MARCH ALLOTMENT PLOT TOUR 2023 / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

Saw about four spiders running for their lives. We'll be living on lettuce for like three weeks but it's fine, it's fine. Morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I would love for you to hit the subscribe button and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven't done it already. I put up loads of videos all about my allotment plot, my allotment journey as a complete gardening beginner and then I took on this allotment plot four years ago with no prior kind of gardening experience, just whacked stuff in the ground, gave it a go and here we are four years later. I've documented my whole journey so you can go back and see it and yeah I hope you enjoy watching them and if you do, do subscribe, do check out my other links below and yeah come with me on my little journey. So yesterday I was here and I showed you we did some planting, we planted out sweet peas, we planted out some rocket but then towards the end of the video loads of people arrived on their allotment plot so I felt a little bit self-conscious so I wrapped it up before I could show you what has been growing on my allotment plot and so much has sprung to life, I am so excited. I feel like this time last year I wasn't in this position, I feel like things just weren't taking off as quickly and I don't know if that was to do with the weather or if it was to do with me kind of waiting. I think last year my motto was to wait to sow anything and I waited too long and then I didn't have enough growing so this year I have just been literally whacking anything and everything I can into the ground it's starting to pay off, so much is coming up and I'm so excited to show you around my allotment plot in March. Let's go and have a look. I'm starting off right at the front of my plot and I've taken you to my tulip patch and these were the first tulips I ever put into my plot, in fact they were the first thing I ever planted into my plot so I cleared the plot, I had like maybe two or three raised beds all set up, a new bag of compost and the first thing I put in was some tulips because I just loved them, I think they had such a lovely burst of colour, beautiful flowers and of course you can just leave them in the ground and they'll just come back every year. What I wanted to show you is the fact that I'm getting loads of little tulip flower heads already, I cannot believe how many I'm getting already and I think this is probably the earliest that they've ever come up like this. There's two types here, there's a darker purple which I think is an earlier flowering variety and then there's a lighter pink which I think is slightly later but the way that it happens is the purple ones come up first and then a couple of weeks later all the pale pink ones open and then they kind of have this lovely display together and then the purple ones die back and then the pink ones die back after so it's like perfect. I didn't even mean to do that guys, it just happened but I don't remember them being this far along this early in the year before so I'm really excited. So I've got some here and I've got some just behind them there, I've got a few that I put around my wildlife pond and then I've got my lovely yellow and orangey ones that come up over there so the whole plot is just going to be so beautiful. I've also got a few down here as well. I just know that tulips are something that just do really well on my allotment so if they do really well I'm just going to keep whacking them in you know. So lovely plants, there we go. This is the next thing I was excited about. If you've seen my pumpkin arch video that I made a couple of days ago you might know that I stood on this bed here and I forgot that I threw in some lettuce seeds. Well it doesn't really matter that I stood on them at all because millions of them are coming up. In fact you can actually see my footprints still in here but I won't touch I won't touch them but look so many so many lettuce seeds all coming up. I did do it in two rows but then I sort of scattered them if you remember. Anyway absolutely hundreds of them all coming up in this bed so beautiful. Just always so nice to see seeds that you've whacked into the ground just like suddenly come up especially when you've forgotten about them which I do quite often and then it's always just such a lovely surprise to see them growing but I think what I will do is leave them to it and I won't thin them out or anything because I'm going to have to pick these fairly sharpish if I'm going to get my pumpkins out. Pumpkins are quite fast growing plants usually if you do it right not like last year. Last year mine just all died but yeah so I these are just basically whack in as soon as they're ready to start picking I'm just going to pick as many as I can and eat it. We'll be living on lettuce for like three weeks but it's fine it's fine no one will mind. So under here under this cloche lies two rows of parsnips and two rows of carrots. A lot of people doubted me when I put my parsnips out in sort of beginning of February mid-February a lot of people said no soil needs to be a lot warmer than that it's not going to germinate. Well hello who's the gardening expert eh? Me or you? Actually don't