THE SNAILS ATE THE LOT! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

If there's any French restaurants out there who want some snails, I've got loads. You can have them for free. Can you just imagine it, it would be insane. It's only a matter of life and death, you know, and that is quite trivial. Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma, this is my allotment plot in South London and these are my allotment diaries. If you're new to my channel I would love you to hit the subscribe button and come and follow my journey along as I try and grow my own food on my allotment plot in South London. This is my fifth year but it's my first year on my new allotment plot which is just over there and that's the plot that I've been working on and bringing back to life ready for the spring and now of course it is spring so it's ready to start planting on. Absolutely beautiful day here today in South London, the sun is out, I think it's going to be like 18 degrees today and it just feels amazing. It's also so quiet except for the birds which is just lovely. I think Einstein is waiting for me to feed him so let's get on with that first quickly otherwise he won't leave me alone, he just keeps pestering me. So the other day when I was here I planted out my brassica plants and let's see if they're still alive. By the way, a lot of you are saying is it a little bit early to plant out brassicas? I actually don't think so but this netting that I've used here actually protects against frost as well so it will stop frost from forming on the surface and I don't think, I just think they'll be okay with that. So this is insecto net that I was saying so not only does it keep out all the bugs like the butterflies, the aphids, stuff like that, it also keeps off the frost as well so it's a bit like a little covering, a duvet cover. Moment of truth, yeah all still alive I think, yeah. Has anything eaten any of it though, that's the question isn't it, it looks a bit dodgy over there, no I think it's okay, I think they've all survived the night, excellent. Obviously newly planted plants and seedlings and stuff, they're the most vulnerable when they're really small and their roots haven't grown down yet, as soon as they kind of get going and they get bigger they can handle a little bit of slug and snail sort of damage but when they're really little it just wipes them out, it's like a nuclear attack basically so we've just got to keep them alive until they become really established and start actively growing big. Oh there he is. You are here, I wondered where you were, yeah because I fed you and then you weren't there. I love the way he just knocks them all off. Broad beans are still alive which is excellent news, they seem to be getting bigger as well now that I've taken the cover off of them, they've got this netting on to stop the birds but you can see that they're kind of starting to shoot up a bit now towards the sky so they're quite happy to have their freedom. Yeah both the plots are just looking really nice now, just really good, I don't know I just feel really really sort of happy with how it's all come together. I'm really starting to see the benefits now and feel the benefits of all the hard work I put in over like the autumn winter time, all those times I traipsed down here in the wind and the cold and the mud and the rain, it's really starting to pay off so this is good. Right today because it's such a beautiful day what I wanted to do was get some more seeds in the ground so the first thing I'm going to do is do my salad bed and get all that planted up and then I'm going to cover it with a cloche because the temperature next week is going to drop so we do need to be careful and we do need to think about covering things as we go. So let's not get carried away guys, it is still March you know. I always like to have a salad bed in my allotment plot because it's kind of like a pick and come again bed you know just once it gets going you can just go over and just pick some salad leaves and stuff, it's just great, it's just great to have so I brought a few things for it today, oh I brought quite a lot of things for it actually. Going into the salad bed it's going to be some radish, these are the sparklers, I have to hold it upside down because I opened it upside down, but I'm so radishes going in they'll do fine. Then we've got some lettuce, we've got this one which is the sulfita, I don't know just red lettuce, we've also got the, no that's empty, we've got some salad onions or spring onions as I like to call them, they come up no problem at all really and then I'm also going to stick in calendula into that bed as well because obviously calendula is not only a flower which is really beautiful and great for pollinators, it's also edible and you can put that in salads and stuff so I'm planting two different types, this one is the porcupine, you see it looks a bit porcupinish and this one is the calendula nova which I think is the pretty classic calendula plant so we've got some calendula going in as well so let's go and sort out the salad bed, it feels very springy to be sowing salads you know. So this is the chosen bed for the salad crops, I did top it up a bit recently but the soil level is quite low but I think salad crops tend to have quite shallow roots so I think it'd do ok in here. I've got rhubarb over here, I think I've got two, I've got one there and one there, I don't know what they're doing but we'll steer clear so it's just this side that we'll be planting into. Right salad crops are in, the little salad bed is all planted up so we've got the calendula, radish, spring onions, lettuce all in this bed, it should come up really nicely actually, I think it'll be a good bed here actually, right let's move on to the next job. So a couple of weeks ago the team at Sarah Raven got in touch with me and they sent me one of their daily collections that you can get just to plant in my garden and try out, I really want to put them in my flower bed but now I've got down here I've just realised a lot of the cornflowers that I sowed are actually starting to come up which is a really great thing but I'm not sure I really want to plant over them now, I'm a little bit worried. I mean does anybody else sow seeds and then genuinely not expect them to do anything at all but look they're all coming up, all of them and they're coming up all over the bed which is absolutely excellent, it's exactly what I wanted, I could probably put one in over here because I don't think I've scattered any seeds over here but I really don't want to disturb this bed now, I really just want to leave it as is and just have all the cornflowers coming up. What's going on? Our birds just have this completely hidden life that we know nothing about and we shouldn't know anything about, isn't it weird how they just live right above us and we just have no idea what that argument was about you know, we'll never know, we'll never know, yeah and now I'm thinking where can I put the dahlias, I really want dahlias, I love them, I'm thinking this bed behind me here but it hasn't been mulched over or anything but maybe it'll just be alright, I might just wax them in there but I think I'm going to put one in over here because I definitely don't have any flowers coming up here, only got a few little cornflowers germinating there but not really any behind so I think I left that