FIRST EVER APPLE HARVEST! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

That's my best advice I think and then snip off their heads and eat them. Hey guys how's it going my name's Emma these are my allotment diaries. It's getting a little bit windy out there so I hope you can hear me okay. Um these are my allotment diaries I'd love for you to hit the subscribe button just below if you're new and you like my diaries and you you want to follow along and you won't miss a video if you just go below and hit subscribe that's all it takes. So I've come down to my allotment plot this morning it's about eight o'clock in the morning and I just wanted to get some headspace really I don't have any like particular jobs to be doing here I just felt like I wanted to come down and just chill out for a little bit really and be around nature and snails and slugs and stuff sometimes I feel like that I don't know if you're the same sometimes I feel like being with the snails and so I'm starting my vlog at the other end of my plot today this is my poly tunnel I thought I would come and check on my tomatoes and see how they're doing none of them so far are turning red which is a little bit unusual for this time of year normally at this time of year I've got a few ones sort of starting to go orangey red this year nothing um I think it's a lack of sun I think we've had so much cloud and rain in the UK that there's not been enough sun to turn them red but I might be wrong I probably am wrong because I don't really know I mean they're all looking absolutely fantastic the shape of these ones is insane it's amazing and the plants are really healthy there's no sign of blight on them or anything anything awful these ones here are looking really good as well like a really nice shape I think these are gardeners delight they're looking fantastic and I've got more growing up here as well and like I said the plant looks really good no sign of blight or anything nasty on them so it's just a matter of waiting for them to turn red I think I'm pretty sure it's a sunlight problem because I have been feeding them and the leaves are very nice and green I reckon it's a sunlight problem and they've had enough sunlight hitting them because you know sometimes if you pick a green tomato and you put it on a warm sunny windowsill they turn red I think it's the sun that does it what makes me think that I know I had two and two together I'm very smart yeah and I reckon it's just there's not just been enough sun sunlight luckily as I'm speaking the sun is coming out it's literally coming out as I'm speaking it's like it can hear me so yeah hopefully with a bit more sun they'll start to turn red one of my worst nightmares is putting these gloves on and there being an insect or spider in there or something everyone always says why don't you just keep them in your shed or in a box or something I know I know but I just I forget I just forget every time and then I panic when I put them on it's just I think there's a stick in there or something it's just a stick thank goodness ah all the building works going on today and so whenever I don't know what to do at my plot I always just resort to weeding weeding weeding weeding you have to do it regularly you have to do it often little and often and then it keeps it under control I know it's really boring I hate it too but just taking that bit of time just to go around and just pick the worst of the weeds and just keep things under control even just hoe over something or chop something down makes a massive massive difference particularly at this time of year so if you don't know what to do just start weeding that's my advice that's my best advice I think am I allowed to have just a teeny tiny little bit of a moan um would you just excuse me if I just complained about something for one minute um so I noticed that some lovely people from the council came along and they actually cleared the main path of all the weeds and stuff it's sort of their duty to do this to maintain all the pathways and weeds and stuff so they've sort of come along here with these machines and chopped all this down but you know what they've left they've left this path here which which is sort of between my allotment plot and his allotment plot they've just left it and just not done it why have they not done it all down there is done right all the way to the end down there so you can walk down there really nice with your wheelbarrows and stuff and then all down here hasn't been done and this is definitely a pathway and it's definitely a communal pathway anyway thank you for letting me have a moan and indulging me in that because it is like one of their only jobs do you know what I mean and they're very hard to get in contact with if anything goes wrong and they're very difficult getting back to you and all the rest of it so the least that they could do is just go down there it's taken two bleeding minutes and I haven't got a little power strimmer thing so anyway we're all allowed to have a moan every now and again that was my one compost heap is not looking so good anymore it was looking really good about three months ago before everything started growing and then for some reason it just started becoming really overgrown I'm putting my foot up here like this because I keep getting stung by stinging nettles on my ankle and it really hurts I don't know how good this compost is in here I mean I guess I guess it's not too bad is it I mean technically I could end up bloody red ants everywhere they're swarming it oh my gosh oh my god it's not stinging nettles it's red ants ow it wasn't stinging nettles stinging me it was red ants biting me this whole compost thing is filled filled up with red ants absolutely swarming with them I don't know if you can see them I don't want to get too close to them they're all over the sides they're all in they're absolutely everywhere absolute monsters they are red ants have just swarmed this year haven't they I think it must be something to do with the weather conditions they have just flourished I've got about four red ant nests on my plot my whole compost bin is now covered in them absolute nightmares they are absolute nightmares I don't know if they do anything good for the garden I assume they do but they don't do anything good for my legs I brought some peas with me today why I hear you say I know why um so I was filming a video earlier last week about what to sow in August time and one of the things that I saw kept coming up was like the salad crops that you can sow in early spring you can also kind of sow in August time so in like early autumn um so like for example radishes spring onions mizuna fast growing lettuces like all these things can be sown in spring and also early autumn so I thought why not peas why not peas so peas can be sown between February and May they take about four months to give you a harvest but you don't have