answer that one that one. That's right guys I've germinated parsnip in February again. Obviously I've just got the gardening instinct and I just know when things are going to work and I don't listen to anyone who says that it won't work because I know it will work and here we are it's worked. Just let me stew in it for a minute because this never happens to me um but look there's our parsnips guys there's one row of parsnips and there is two rows of parsnips all germinating all coming up very happily. See if I can go a bit closer for you there they are do you see them do you see them now look at those little babies all coming up just like they did last year see there's my second row coming up really happily also just having a look and we have got some carrots coming up too those are carrots carrots when they come up they sort of got like they look a bit like grass um it's a bit like that that's a carrot that's a carrot it's like a little bit of grass coming up but you can see I can what I can see that they are my carrots because they're coming up in a row I mean like I said I'm not trying to be a know-it-all or anything um me a gardening know-it-all yeah please just let me stew in this one because it's very rare that I'm actually right about something and I stick to my guns and then it works out um usually I don't listen to you and then everything dies and I think oh I should have listened to you um but honestly to everyone who thinks you can't germinate parsnips in February you can you can in fact they work so much better if you do it in February cover it with a bit cloche they'll get going now they'll be happy as Larry there and I'll get massive parsnips again so just do it if you've got the instinct the gardening instinct hits in kicks in like it does with me sometimes you've just got to go with it and follow it through oh guys just let me have this moment and then let's just turn to the garlic here actually the garlic's doing quite well you know it's not doing too bad and the shallots are doing quite well as well I just need to give them a bit of a weed I think where'd the sun go all of a sudden that's what happens when you show off you see it's why you shouldn't show off never show off right now that we've established I'm a gardening genius I am so excited to show you what is growing in my polytunnel which is where we are right now because when I saw all this yesterday and I looked in I thought I can't stay here because I'm going to be jumping up and down and getting excited and shouting and everyone's going to think like I'm having some kind of episode in my polytunnel which I think I am getting but this is how well it's doing guys oh I just can't I just can't you're not ready for this just look at the amount of growth going on in this polytunnel can you believe it we've got our lovely purple pak choi here I don't know if it's bolting though because it's going quite tall but I don't care it's such a beautiful plant I'm just going to leave it as a plant now like I just don't I don't want to pick that so beautiful the leaves are so silky and soft as well oh my goodness look how well it's doing and then down here I don't know what that is but it's growing it's growing and then we've got some rows of bright lights radishes which are just doing absolutely fantastic I thought it would I think this is a baby kale like a dwarf kale or something and then we've got the garlic the garlic is just oh my goodness the garlic the garlic we've had some kind of animal or I really hope that's not spider definitely something's been digging I don't like the look of that at all so we're just gonna move on from that for now these are my radishes that actually went too far and went to seed and I'm waiting for them to flower and then I'm going to eat the flower pods someone said the flower pods are really nice so I'm going to leave them and then look at my kohlrabi I've never grown a kohlrabi before and I've got loads of them now I've got loads of them so these are like I don't know what these are really I think they're like a bulb that you eat basically so you see on this bottom bit here I think that bit gets bigger and bigger and then you know it's ready to pick but I mean look they're all down here as well we thought they'd died do you remember that we thought they'd died and sort of like we had one or two but look hundreds of them hundreds of them so so so excited and happy about that I've never grown a kohlrabi this is amazing and then down here where my leeks are they've done something they've got bigger and I've never seen leeks that actually get bigger before they always stay like a little bit grass but these ones are getting taller so still grass but definitely taller I'm not gonna I'm not gonna dig them up or anything because they are doing something aren't they so I'm quite happy with those I'll just leave them just leave them to do their thing I mean yes you're right still very grass like but they are technically bigger than they were last time so I'll take that I'll definitely take that I think that might be a carrot there we're just going to see all the positives and everything today I think because we're just having a really good time looking around at everything aren't we but yeah I mean look at that that's you know that that's a postcard