REALITY OF AN ALLOTMENT PLOT IN THE UK / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

Hello everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries and this is my allotment YouTube channel. If this is your jam I would love for you to hit the subscribe button below. So in this week's video I'm going to be talking all about bringing your plot under control again if you feel like it's got a little bit out of control. So I'm the same as you guys, I'm not an allotment expert, I've just come down here, I do my best. Occasionally things get on top of me, especially if you're new to allotmenting and it's your first allotment plot at this time of year it is quite normal for weeds to be going a bit crazy and for things to feel a little bit out of your control. Don't let it put you off, keep the motivation, keep the faith because this happens to me every year. Every year about this time, about the beginning of July, I come to my plot, I look around and I just think it's just awful, I just let it all go and everyone else's plot is perfect and mine is just terrible and it's getting on top of me and I can't handle the workload. But you can, you can, it's completely normal for weeds to grow like crazy at this time of year. I think it's good to take a step back sometimes, have a little look at what is working, what's not working, locate some of your jobs, some of the things that maybe are getting out of control and then dedicate some time to taking care of those things which is exactly what this video is all about and what I'm going to do and hopefully this will give you a little bit of motivation, inspiration maybe, to get out there and to give your allotment plot one last go. It doesn't take much to bring it back under control, to feel in control of things again and I'm going to get stuck straight in but I did have a bit of a disaster over the weekend and I'm absolutely gutted and I'm trying not to show it too much because I want it to be positive here, I try and keep positive vibes but my giant sunflower fell down and I think he might have snapped and I'm a little bit gutted. He just grew too big and I didn't have the structure in place to keep him up so he has just fallen down, it's so sad, let's have a look at this stem, the stem is the most important bit, no look, look, completely snapped, I'm gutted. I'm pretty sure that's it for him. That must have happened quite recently though because he still sort of looks alive. I'm going to prop him up anyway, I'm just going to prop him up, I can't just snap him off and kill him, I can't do it, don't do that, I can't even get that in the ground, there's just no way, there's just no way that that is going to survive. Oh sunflower. No, I think he's probably going to die now, there's not much I can do about him unfortunately because he's snapped at the bottom but he does still have a little bit clinging on so maybe he'll live long enough just to open up that flower for me but he looks like he's just brown bread I'm afraid. Such a shame because that's the biggest sunflower I think I've ever grown but the wind, the wind is the biggest damage to any allotment plot, like the wind just causes more damage than anything else other than maybe hail or something but yeah, such a shame. The broad beans have fallen into my structure again, they seem to just like that structure for some reason, right we have to sort this out now. French beans are quite happily growing up this string, they don't seem to mind that it's a bit wobbly, I thought it had to be really tight like that but actually they're doing alright and it's giving them a bit of leeway like for the wind so they can sort of rattle about a little bit but yeah they're doing really really well. I've even got a few little purple flowers which are so pretty, if I'd have known the flowers would be this pretty I would have put them at the front somewhere but I didn't know they were that beautiful. So this advice will feel a little bit silly when I say it out loud but then what doesn't, what comes out of my mouth that doesn't sound a little bit silly, but when you're feeling really overwhelmed and you don't know where to start and everything feels like it's on top of you, the best possible thing that you can do is to just start, just start doing it. It can be really tempting in those moments, you get like paralysis and you don't even know where to start and you don't know what to do and it feels like such a big overwhelming job. The best thing to do is to literally pick somewhere, anywhere, a corner of your plot, one raised bed, one area that's very very weedy or you don't like the look of and you're worried about and just start on it and that's exactly what I'm going to do with this little corner here behind me which has just become a bit overgrown. It's just making me feel a bit overwhelmed so if I start with that I know it's going to make me feel a bit better. Oh my gosh I can't stop sneezing, have I got hay fever, am I allergic to these weeds? What good excuse, always find a good excuse to get out of weeding, allergic. Okay so a lot of the weeds now have been removed from this area, I don't think the fence is really salvageable. We're going to leave it for now, I put the gate over there, that's the last bit of the fence that I need to finish along there and you can see how the fence is really holding back all the bindweed behind there, you might not be able to but you will soon. Right now I'm going to go and grab some wood chip before it rains, I really hope it doesn't rain today, it wasn't supposed to but it's unpredictable isn't it, like life. Right so I'm going to go and get the wood chip, yeah come on. And Rocky, hanging around the wood chip pile, looking to make a new friend, I lured him back, I lured him back because he looked really hungry and he was looking a bit sad, Rocky where are you, there you are, come on then, come on then, you want some chips, you want some chips, yeah, yeah, he looked really hungry, he looked really sad, he was like facing away from the wood chip pile, just sitting there, staring at a bush, right, you want some chips, come here, oh no, too lucky, I should have called you lucky, no nice, the other way or you'll be covered in wood chip. I think I've got a bit more left in me so I'm going to tackle that fence and try and get that bindweed off because bindweed is, firstly it's the most annoying plant in the entire planet, if you disagree you can't be my friend anymore, seriously I hate it. It wraps itself around everything, what it's trying to do is it's trying to get up high so it wraps itself around all your