EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / NOT ANOTHER ONE!!! / NOVEMBER 2020

Another glorious morning. Makes me sick. Oh, oh my god. I don't know how this happened. There's a freaking baby slug on my finger. How did this happen? How did you get on my finger? In the vlog I'm gonna have a freaking panic attack. Okay, everyone just remain calm. Let's not freak out. I'm not sure how this happened or how I'm actually able to keep it on my finger. Oh, it feels so horrible and slimy, guys. It's just hideous, but I'm sort of proud of myself for not freaking out as much as I thought I would. He's got little feet of things. Don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out. I'm gonna put him somewhere. I'm gonna put him, put you on here. There's leaves in here. I don't know if you'll eat them, but there you go. Right, just get off me. Just get off. Just get off. A bit of drama in the morning, but there you go. There's always drama when I'm here and nature's about. Watch out, nature's about. Right, okay, I'm here at the plot today. I've been every day. I just need to finish the back of it and I'm just determined to get that bit done. So I want to dig out the old tomato bed to get rid of the peppers and have a think about the layout for next year. I think it's really important at this time of year, I'm sure most of you are doing it too, to think about what you're going to do next year and if you're going to change the layout of your plot, autumn winter is the time to do it because you're not going to disturb anything and unless you put a load of bulbs in, but don't do that yet. Right, I haven't put, I put some daffodil bulbs in, but not like loads of them. There's a lot of grass at the back of the plot. I put the grass there because I didn't know what else to put there. So it's not like a design choice, it's just I wanted something growing so it wasn't like full of weeds. That might become a new raised bed. I'd like to grow beans next year. I want beans. I like beans and I'd like to grow a few different varieties. Some people have suggested some varieties of beans. I like the runner beans. I thought they were beautiful. French beans, broad beans, things like that. So I want some space for that because I don't have a lot of room and they obviously grow up, so I need more uproom. I need a structure. That's what I need. It's my favourite thing to do at the plot, is build structures, even though I'm not very good at it. Right, so I'm going to have, I'm going to just clear the back. That's the first plan of the day, clear the back. Let's do it. So guys, here we have the pepper plants. These are bell pepper plants that didn't really produce any peppers. You can see, just very tiny. Oh look, there's one there. No, I'll show you. There we are. There we are, a bell pepper. A very, very tiny, tiny green bell pepper. That's about as much as my, sorry it's not focusing, it's about as much as I got this year. I don't really know why. Oh, there's another one there, flipping out. Hang on a minute. There's another one, there's two. Oh, I better check these flipping plants. What's all that on it? All right, that's it. That's the harvest that I got from the bell peppers this year. Two tiny, tiny little bell peppers. Brilliant. Not sure why they didn't grow. Don't know. Might try them again next year, but I'm not a massive fan of bell peppers. I got given these for free by my neighbour, which is really nice of him, but just nothing came of it. But I didn't have anything to put here anyway, so it was quite nice to have some plants here. Obviously, you know, oh god, obviously they are dead now, so they all need to come up. I always find it more interesting when a plant or a fruit or vegetable doesn't work, like why I only got two small ones when I did everything right, planted at the same right time and everything. I always find it more educational and interesting to find out why it didn't work, as opposed to stuff that I whack in and then it grows anyway, because I don't feel like I've learned a lot from some of the stuff here. Like the stuff that I've just whacked in, that's just grown. If there's a problem next year, I'm going to have to start over and like figure out why. Do you know what I mean? Like you learn more when things go wrong. I actually think that is actually a saying. I think that's actually something people say already, but I've just learned it at 32. So there you go, you're always learning, so always learning new things. I don't know if I should eat these. Is this something that you can eat? I don't know. I might take them in the shed and have a little nibble on them later. I don't think they'll kill me. I don't know. Or will they? I don't know. Is that another lesson that I'll have to learn here? Mind you, I wouldn't learn it if I was dead, would I? But game over. Right, let's dig it out. How long have I been