that is I could take a picture of that and send it as a postcard to someone because that is glorious oh there are spiders in here there are spiders in here there are spiders yeah definitely spider under there somewhere let's give it a spray with garlic water I think ward off evil go away this water is smelling more and more garlicky every time I use it just getting more and more infused just saw about four spiders running to their lives be gone evil be gone evil now I stink of bloody garlic water brilliant lovely so as you can see I am a gardening genius this year and Lowe's is growing and I'm so excited about it I don't have any specific jobs to do today but I think I might just do a bit of weeding while I'm here because it seems a waste to come and not do something so I'll just do a little bit of weeding around the place and then I'm going to repot on some of my seedlings at home so I'll take you home and show you how I'm going to repot stuff and we'll do that I think welcome to my back garden so I was going to show you some of the seeds that I've been sowing but I've had some trouble with them and basically I think in my last video on Monday I said that some of my seeds are being eaten and I really needed to protect them well obviously I forgot and I didn't protect them so a lot of them have been eaten I can actually see one of the culprits in here right now there he is sitting there happy as Larry with all his food around him unbelievable there's another one in there too a little baby one oh they're literally just having babies now brilliant I forget that if you've got one of these sort of flimsy greenhouses outside slugs and snails do come in and when your seedlings are really tiny they're like the most delicious to them and so they do just come and just wipe out all your seeds I mean I've got some peas here or should I say I have some peas here unfortunately they have sort of been eaten to death really but we are going to pot some things on so I had to take them inside I'll just get them right so this is my calabrese and my purple sprouting broccoli which did all grow really well but then sort of got massacred by slugs and snails which is really annoying I think some of them are savable though so I'm going to pop those ones on and then I'm going to resew another row and keep them indoors because I think that purple sprout and broccoli and calabrese are just so delicious to slugs and snails all brassicas are they just seem to love them so we'll put on what we can it's not the end of the world guys it's still very very early that's why I always say it's better to plant too many and just get it done early because when it gets eaten you've got loads of time to plant more so I've got a few pots here just filled with multi-purpose compost they're going from a coir mix to a multi-purpose compost so they're probably going to slow down a bit for a while because they're going to get a burst of nutrients by going into here or they'll sort of speed up because they'll have loads more nutrients and then they'll slow down a bit because they'll realise they've got everything they could ever dream of within like a two centimetre radius so they'll sort of slow down a little bit but anyway it doesn't matter just whack them into a pot with some compost in you'll be fine anything will do right so what we're going to do is we're going to choose our victim one that's not had the middle eaten that's not had the middle taken right we're going to hold it by the leaves it's important to hold it by leaf when you're doing this using a lollipop stick I'm just gonna gently just sort of tease it out okay we're going to tease the entire thing out right we're just going to take the entire thing out change plan and then we're going to try and tease him away from his mates very gently we don't want to really pull him we want him to kind of come away on his own that doesn't really make any sense but it does in my head and gently teasing him come on come on come on look at the roots on him such a tiny plant is such a great root system absolutely fantastic so then what we do that way bring in our pot hole in the middle like that just gently drop him in and then fill him in I'm going to press him down just enough so we stand stay standing but not to compact the soil too much just like that and that's a purple sprouted broccoli that has been potted on now you've just got to do that 50,000 more times hope that helps that's why I always say when you're sowing seeds make sure you've got enough room make sure you've got enough pots or containers because remember anything can be a container for a plant as long as it's got drainage holes in the bottom so yogurt pots dessert pots what else can be a butter pot maybe a tub of butter anything that's like substantially plastic in light anything that's strong enough that you can put drainage holes in the bottom basically can be a container for a plant and but yeah make sure you've got enough of those and then make sure you've got enough room to store them all I'm gonna put these ones inside because slugs and snails love them I hope that's helped I hope you enjoyed my vlog today if you did subscribe to my youtube channel I will see you again on Friday with another vlog from the allotment plot see you Friday guys thanks for watching