THE BEST NATURAL SLUG PELLETS / APRIL 2023 / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

You might think I'm being a wuss but they really hurt! Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. I would love you to subscribe to my YouTube channel, I vlog everything to do with my allotment garden, vegetable growing and shortly I'll be starting a new series in my back garden showing you how to grow lots of fruit and vegetables in pots or in a really small space and I'll just be showing you how much I can grow in my little tiny London garden so that'll be exciting too. I have some good news before we start the video. I've been rambling on about these slug pellets. They're natural slug pellets, not evil ones and they're called slugless organic slug and snail pellets. You basically, they're like pellets like that and you put them around your crops and then you water them and they turn sort of like into a surface area that slugs and snails don't like. They're by a company called Andermatt Home and Garden and they have given me a discount code for you guys so I'm going to link this product below in the description bar and if you use my discount code which will also be below or on the screen now somewhere, yes, you'll get 15% off which is really exciting and these are great. I really, really honestly recommend them. They're such a great slug deterrent and really easy to use and I love the packaging. It's all very eco-friendly, plastic bag, paper bag, you know, anyway that was cool. Good news as well, stopped at the shop on the way home yesterday and got my son a bag of marshmallows which means he told me where my little trowel was. It was actually in one of the tree branches, it sort of jammed it in between so got it back which is excellent news. Obviously gave in but you know, I'm only human. Thought I would start this morning with our favourite game. Is it alive or has it died? One of my favourite games to play at the allotment plot when I first arrived. We go around, we see what's alive, what's died. The only thing, the only thing this game is missing is Stephen Mulhern in a shiny jacket coming out playing it on ICV but it's okay, it's fine, maybe one day we'll get signed up. Right, we're going to start with the brassicas. I'm going to start with the brassicas which are in this wonderful netted cage. A few asking how you water it, I mean water gets through this, this is not, this is, this allows water in and then if I show you, you see it's all wet under here and also look, this is a good example, those pellets, the slug pellets, they've got wet and they've sort of turned into this surface area that cannot be crossed by slugs and snails. I don't know why they don't like it but they just don't like it and as you can see, minimal damage, minimal, minimal, minimal, minimal, very good. I can't remember what these are, I think they're cauliflowers, I don't know, I don't know, we'll find out, all alive. First, first contestant of the show is alive, fantastic, obviously the tulips are all gone, thank you for all the love on my tulip, I got tulip fire basically and had to pull up all of my favourite tulips at the back there which was really devastating but luckily a lot of you agreed with me and said yes it is tulip fire because I did think as I was pulling them up, imagine I put this video up and then everyone's like no it's just the tulipo bug or whatever, tuli buggy and you just need to spray it with something and then it'll be gone but it wasn't, it was tulip fire so thank you. Right we're moving on to broad beans now. My broad beans were actually planted out a little bit later than last year so they're a little bit smaller than I'm sort of used to them being at this time of year, normally they're sort of up here somewhere but this year they're quite small, obviously I planted some new ones as well I got from B&Q, I've removed the netting now just because they're getting a bit tall for it and also I just want to let them go. This is my other slug and snail deterrent which is crushed whelk shells from a company called Shell on Earth and these are doing really well as well, that seems to have stopped them from from eating them. Some of these plants don't look quite as happy as the other ones but I just feel like they're going to be all right, they are sort of still growing, I mean this one here this is a lot healthier and doing really well and then some of but again not not like alive you know alive officially alive so I'm going to put it out there and say alive for them so that's excellent that's really good. Over here my potatoes started to come up and they are still alive not died yet so these are my early potatoes all starting to come up through the ground very very exciting yeah they seem to have done seem to be doing all right I'm just going to leave them alone really just leave them alone. Venturing a little bit further down the plot now and I've got my sweet corn which I have planted direct this year and just because I found an article in a magazine saying that it doesn't like its roots being disturbed and I've really struggled to grow sweet corn over the last couple of years so I'm going to try something new this year and try growing them directly in the ground. I've got this cloche I've got this fleece fleece cloche whatever it is over it to keep it warm because they obviously like to be nice and warm and cozy to germinate let's see if any of it has germinated I doubt it I doubt it guys but we can dream you know dream big this is my my impression of dreaming big sweet corn germinated really quickly is that a sweet corn no that can't be a sweet corn oh it might have already germinated oh oh my first impression was no nothing nothing but then I saw this which looks suspiciously like something I might have purposely planted and then over here there's one there could that be sweet corn I don't know thing is the sweet corn it's a bit sporadic so it all kind of germinates at its own pace so it's quite difficult to know if it's a seed or a weed that's the only thing we're planting it direct I think but I'll just leave it a bit longer and hopefully something will come up peas not doing too good sad about this because peas have always really worked for me and this year they're just not so look they've just been eaten they've just been eating I think the problem is I put the slugless on this side but not on that side and obviously they've just slithered over that side and got them so that was really silly um but yeah they're sort of all been eaten they've not done very well at all I mean you've still got some leaves on them you might you might grow might get a couple should have separated them really I think yeah I mean that's really funny because peas really worked for me last year and this year they don't seem to be working at all which is such a shame but there we go right we've got um flower bed happy we've got corn flowers and gladioli and then the dahlias and there they should be all right and then we've got our sweet peas at the front here all alive raspberry sticks are now growing into living sticks absolutely fantastic and that looks so weird didn't it so weird I need to build up my structure a bit more but I'm not going to do it yet because I'm a rebel and I'm going to wait also yes I will stop poking everything because I know when you poke stuff sometimes it dies there's one bed at the front here we haven't checked out this one so we've got a few parsnips growing which