EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / PROTECTING AGAINST DISEASE / JUNE 2020

Good morning guys, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, if you're new around here these are my allotment diaries. I would love for you to subscribe to my channel to follow my progress on my first ever allotment plot. First thing I need to do is apologize. Every time I put a video up and I'm not 100% happy and cheerful and smiling and laughing, I do get comments saying I don't seem happy today or I prefer your vlogs where you're upbeat and happy and I agree, I totally do as well, but the reason I was quite stressed in my last vlog was because of the brown spots that I found in my tomato plant. Now before I start these vlogs, and I'll give away a little bit of a magic here, before I start filming them every time I get here I actually inspect my plot, that's the first thing I do. I get here before I even pick up the camera, I walk around, I check everything and I found that brown splotches on the leaves on my sunflowers, on my pumpkins and on my peas as well as my tomato plants. So what was going through my head straight away was oh my god I've got blight, I've got early blight and everything in the whole plot is going to have to come up and die and that is what was going through my head when I was filming my last vlog that I put up Monday. That is all the things, all the fears were going through my head because so I've spent the last few days in an absolute panic, an absolute flurry of anxiety, panic, stress, trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the leaves on some of my plants because I know how quickly blight can destroy everything. Now I don't think it is blight anymore, I think what I've got is, and I can't remember the name of it, it's serratina, serralina, serratina leaf spot. I'll put, I'll write that on the screen when I figure out how to say it right. I think that's what I've got and the reason I think that is because it's following all the patterns of it, I don't think it's blight, the stems are not being affected, there's no fruit yet on anything and I just think that is the most, the most logical thing it could be. That's also probably best case scenario so I'm going to go with that for now. But you know what, it has really made me think about blight and the fact that I haven't really armed myself very well against blight because of the way I've planted stuff. I've planted stuff too close together, I haven't been cutting leaves off, I haven't mulched anything underneath on the soil, I haven't done many things to protect myself against any kind of disease or bacterial disease so that is what I have done over the last two days and I will show you what I have done. Right the tomatoes were my first concern, this is where I first noticed that there was a problem with some of the leaves in, you know, my plot. So what I have done is I have taken out three tomato plants, there was one here, there was one here and there was one here, they are now gone, I've just ripped them out. That is to improve airflow between and give them more space because there wasn't enough space in the tomato plants and that is what blight loves, it loves everything to be nice and close together so the disease can just spread from plant to plant. So I've done that, next thing that I've done is I've removed any leaves that I think have had leaf spot, not completely all of them though because the plants are still very little and I still think they need some leaves, like plants generally do need leaves but what I will be doing is removing the leaves at the very base of the stems of the tomato plants to kind of leave a bit of a long stem with no leaves and that is just to raise the plant leaves above the soil and get it away from the soil. Next thing that I did was I mulched it, you can probably see that, that's pretty obvious but I basically use the straw, I use the strawberries to mulch the base, this is to stop splashback like the soil splashing up onto the leaves and infecting them further when I water them and I will be sure to water the base not the leaves anymore as much as I can physically manage. And the last thing I did was I've sprayed it with a concoction that I found online which is basically water and then two teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda which is baking soda and that should help to protect it against fungus, basically by doing that the bicarbonate of soda raises the pH level on the leaves and makes it inhospitable for fungus and bacteria to live, so that's what bicarbonate of soda does and if you really want to kill it you should be using hydrogen peroxide, I think that's what it is, but that's too invasive for me, I'm not interested in doing that, I'm going to stick with the most natural things that I possibly can and that is baking soda, so that's what I've sprayed on it and I will do that at least once a week. I hope you heard all that tomato plant because I'm doing a hell of a lot to keep you alive and the kindest thing would be to live, okay? Right, just going to take you over to the wonderful sunflowers, I've sort of done the same thing with these because I did notice that these have got some problems, I don't know if it's leaf spot, actually it does look very much like leaf spot, so this is the leaf I've left on to show you what was going on with them, so if I can get it to focus, this is what I believe is leaf spot that I've now got on my sunflower leaves as well, it looks very much like leaf spot and eventually this whole leaf will go yellow and will die, as will probably this one, this one, hopefully the ones at the top, no, they've got a little bit of it too, so I have no idea, but apparently it doesn't really affect sunflower flowers, it just affects the foliage, so if I can keep as much of the foliage alive as I can, maybe I can save the sunflowers, I don't know, they all seem to have it now, but again, you know, what if, I mean, this is absolute prime, prime candidate for blight, because look, or like for diseases, because look how closely I planted them all together and also, you know, I've left a lot of leaves on, they're blocking out the light, they're creating humid temperatures at the bottom, whatever happens with them, what I will continue to do is remove leaves and make sure that there's really good airflow, which I have been doing, so you can see the stems at the end are a little bit bare now and that is just to try and improve airflow around here and get the air moving, but yeah, I hope that keeps it all at bay, you can imagine like how heartbreaking it's been to like think that a disease is just savaging everything, it's been really difficult, so that's why I've just not been in the best of moods, but I feel better now because I've got a plan and sticking to the plan and it's a learning experience isn't it, I mean this is my first time, so I won't plant things that close together again, it's not worth it, but yeah, it's been a big learning curve, so hopefully I don't lose too many crops, I don't know, I might lose some sunflowers, I don't know, but hopefully I don't lose too many, fingers crossed. Right, the spinach has pretty much gone to seed, I can't seem to stop it flowering anymore, so it's time to come out and in its place I'm going to sow some more beetroot, because why not, done spinach, time for beetroot, it's been nice, I'm sure the guinea pig's not me, I don't like it, oh god it's really in there, I think one of the things that I've become not very good at is understanding that it's not going to stay the same forever, like these crops are going to die and that it's okay, you can pull things up and sow new things, it's like I've become a little bit obsessed with keeping it exactly as it is and that's not really the point of an allotment, the point of an allotment and growing your own food is to keep pulling it up and adapting it and changing it and trying new things and sowing new seeds, so I need to be a little bit more ruthless I think at just yanking stuff up sometimes and being like I don't like that, it doesn't work, let's try something else, I think that's why I got so upset with the thought of having to pull everything up, because I was like I just want it to look like this forever, but it is, I think it's a little bit about letting go, so it's not just being patient, but I've also got to learn to let go of things sometimes and accept that things change over time and not everything's going to survive and that's okay. I am getting there and I am enjoying every second of it, despite sometimes being a little bit moody or offish at the plot, it causes me countless stress but also lots of happiness.