bit didn't I, I think I scattered them over here, yeah ok cool. I don't think they're going to come with a picture but I think they are, oh that's the horse manure, maybe I should go and get some horse manure for it. And I think it's the red collection, so all the red dahlias, let's have a look, so dahlias are here, oh gosh they've sent me loads, oh they've sent me absolutely loads, some of them are massive as well, I mean it's so good, I'm so happy but where do I plant them, right so that's one dahlia in, I've got about five more, you know what I'm going to do, I'm just going to whack it in this bed here as is, I'm just going to do it. On my first ever year of the allotment plot, I kid you not, I just put dahlias into ground like that because I didn't know what I was doing and I had the most incredible dahlias I think I've ever grown in my life and I've never managed to replicate it since so I reckon if I just weed this out a bit, whack in the dahlias, like what's the worst that can happen? You're only toying with the death of a plant, it's only a matter of life and death you know and that is quite trivial in the grand scheme of things, so the worst that can happen is that they don't grow and they die and that's it, that's it, the best thing that can happen is that they grow and I have dahlia city down here just to waltz through, I mean oh can you just imagine me waltzing past a sea of dahlias, I mean, I mean just imagine it now all down there, all down here, dahlias right up to like here, just the houses all here, I mean can you just imagine it, it would be insane, it'd be insane, so on that basis we're it looks a bit like an octopus doesn't it, it's weird, these are the tubers, these big fat bulb things and this little stump thing on the top is what goes up, that's where the foliage goes from, well not from but it goes up that way, so when you put it in the ground it goes that way, like hang on that's a bit deep that hole, put it in that way like that right and then you cover it over, but normally you leave the stump out, I'm not going to do it on that one because I put the thing in too bleeding deep, you can see it on this one here, hang on, you see I've left a little stump sticking out, that's what you're supposed to do, I mean to be fair the stump was a bit small on this one, where's it gone, where did I just plant that, once it's under the ground it's gone, I reckon it'll still grow though, so we'll just leave it like that, right I'll try and show you again with this one, this might go better this one, hang on, right let's see if we have more luck with this one, so this one here, this is massive this one, there's all the tubers all around it, a lot of people separate these and grow more but I'm not going to, I'm just going to put it in as one, see that bit there, that's the stalky stemmy bit, that goes up, alright so just find that, locate this bit, the stalky stemmy bit and ignore the tuber bulbs, they go under the ground, so it goes like that, right, ok, like that, then cover it, cover it with dirt basically, these things, these want to, you can't go up, you need to go under, you can tell it what to do because you're in charge, right and then you see that little stem bit, I'm just going to leave him poking out like that, right that one's already starting to sprout so I've got high hopes for him, ok I don't know why I'm hitting him now, I'm sorry mate, that was way too aggressive and then we just give it a water, I'm not totally happy with the way that's forming a puddle, that means that my soil isn't very good, it means that the structure of the soil isn't very good because look it's too sticky, we want it to be a bit more crumbly than that so that it can drain water better, so it just needs a big top up of compost, manure, stuff like that so I can do that, we'll just do it the other way round in this bed, we'll plant everything into it and then we'll make the soil good after, we'll just see what happens, I did that on my first year like I said and it all grew, right ok let's go, I think I've got one more, they're in the ground, will they grow? We don't know, I'll tell you what they won't do though, they won't sit in a bag, so at least they're in the dirt, I mean if they're in the dirt there's a chance they could grow, if they're in a bag, I mean to be fair they were actually growing in a bag so I don't think that's a very good analogy because a lot of my plants do just grow in bags, they actually seem happier in bags to be honest, maybe I should just leave them in future, just let them grow in a plastic, in a paper bag, plant the whole bag out, just chuck the bag, just chuck it, oh what am I saying, right, gosh there's such big birds here today, sorry I'm getting scatty because I'm tired, right that's dahlias in, that's cornflowers, that's salads, great, I'm trying to tidy up as I go because I'm a very messy gardener, I just leave my stuff everywhere and then I just lose it all, lose it all, everyone gets very frustrated with me but you know, just a little purple broccoli update because you know we had the issue, the issue is now continuing, it's ongoing and everything that we did to try and stop these from being eaten has failed, as you can see snails have taken over it, now I never normally have a problem with snails, snails are normally alright, I think they're ok, it's the slugs I normally hate but in this case it's snails, the snails have decided to move in, it's you know, snail real estate is going up and this is where they've decided to move in, so it wasn't the pigeons, it was the blooming snails, what do you have to say for yourself guys, I think perhaps the net was actually a bad idea because the birds might like the snails, I don't know if birds eat snails but if they did, they can't with the net on it, so let's unnet them and raise havoc on the snails, there's loads of snails here, this is literally snail real estate, this is insane, snail town, where's Einstein gone, I want to see if he eats a snail, I think birds do eat snails, I wonder if they're a bit of a delicacy for birds, the same as they're a delicacy for humans, I wouldn't eat a snail, if I was like trying to harvest snails though, this is great, this would be great for a snail harvest, if there's any French restaurants out there who want some snails, I've got loads, you can have them for free, but yeah, no purple sprout and broccoli I'm afraid this year, even though I grew it for like, what was it, 10 months, 11 months, 11 months, 11 months, these guys, honestly, never had a problem with them before, now I do, I don't know if he'll eat it but I'm going to put you up here and see if he eats you, well I hope you enjoyed the vlog today, sun seems to be going in now, we've only actually got a couple of hours of it but it seems to have all clouded over, hopefully it comes back out again soon, but it was nice while it lasted, right, that's about what we get in March here in the UK, but yeah, it's been nice actually just to potter around, I've actually been here for a whole hour longer than I normally am and I think it's just down to the weather, just being so nice and just wanting me to stay, you know, I realise how much I've been trying to get away from it during the rain and the cold, but yeah, it's nice just to potter around, hope you enjoyed the vlog today, if you did, do subscribe and I will see you again next time, thank you for watching, bye!