plants, fences, anything to get up towards the light if it goes around your plants it strangles them to death, blocks out all the light, stops it getting what it needs, if it goes over all your fence it can actually pull the fence down, you can see how it's pulling it back over there, it's a nightmare, I have had a few comments saying how do I get rid of my bindweed, I don't know, like I just have to keep pulling it up, keep killing it, keep disposing of it on like over there basically, that's the communal bit, that's all the bindweed, I don't know where else to put it, I can't put it in my compost because it will grow again, it's a nightmare, you just got to keep doing it and hopefully it'll weaken and eventually die, oh hello, I didn't see you there, oh goodness, I've got so many friends at the allotment this year, hello, I haven't been digging so I don't think there's any worms for you, sorry, he's so cute, I think he's a baby robin because he looks a bit like a robin, he looks a bit like a robin, oh it's right here, he's so close to me, I don't even need to zoom, yeah he looks like a robin but like a little baby one, don't you, the other day he almost sat on my knee but I got a little bit scared so I had to move away at the last minute, but yeah he almost came and sat on my knee so I think he's my new friend, we need to come up with a name for him though, what do you think, not Robbie, I can't call the robin Robbie, I've got to think of something a bit more, I don't know, imaginative, if you've got a name for my new little baby robin, I think it's a baby robin, leave it below in the comments and I'll choose my favourite, name that bird, I love making these vlogs because I want to inspire you and motivate you and show off my allotment plot, I'm proud of myself here and I have such an enthusiasm for it and I just want to spread the word to as many of you as I can or as many people as I can to get growing and to grow your own food and to prove that you can do this with limited experience, you know, you don't have to be a horticultural expert but the reality is that allotment plots are hard work, they're really hard work and I don't feel like in my vlogs I show you that nitty-gritty hard work enough and what I'm worried about is because now that I'm reaching a wider audience than ever, you know, there's over 100,000 of you on Instagram, it's amazing, I reached over 25,000 of you on here, it's absolutely amazing and I love it but I'm now worried that I'm putting out this idealised version of what it's like to have an allotment plot, there are some days where you go down to your allotment plot and all you will do are boring maintenance jobs, you know, some days that the allotment plot aren't full of fun, they're just hard work and I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't felt like giving up this plot several, more than several times, like probably 10, 15 times over the last few years. My nan used to say to me that nothing in this world worth having comes easy and I apply that a lot to my allotment plot because the rewards and the benefits that I get from being here and from growing my own food here, like massively outweigh all of that hard work and all that negativity and I just keep that in my mind, you know, like if it was easy would I care as much, would I feel as much satisfaction from being here and would I feel proud of myself every time I come here and something's grown, probably not, probably not, it is really, really tough and it's really hard work and you do have to show up and no matter how many books you read about the half hour a week allotment plot or any of those, you know, snazzy articles you see of like, oh you know, you can do an allotment plot in an hour a week, you probably can't, you know, you do need to show up, you do need to be here, you do need to put the time in. I just want to get across the point that allotment gardening is really hard work and having an allotment plot is a massive commitment but if you stick with it the rewards are incredible, you will feel amazing and hopefully you'll get some really amazing crops that you've harvested yourself, you've grown them from seed yourself, you'll feel incredible, it's the best tasting food you'll ever have, the best bunch of flowers you'll ever pick but just don't go out there getting these plots, you know, being inspired by me, going and getting yourself an allotment plot and thinking it's going to be easy and giving up straight away when it gets hard because it's hard, I'm telling you right now it's hard and hopefully this vlog has sort of shown you the reality behind the allotment plot, the bit that I don't always show you because it's not as fun is it? It's not fun seeing someone weed for an hour but it's life, that's what it is, that's allotment life. So this is what we have tackled today, the front of the allotment plot which I think you'll you'll agree looks a lot better now, so I've got rid of all those weeds there and I've re-wood chipped the pathway a little bit, cut it all back round here and then we've gone as far as just around this bit here and then down the fence all we've done is basically removed all the bindweed from the fence which is now in great big piles down the communal path which needs to be taken care of by the council, not me, come on, I've got all this to look after, I can't do that as well. So I think you'll agree it looks a lot better, all we've done is tackled this front bit of the plot but that's the point, when you feel like your plot's a little bit out of control, tackle one area at a time and do it well, do it properly so that it's done and then when you move on to the next area there aren't little jobs still to be done in that area so this area is now done, it's sorted out, the weeds will hopefully stay back a little bit and I can move on to another section of the plot next time and the satisfaction that you'll get from doing this is amazing, you'll feel on top of it again, yeah it's great, it doesn't look like the sunflower's going to survive, look at it, I reckon that must have happened about, oh my gosh, like half an hour before I arrived, maybe even less than that because all the leaves were still alive weren't they and it looked very much alive so it must have literally just happened before I got here which is such a shame, he's now tied in, my three-headed monster one, but unfortunately he's gone, you can't win them all, I hope you've enjoyed my vlog today, I hope it's shown you a little bit behind the scenes of the reality of allotment life and I'll see you again next time, thanks so much for watching, bye!