdoors, whatever it may be. So I'm looking at the plot and it does look sad, to be honest, sad. Looking at this I just cannot wait for like the spring and summer when everything starts growing because it's just, it's just so brown isn't it, so brown. So yeah, it'd be nice to have things growing again. So I've got broad beans growing at home, they're not ready to go out yet. I've got my tulips coming up which is excellent, we've mulched a couple of beds and today we're just going to tidy up a little bit. I think this area over here in particular really just does need a little bit of TLC so first thing I'm going to do is pick up all of the rubbish and stuff and move it somewhere else so it's out of that area. That's what we're going to start with. This time of year, particularly when it's been raining and it's a bit miserable out, it can feel really disheartening having an allotment plot that's sort of overgrown or it's got areas like this where it's just completely a mess basically. I got a lot of questions about people who've got their first allotment plots and they want some really good allotment advice. Where do I start? What do I do with my plot now I've got it? If it's very overgrown like this, you're going to find that the best thing to do is just to get stuck in and start chopping it down. My neighbours back there are very confident with using power tools and stuff so they're very easily digging it all out. I think they've got a digger in actually and they just dug the whole thing out and then they put it all in a big pile and set fire to it and stuff like that so that's great. If you can do that, oh my gosh, it'd be so much easier. But for me personally, because this is my plot and I did it on my own, I just used this and these are the exact shears that I used to cut my entire plot back and it was just a complete blackberry bush. The whole plot was just one big blackberry bush and I just used this to cut it down and then I just used a fork to dig out all of the canes and slowly but surely it got there and it doesn't feel like it will but it will get there. At this time of year it always looks crap, okay, so if your allotment plot's looking crap, great, that's how it's supposed to look at this time of year. Definitely it's not supposed to look beautiful or pretty or anything, it's going to be brown, overgrown, muddy and wet. That's fine, okay, just stick in there because when you get to the spring it's going to start to grow, it's going to look beautiful. You've got to put in the work now, even if you can't see the results straight away. That's the best advice that I can give to a new allotment plot holder. Right, let's get back to snipping. There's so many new gladiolus growing as well and the thing is is last year none of them flowered, none of them flowered and I'm wondering if it's because they were basically all new plants and actually gladiolus maybe they need a couple of years until they flower or something, I don't know. Because you buy them as a bulb, don't you, you don't buy them as a seed. I guess we'll find out this year though, so stay tuned for that. Really the best possible advice I can give you is that gardens are not instant things, you're not going to see instant results from it but that's what makes them so beautiful and so addictive. I think in this day and age so much of what we do is for instantaneous reward so we expect to see results straight away, we're very results driven, we want to see the impact that we're having straight away. But the same as when you put a bulb in the ground, you put it in in maybe October, November, you're not going to see anything until like March or even May for some tulips. So nothing in gardening is instantaneous and that is the beauty of it. It forces you to slow down and look at your world around you just a little bit slower and just to take in things that maybe you would have missed before. It's really great, I keep saying gardening is my therapy, it is. It's the time when it just forces me just to look at the world in a completely different way. It is addictive and it is amazing but you have to learn patience and it's something that took me a long time because I wanted to see everything perfect straight away. It's not going to happen. So patience is key and that's what the garden teaches you. Right, you're probably not going to be able to see this at all but for me personally this is looking a lot better. I think because what I've done is I've chopped a lot of that back over there so it's feeling a lot better and then I've got my compost heap which looks a little bit more tidy now, needs a lot more work but we'll keep going and then I've got this little weed membrane down here, just need to get some wood chip over it. I think it's going to be all right. Obviously like I just said, not looking perfect, nothing does on the plot at this time of year but these little tiny steps that you make add up and they make such a difference in the spring summer when you come here. So even though it feels a bit pointless, it's a bit like when you start going to the gym or you start running and you don't see any difference or you start a diet and you you cut down on your food in the first week, you don't lose any weight at all or whatever or one pound or something, you don't see it but if you keep doing it and you keep doing it in little bits, eventually it makes a massive difference. That's the best advice I can give you if you're a new allotment plot holder, is that don't expect instant results. This is not an instantaneous thing guys, allotments take time and it takes a long time to see the results. Now let's look for some fun stuff. I'm going to go bulb hunting. I've just noticed down here something's been eating this. Oh my goodness, something's really dug them up and eaten them isn't it and it's starting to grow as well, it's a shame. A lot of my bulbs here are starting to come up. I didn't think these would come up this year because I actually obliterated this bed with so much digging and stuff but there's so many coming up, so many bulbs. I think these are my red and yellow tulips and they are so stunning, I'm so excited. I planted tulip bulbs in little clusters all around my plot this year in October, November time and I can just start to see some of them where they're coming up now and it's so funny because I actually forgot loads of places where I planted them. So we've got some more coming up here which I completely forgot. Oh my goodness, I can't speak. I completely forgot that I planted them here but here we go, all coming up and then we've got some daffodils here as well. Oh my goodness, it's gone so noisy here, what's going on? And then my absolute, oh my scissors, my absolute favourite tulips, they're the ones at the front here and they're like pink and mauve and kind of like lots of pastel colours. I absolutely love them, they're coming up so well. Absolutely hundreds of them and they look so strong and so like healthy, I cannot wait to see what these ones look like, this is very very exciting. I'm gonna have to harvest some of these onions though before they properly start coming up, hopefully you grow a bit, come on get growing, get growing mate. And last place I want to quickly show you before we wrap this up is my pond because if you might, if you're following me you might know that I redid my pond basically last year because it just became an overgrown mess and I couldn't look after it so I put in some shrubs, put in some new pond plants and I put in a load of bulbs around as well to make it look pretty and beautiful for wildlife. Well everything's growing, I just love being able to say that, well everything's growing, it's like I'm a proper gardener. So we've got the shrubs, the shrubs are all still growing around the edge, I know there's some weeds but that's okay it can't be helped, this shrub is so beautiful isn't it, little red leaves coming out, absolutely gorgeous and then we've got the bulbs and I think some of these are daffodils, I've got some tulips and I've also got some irises as well, really lovely, they're all coming around, all around, all around the edge of the pond and then in here I can see signs of life from my pond plants which went in, now they're not all coming up which is a bit of a shame, I planted a lot more than this but this one looks really good, he's starting to pop up through the water, this one he's gonna be fine, they're indestructible those ones, there's another little one over there, might need to get a couple more, I'd really like some lily pads in here actually, I might go for lily pads just to be fancy, but here's just a little overview of the pond, it's not looking much now but I assure you in the summertime, in fact if I get down here now like this right, in the summertime I'll be able to fade to a really gorgeous, colourful, beautiful pond, it will be absolutely bursting with butterflies and bees and frogs and hedgehogs and everything, whatever comes to a pond I don't know, all swimming creatures and stuff, be lovely. Right and that concludes the vlog today with all the building work that started up so I can't really vlog anymore, I hope you enjoyed it, did I get much done? No not the masses, not loads done but do I feel better for being here? Yes absolutely and that's the point of it, it's just I love being outside and it's dry today and it's freezing cold but isn't it nice just to get outside in your allotment plot and spend some time in nature and I hope today's been helpful and you've enjoyed it if you have do subscribe to my channel and I will be back again with some new vlogs next week see you next week guys, bye!