to harvest peas you can actually harvest small pea shoots and put them into oh my god spider on my head no sorry I'm a bit jumpy now since the red ants you can actually harvest the shoots of a pea so when they get to about that big you can pick them and eat them in a salad and they're really delicious I buy pea shoots from the shop and they're really expensive but really good my rabbit also loves them as well I mean they're so delicious and sweet and soft and easy to eat they're just lovely lovely lovely crop so if I sow it now so we're in sort of like what mid-August if it takes four months to become a pea then it stands to reason that it takes about two months to become a small plant so I reckon by sort of the end of September mid-October I should have some pea shoots to harvest if I sow them now so I'm going to sow them now I'm going to try it I'm going to try and get some pea shoots later in the year why not if we have a good sort of September early October this should work this should be genius let's try it I'm going to sow them in the polytunnel for no reason other than I've decided I'm going to sow them in the polytunnel and that's where they're going to go so I'm going to do it in this little row just in front of my tomatoes I think what we'll do because we're not sowing them as peas so for peas you know they need structure and they need to climb up something and all the rest of it because we're just growing them for a crop what I'm going to do is I'm going to scatter them almost like we're sowing them in like a seed tray do you know what I mean I want a little crop of them like it's grass like it's a bush like it's it's just a pot of something and I can just grab them all and and snip off their heads and eat them sounds ruthless because it is I'm literally going to grow these and give these life chop off their heads and eat them scatter them around really the mice in here are going to love these mice love peas just a few more I can hear the mice already they're like dinner's up guys you see how just scattered them like this so I just want them all coming up like a salad like a ready-made salad all right cover them over nothing else we fed the mice now you've got to think a bit of water we'll stick some here too if you can hear me over the the power tools we'll stick some down here look at the white fly flying it's like snow or as my daughter said like dandruff it's quite magical really it's quite magical look see them all flying look at them all snowing white fly it's snowing white fly oh look it's snowing snowing white fly fly how lovely look at all of these look all eating everything all right it's enough flying it's enough flying like things flying around me all right scatter some peas here just gonna mix them in like that not doing it properly because it'll work fine like that I don't know if it will work fine like that I mean if you say it sometimes it does I'll just water them in it's always good to experiment with things you know yeah I know it says like plant it in early spring but what if you planted it in late summer what's going to I don't think we'll get peas but I do think we'll get some little pea shoots so it's worth whacking in you know the weather's a bit cooler now and stuff sort of I think they'll do okay gosh there's so many white fly I can't get over it are they bad or good they don't seem bad they don't really seem to do anything disruptive other than sort of sit there and then fly about when I shake them that's all they seem to do it's a very easy life to be a white fly very easy life look look at that flying and then they just all settle back down again and I'll shake them up and they'll fly that's the most excitement they'll have all year me shaking them up like that this is my mabuna mabuna not mspuna mabuna that I planted in with my kids um beginning of last week I think it's already come up the two rows of it have already come up it's amazing at this time of year how quickly stuff comes up look not even just a little bit of it like the whole blooming row like every single seed that we scattered and then there's another row of it just over there which I think you can see and then I've have got some carrots still growing that survived I don't think I've got any new carrots coming up because I did sow some more in but we live in hope we always live in hope for carrots one year we will get carrots yeah it is great at this time of year how quickly seedlings come up and then down here I've got my radishes still coming up really strong really happy just so quickly it won't be long before we're harvesting these either side I've got some spring onion but they're not coming up yet um but the radish amazing right last job of the day before I go home is I'm going to harvest some of these beautiful apples from my neighbor's apple tree which is hanging right over my plot um so I have asked you guys and I've also asked quite a few fellow plot holders here what I should do about the apples and if I can pick them and everyone's just saying yeah just pick them because the thing is firstly it's just hanging right over my allotment plot so it's literally hanging over my cornflowers um and they're all dropping down and as you can see I'm the one having to clear them all away and all the wasps come and get them but the fact that so many are dropping shows me that he's really just not picking them look he hasn't picked any of them at all so I'm gonna pick them I just think it's better that someone's eating them rather than no one's eating them do you know what I mean yeah so I'm gonna pick some and that will be compensation for him to pick all these dead apples up as well not that I'm petty like that I'm not petty I'm just saying it as it is you know oh hello I thought you were around here somewhere I haven't got any worms for you though shall I go and find one there's a worm on there on my glove oh god hang on there oh my gosh okay I don't I don't think I actually want you to come onto my hand I'm a little bit scared but there's a worm there somebody said if I put worm on my hand he might come and eat and then he flew down and I absolutely freaked out absolutely freaked out and I was like no no I'm sorry I just I can't do it I got a bit scared sorry apparently with an apple if you just twist it and it comes off like that it's ready to pick I won't take too many because firstly they're not mine and secondly I'm not I don't know what they taste like or anything I'm not sure they look really good don't they they look really nice so these are the ones that have just sort of come off in my hand so I'm just gonna take them home wash them up have a little try of them and see what they're like uh why not you know um but yeah I haven't taken too many as you can see I hope you've enjoyed my vlog today if you have do subscribe to my channel I will be back again in my next vlog see you then thank you so much for watching bye