PLANTING OUT EARLY POTATOES / MARCH 2023 / ALLOTMENT GARDENING

Mud in my eye! Oh my god, I've got mud in my eye! Mad woman! Gosh! Well, good morning everyone. Welcome back to my Allotment Diaries. My name is Emma. These are my Allotment Diaries. I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel. And thank you so much, first of all, for 20,000 of you. I reached 20,000 subscribers over the weekend. I'm absolutely overwhelmed and thrilled with it. Thank you so much if you are one of them who has subscribed to my videos. Every time someone subscribes, it is just amazing to me. I just can't believe the amount of people that are here now watching my journey. So just thank you so much. If I'm looking a bit dishevelled, it's because it is so windy out there today. Unfortunately, I couldn't get here last week because it snowed. We had a really hard frost, so there was no point doing anything. And then we had torrential rain. The weekend was a bit nicer, so I got loads of seed sown and stuff. I managed to bring a couple of bags of compost down here as well, which I'm hoping just to mulch a couple of beds. But today, it is super, super windy. Whoa. Slightly concerned that my polytunnel was going to blow away. Fortunately, it looks quite good. The shed, however, is feeling very, very precarious right now. Genuinely worried we're going to have a Wizard of Oz situation and I'm going to fly away. Just looking out there at the wind, it's really picking up now. I really hope I can get the jobs done that I wanted to do today. Hopefully, I will. I wanted to start this vlog with a little bit of advice. Now, I don't normally give out advice, so if you're looking for proper allotment gardening advice, this is probably not the channel. I'm just the person trying to whack it all in and show you that you can just get on with it. So when you guys get a new allotment plot and you finally get to the top of that waiting list, I seem to be one of the first people that you want to message, which I'm so grateful for. It's amazing. But one of the biggest messages I get is, what do I do first? What's the first thing that I should be getting on with at my new plot? Firstly, don't come here when it's windy because you might genuinely be impaled by something or blow away in your shed. So don't do that. So I want to give you three pieces of advice for the first three things that I would do with a brand new allotment plot. Number one, turn up, bring a planner. You can purchase my planner if you want, or just a piece of paper and a pen and your phone with a camera and go around and just assess your plot and see what's there. What's already growing? So you might have some rhubarb, you might have an old strawberry patch, you might have some crops that still haven't been harvested. So just go around and try and look amongst the weeds and see if there's anything there. Is there raspberry canes? Is there blackberries? Is there something growing? Take a little bit of a stock list of what is actually already growing at your allotment plot. Decide whether you want to keep it or not. So if you hate rhubarb, it might be that you're going to dig all the rhubarb out. But if you love it, then you know that you've got rhubarb on your plot already, so it's something you don't have to buy. The second thing that I would do is start clearing it. So start a compost area, or even just make a pile of all the stuff that you pull out. Pull out all the weeds, cut everything back. So you might find some old pathways, you might see the raised beds there. You might think, oh, actually, there is a bit of structure to this plot, it's just become overgrown. And then that's kind of half the work done for you, because deciding on the structure of your allotment plot is quite difficult if you have a blank canvas. I mean, it's fun, and it's doable, I did it, but to have some structure there already is definitely more ideal. And thirdly, once you've started clearing and you've got a couple of raised beds, or even just one raised bed that's ready to go, plant some potatoes. Start with the earlies, your mains will be able to go in soon, but just plant some potatoes. A couple of reasons for this. Firstly, potatoes are a really long growing crop, so you're going to have something growing on your allotment plot almost straight away. And they kind of get on with it, so you don't have to really worry about potatoes too much. So that could just be whacked in. And secondly, potatoes are really good for breaking up the soil. So they actually, as they grow, they actually break through the soil, and they give your soil a better structure. So those are the three things that I would do straight away if I was given a brand new allotment plot today. I would assess and write down what's there, clear everything to see if there's some kind of structure, and start making a compost pile, and plant in some potatoes. And I hope that helps, because I do get a lot of questions about that. So hopefully that's given you a little bit of advice. And potatoes is exactly what we're going to do today. If we don't get blown away. Right, there we go. That should give the cat something nice and new to poo in. This bed was just for my brassicas, because it's quite in the shade, and it just needed another top up of compost, because you can see the cardboard, and you can see the manure as well. So it just needed another bag of compost, so I just had to buy some cheap stuff, because I haven't got enough in my homemade compost. So that looks a little bit better. And in a couple of weeks, when I'm ready to plant out my brassicas, they're all going to go in here, because this bed is sort of half shady, partial shade, and so is that bed over there. So these beds are really good for brassicas, because they can kind of cope with a bit of shade. And then that's where my pumpkins are going. And that, I think, is where my potatoes are going to go. So this bed here, it's had my pumpkins in for a few years. This year I've moved my pumpkins, because I think you need to move crops about. It's called crop rotation, and it means that basically you move your crops about every year, so they don't spread disease and bacteria around. And also just to try them in a new soil, and replenish the soil a little bit. So pumpkins were here, now it's going to be potatoes. I just want to show you the soil. So this is the consistency you're looking for in good quality soil and compost to grow in. So you see I've got it here in my hand. If I squish it together, it just crumbles apart. Look at that, like an apple crumble topping. That's what you want, apple crumble topping. So when you squeeze it together like that, it kind of goes together, but it's very, very easy just to break up again. That is good quality soil, that's really good growing soil. And that's because the pumpkins have been there for so long, and I've regenerated the soil. I keep putting new mulch on it, and new manure, and digging in natural material. And all of that natural material will just end up with really good growing material. So just keep whacking stuff on, basically, that's what I mean. Just keep whacking anything on that's in natural material, but