here at the plot? Like what, 35 seconds? Look at my flipping fork. This is the only thing I've got to dig. For God's sakes. For anything now. For God's sake, someone give me some new flipping tools. Can a sponsor please sponsor this? Just give me some new tools. I know you're not supposed to blame your tools, but for Christ's sakes. You find where it's gone. It's just gone into the ground somewhere. It's just gone forever. I know you're not supposed to, like a bad toolman blames his tools or whatever, but this is just ridiculous. No one can work under these conditions. There it is. I don't know what to do with this bed. I'm wondering if I should extend it, make it longer and put beans up here somewhere. But yeah, I don't mean to sound like a teacher right now, but if I can dig out that bed and weed it with a broken rake and a broken fork, you can do it too, guys. Come on. Come on. You don't need all the tools in the world, do you? People joke about my tools all the time, but they've never really let me down. So this looks like it's falling down, doesn't it? This structure. I'm not sure what's happened to this structure. It looks like it's got a piece missing here. There should have been a third, it's like a tripod. Is that the tripod? Or is that the tripod? It's falling down, isn't it? I'll do something about that before I have a lawsuit on my hands. Collapses in a bird's head or something. You don't want to piss off the birds, do you? I concluded it was unfixable, so that might be a good place for beans. What do you think? We get quite a lot of sun here, right, and I've covered that with a ground sheet ready for digging. What if I made that a really long bed and then had structures up, like one, two, three structures with beans? I think we might have found bean city, guys. I think this is where it should be. Yeah, if I dig that out, see if I can make a bean structure. That's really good. Yeah, I sort of want the beans in rows so I can walk between them and pick them. Let's bloody do that. That's a good idea. I'm going to dig it all out. It's going to take me hours, but okay. Oh, God. Right. Digging, digging, digging. It never ends. I'm actually really enjoying doing this. It's something I'm sort of dreading and putting off. I don't know if you noticed, but I was just putting it off because I was like, I'm not going to like doing this job, but now I'm doing it. I really, really like it. For me, having an allotment, it's not all about the produce that you get and eating your own produce and cooking and growing things. It's actually about the process of it because that's the bit that I sort of enjoy the most and I get most excited about. Those are the things about gardening that fill my heart with joy and just give me so much pleasure is the actual process. So to anyone out there, because I know I've inspired people to start gardening and I love that. And I would say to you, if you're a first timer and you're worried about how much you're going to be able to produce, don't worry about it. It's not about that. It's about the process of building your allotment, of planning, of growing and just enjoy that bit. Because if you enjoy that bit, everything else will follow. It'll just happen. You know, when you put everything into it and you've got passion, you'll never get knocked back because if you make a mistake or something doesn't grow, you'll pick yourself up again because it means that much to you. So I would just say, just enjoy it. And I'd love to know if I've inspired you this year to get gardening or if you're going to try next year, let me know. Just thought I'd update you on my progress so far. So I've done this bit here and it's coming down to here. Now this has got all ivy in it and stuff, but you know, it's getting done. I think this is a really good place actually to have the beans. Yeah, I'm really happy with that. I have like long structures, like horizontal like that with all the runner beans and stuff going up. So yeah, it's going good so far. I'm getting through it guys. I'm struggling a bit. I did not have my weeder picks this morning. So I'm starving. The soil looks really good. I've just found the fattest worm known to man. If you'd like to see it, come here. Come on. Look at this guy. Isn't he big? Flipping heck. He's just pooed on my hand, but that's a good thing, isn't it? Worm poo is what we want. So I'll put him back there. But yeah, soil is excellent. So I'm getting through it. I think it's going to be really good here to have beans. I am going to do vlogmas this year, which if you don't know what it is, it's when I'm going to vlog every single day in December. So I will be here showing my lovely face, doing lots of Christmassy allotment things for 24 days in December, starting the 1st of December. I will be back before then next week. Hope you have a lovely weekend, everyone, and enjoy your Friday. Bye.