is excellent we've sowed a couple new rows of carrots some of the old rows are still coming up um so I think they'll be okay and then we've got our rows of parsnips just there we've got our garlic and shallots over there that's fine and look at this guys mr rhubarb potato has grown a leaf can you believe it absolutely no idea what it means but I'm assuming a leaf is a good thing for a plant to have so you do your thing mr rhubarb potato and we'll leave you to it do you know if you ever just pop down to your allotment plot with no plan and you don't really know what you're going to do when you get there and you sort of wander around a bit and you play is it alive as it died and you think what can I do just start weeding just weed there's always weeds and if you spend some time weeding whenever you've got a spare moment it'll never be time that's wasted because you'll stay on top of it also you see all this overgrowth it's been growing up by this raised bed so lots of grasses and weeds and stuff this is the perfect place for slugs and snails to hide in so keeping this weeded and keeping this low stops them from having somewhere to hide and to live it's basically like having a slug and snail hotel right next to your raised bed you know this is the hotel and that is the all you can eat buffet so you know you've got to get rid of the hotel the buffet can stay but the hotel's got to go so I've noticed there's quite a lot of stinging nettles growing around my plot and apparently stinging nettles are really good to use for like um to make a feed see them all around here there's like loads of them growing everywhere and I just think instead of just like ripping them up and throwing them away maybe I could make something useful with them so there's a feed that you can make for your plants that's made out of stinging nettles and you basically chop down some stinging nettles put it into a bucket or watering can with loads of water and leave it for about three weeks and it creates a really I think it's nitrogen I might be wrong on that though don't quote me on that I think it's like a nitrogen rich feed that you then feed to your plants and it helps with leafy growth um so I'm going to make that because I don't want to waste it but I also don't want to eat it whenever I say there's stinging nettles somebody always says in the comments you can eat it I just don't want to guys I just don't want to eat stinging nettles like it's just not going to happen so I know you can I don't want to I don't really know the proper correct way of handling stinging nettles because they always sting me no matter what gloves I'm wearing oh god it's really scary because I know they're gonna sting me any second you might think I'm being a wuss but they really hurt I don't want to get stung by them today I just don't oh god such horrible plants people eat them like I don't want to touch it with gloved hands like the idea of putting it in a tea and then drinking it like I don't want it near my hands with gloves on let alone near my mouth you know I know I know I know it doesn't sting you when you drink it I know I know but I feel like it will it just doesn't feel right how it works I don't know if maybe like the more stinging nettles you put in the stronger the feed is I don't know if that's right that feels right but I don't know not everything in gardening is like logical you know some things I think oh yeah that's really that's common sense some things don't really make sense you know realization just hit me that I'm filling up a watering can with another watering can how weird is that how often do people fill up watering cans with another watering can it's just not something that happens very often you know it's weird it's like the twilight zone it's like I've stepped outside the matrix and I'm now filling up a watering can with a watering can it's weird just feels weird I feel like I'm a kid like I'm making a potion at school cover the top I feel like I need to cover the top I don't know if that's something you need to do but I think I will um with with what yeah because otherwise all the rain is just going to wash it out isn't it so now what we'll do is we'll just leave that there covered very strangely we'll just leave it there for like three weeks and then it will stink it'll absolutely stink but it will be a really good feed to put over some of my crops hopefully by then pumpkins will be out um I have started my pumpkins and pots at home now by the way so if you haven't yet started any pumpkins start them now I'm just growing Jack B Littles this year and then the giant pumpkins I haven't grown a giant pumpkin for like four years so I'm going to grow a massive one this year you know I think sometimes it is okay just to come down to your allotment plot and just enjoy it and not feel like you have to have a whole list of jobs to be getting on with you know just to be able to come down here and trust me when I say that because I make these vlogs and it means that I have to often I have to like plan my weeks ahead and I have to plan what I'm going to do so I know what I'm going to be filming so it makes an interesting vlog sometimes it's really important just to come down with no plan with no idea of what you want to do and just enjoy it and just be in the moment and just pick some jobs that need doing right then right there and then um I think a lot of people when they take their first allotment plot on they get excited by all the hard work at the beginning because it is hard work and they like that but then as the months go on they lose that kind of like you don't want to do all that hard work all the time so you see your plot as hard work and you don't see it as fun and enjoyable and a space that you can just sit in you think every time you turn up you've got to do something and you don't you really don't there's no rule that says you have to work when you get to an allotment plot you can just sit down with a cup of tea and just just look at all the flowers and just listen to the birds I think a lot of people come to an allotment plot with the best intention ever they want to grow their own food they want to be out in nature it's fantastic but very quickly they lose that kind of that initial motivation they lose it because they see it as hard work just want you to know that if you have just taken on your first allotment plot it is okay to slow down a bit it is okay to rock up here without a plan and just enjoy it in fact it's essential don't lose the plot it's what I'm trying to say don't lose the plot just stick with it enjoy it see it as fun as well and if in doubt just do a bit of weeding that's what I say just do a bit of weeding well I'm happy to report that we did pretty much nothing productive today we made a comfrey I think it's called stinging nettle feed we did a bit of weeding we played is it alive is it died that's about it really still just goes to show don't need to always turn up with a plan sometimes there are jobs to be found if you just look in the right places I had fun I've enjoyed my morning and now I'm set up for the day I hope you've enjoyed my little vlog today and if you did do give it a thumbs up give it a comment below and subscribe to my youtube channel I'll see you again on Friday for an at home small garden vlog showing you all the things that I'm growing in my small London garden at this time of year so join me again on Friday 5pm see you then have a lovely rest of your week bye