dead, don't put anything living on it. Just dead stuff. You'll get apple crumble soil, that's what you're looking for, an apple crumble topping. So, right, we're going to whack in the potatoes, if we don't blow away. So, I've been chitting my potatoes for a couple of weeks now, and that basically means I put them in an egg box, and then put them on a windowsill, but out of the direct sunlight, but in a sunny place, basically. And this is what's happened. So this is about two weeks worth of chitting. Essentially what's happened is that they've sprouted little green leaves out the top of them. They look very alien-like, don't they? Anyway, this is the top of the potato. So, I used to think this was the roots, and I planted them upside down. That would be upside down, right? That's the right way up, because you want this green stuff to reach the surface. So that's the way we're going to plant them. That's what we're going to do. We're going to whack them in. We're going to do that. And it's so windy, I'm probably not going to be able to talk, so I'll just show you what I'm doing, alright? Oh, we've had to stop because I've got an emergency. Oh, we've got an emergency. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. I've got mud in my eye. Oh my god, I've got mud in my eye. Oh my god, I don't know how to get that out. I can see it in my eye. Oh god, ow. Ow, ow, ow. Ow. How did I get mud in my eye? Oh my god. Oh, there's still more in it. I can feel it. Yeah, there it is. Oh, don't go down there. Come on, out you come. How do I get that out of my eye? Oh, I got it. I don't know how I did that. There better not be any worm particles in that. I've got worm particles in my eye. Who thought mud would be so dangerous? Oh, there's a crow in my plot now. That's a crow. Back her off. Sorry about that, guys. Oh, sorry about that. Oh my god. I must have just flicked mud right into my eye, but the way it went up was like I was blinded for a second. All I could see was mud. Like Duncan from Biker Grove all over again. Right, OK, we're just going to have to carry on like that. Right, OK, let's go. What I was trying to do is dig it a little bit longer because I think they need a bit more space between them. I think I've planted them a little bit close together because they're quite big plants. I think the closer you plant potato plants together the smaller the potatoes are that you get from them so you want to space them out a bit to get big potatoes. I think. I don't know. So that's about the spacing that we've done. I tried to leave it about a foot but that's what we've done. Now we forget they're there so something else there in its place. Probably. Right, the point is they're in. They're in the ground. We've done it. We've planted them. It's now up to them to make all of our dreams come true and become potatoes. I was just thinking as I was planting them isn't it weird how we plant a potato to get more potatoes? You just put a potato in the ground and it makes more potato and it's the same with garlic and onion. You plant a garlic clove and you get a bulb from it and it's like a potato. You plant a potato, you get a whole load of potatoes. It's just weird, isn't it? It's just a weird thing. Right, potatoes are in. I'm so relieved we didn't get blown away like the Wizard of Oz. Excellent. I'm glad that I didn't decide to do the pumpkin arch today as well because I was seriously considering doing the pumpkin arch today and I was like it says it's going to be windy. I don't think that's a good idea, Emma. Now I did bring something else to sow today which I'm quite excited about because it is March. It is March if you hadn't noticed. I know we've had snow but I am going to put my Californian poppies out. Absolutely beautiful, beautiful flower. A lot of people think they're weeds and they are in a way because as soon as you plant them they're a bit like nasturtiums. They sell seed everywhere and they just keep coming up so I will get some coming up this year anyway without sowing them but I'm going to put these around my pond. I also brought this which is a wildflower seed shaking kit. So it's from Wilko's. I think it was about £5 and it says you can sow it from March to June and it flowers through June to October and it's a whole mix of different wildlife loving flowers. So I can see some poppies, cornflowers what else can I identify? Not much if I'm honest. We've got cornflowers, calendulas marigolds, poppies yeah so loads and loads of pollinating loving flowers. Also going to whack this around my pond as well so well let's just do it it'll probably all blow away now won't it in the wind but there we go, what can we do? Can't sow seeds onto a soil that's too compacted so it's got to have a little bit of something about it otherwise the seeds will just blow away and sit there so I need to break it up just breaking up the surface a little bit so I'm just breaking up the surface a little bit, that's all I'm really doing shake well before opening seems like the easy bit oh look at that look at that that's amazing that is, I love that and you can just shake it on, fantastic oh this is my kind of seed sowing guys I'm in my element here oh my god, it's going everywhere oh the wind, it's the wind oh god it's blowing in my face it's not the day to spread anyone's ashes I'm just saying, it's just not the day it's like we're speed sowing speed sowing world championship and I'm winning like a mad woman what must I look like? find out later when I'm editing it I suppose right and then we'll just put the Californian poppy seeds over the top as well I like these seeds these tend to germinate really really well you don't think they're going to do anything and then all of a sudden 5 million of them just grow so if you want 5 million of them it sucks right guys right I'm aware that today was probably not the best day to sow wildflower seeds or any tiny seed and definitely not the right day to sow my potatoes but we did it and the thing is, the weather is too windy to do this really and I'm battling against the elements more than I need to be really but if I always waited for the perfect weather conditions I wouldn't get any gardening done I live in the UK and it was snowing last week and then today it was windy tomorrow it's going to be sun shines and really warm so I just can't if I was always waiting for the weather to be perfect I'd probably get about 5 decent gardening days a year so I just have to bite the bullet sometimes and come down here we had a laugh, we had fun we've whacked in our early potatoes we've got some wildflower seeds in the ground we nearly blinded ourselves but hey, we live to tell the tale and we're going to see another day of gardening so I hope you enjoyed the video I'm going to be back again on Wednesday I'm coming down tomorrow it's supposed to be really nice weather tomorrow so fingers crossed for that I really need to get my pumpkin archway built I'm so glad I didn't do it today it just would have been a nightmare I hope you enjoyed this vlog if you did subscribe to my channel I will see you in the next one guys hopefully my eye will be all fine by then see you next time, thanks for watching, bye