EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / PICKING THE FLOWERS / JULY 2020

Hi everyone, welcome back to my allotment diary. So today I am just going to start by deadheading these calendulas because basically I've neglected them for ages and I'm just a bit worried we're not going to get any new flowers and I sort of feel like there's more life in them but you can see most of them are dead. Someone said about leaving a couple of them and getting the seeds I might do that but I can't leave all of them but I'm hoping to get a few more flowers out of them so I'm going to deadhead them that's what I'm going to do. Do you want to help me? No. I've got Tommy here today with me being really helpful aren't you? Do you like the pumpkins? Yeah he's pretty impressed with the pumpkins he wouldn't be to be honest but yeah right let's cut. I won't be here tomorrow because I'm just here to inspect. You're in here to inspect it. Right so I'm going to take the dead flowers off basically. Right. Is it not good? Let's do that. Is that a bug? Oh no it's not. I've completely neglected the deadheading of these. I'm really worried about them now. It's slowing them down a bit. There are more buds on here so I've got hope that there will be more calendulas because look you can see there are some more some more coming so fingers crossed if I do this now I just hope I'm not too late to be honest because I've completely neglected it so I hope I'm not too late. Right that's most of them taken off you can see hundreds of them might just scatter them on the floor. I just don't know what to do with them to be honest. I don't have much of a compost heap going at the moment so it's a bit useless really but I've left two on for the seeds. I don't really know how to collect seeds and that is my next challenge at the plot I think is to collect as many seeds as I can so it's not just these I've actually let the rocket go to seed as well. I'll show you. So I've let some of the rocket go to seed in the hope that I can collect it so like basically it's flowered. I don't know how to collect it though I'm gonna have to look that up I think you might have to put like a little bag over it or something and wait for them to die I don't know but that's the plan anyway I've also managed to get one more strawberry plant because it's regenerated itself it's like grown another one or something it's weird strawberry plants weird but waiting for a couple more and then hopefully this bed eventually will be filled up with strawberries because at the moment I've got half of it strawberries but hopefully by next year the whole bed will be strawberries. Broccoli is doing really well since I put it in these little um plastic containers um which I said that I'd never do but here I am doing it um this is the only one that I didn't have a container for and he's still doing all right he's okay and these ones that are in here you know they're all right I think that's broccoli bloody hope so I don't know about this so I don't know what that is that one seems all right there's a bit of bindweed in there could bugger off try to get in on it yeah that's doing well I think that was a really good idea actually to put it into plastic plastic bottles I have to get some more of those um carrots I'm not looking so happy I think I think the slugs and snails have got to them which is a bit annoying oh actually I can see slug juice on there oh yeah they've definitely been here they've definitely been here look snacking on it all bastards thing is I've got a bit of a dilemma because I think if the slugs and snails are going for the carrots they seem to be leaving the broccoli alone so do I just sacrifice the carrots because if they like those better then they can sort of have those and leave the broccoli alone but so far that seems to be happening so I might just leave it to be honest um and just let them have that I don't know sometimes you've got to just like sacrifice things I think yeah right anyway it's doing well finally got some pink dahlias opening which is exciting because at the moment I've got quite a lot of yellow at the plot I think I just planted a lot of yellow and orange flowers but now I've got all the yellow yellow is doing really well obviously um but now I've got pink which is just beautiful um but yeah I don't know why these plants are smaller than the yellow the yellow seems to be thriving the other thing I wanted to show you today is my tomato plants because they're looking really good I think I've actually had to take out two more so I've actually got one two three I've got four plants now and I think that was probably like the limit for how for like what should have gone here um because I didn't realize how sort of big they get but they're all doing really well I've been keeping the bottoms so no leaves are touching the floor but I think I could probably be a little bit more ruthless with them to be honest um and they have started which is great because I was worried that they just weren't going to do anything but look look tomato flowers so hopefully that means I will get some fruit I don't know though and um the string seems to be working so far the twine holding them up they do seem quite supported a bit bendy but like they are they are being kept up and I can sort of like um time a bit tighter and stuff and like make them stronger um probably would have been easier to use canes but um you know me I like to do things my own way and uh but yeah they're all right so far so hopefully all the all the um string that I tied under the ground has all snapped off by the way so the plant obviously didn't like that and so I just re-tied it really at the bottom sort of tied it there and then twined it up but it's working and that's the point isn't it it's working so why why change it why fiddle with it if it's working so I think what we'll do today is cut a few flowers to take home what do you think Tom uh I think we can cut some of the because most of the flowers that I've been cutting so far I've just been putting in my watering can okay good right so what we'll do is we'll cut some today and take it home because we'll have some flowers at home as well but so far I've just put them in the watering can because I can't bother to take them home. Just don't get too many in our room yep okay right let's cut some zinnias and dahlias I think let's do that it's this big yeah just make them this big we don't want what about that for a harvest day beautiful flowers to take home dahlias and zinnias my favorite right we better get this home quick because I don't really have anything to put them in it's going to keep them alive um so yeah hope you enjoyed today's vlog hope you enjoyed today's vlog if you did subscribe to my channel and I'll see you next time thanks for watching