MORE MAIN CROP POTATOES! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS

[Music] good morning guys welcome back to my lot Diaries my name is Emma these are the allotment Diaries and look the sun is out so it must have listened to me yesterday when I had a massive go at the weather and there's the building work as well back lovely so I'm starting my Vlog at the back of my lopment plot today because do you remember and if you're new you won't remember this obviously but at the back of my plot I sewed a load of wild flower seeds so corn flowers Cosmos then we have some Cula some I can't even remember what else was in there but just a massive variety of different wild flowers the idea was that I would have this lovely long strip of Fairly tall flowers and it would kind of not only sh to my plot from the plot behind mine um and offer a nice little barrier but also give a pollinator something like a highway like a wildf flower Highway for the uh pollinators so I've come to check on it cuz I've sort of left it to its own devices um and there is a little bit of growth so this is the strip here you can see I've left it in between the pathway just behind it is this pile of kind of logs and twigs and sticks and things that I found that's my neighbor's plot back there that's all starting to grow with Weeds now which is not ideal so that's why I planted in this strip of wild flower seeds um this has been covered with netting to try and stop the birds from pecking the seeds as you can see lots of weeds are coming up but if we look in between the weeds and we try and see beyond the weeds there are some little Co um what they call Corn flowers coming up there is a little Cosmos down there and I can see some some signs of life I think you know these kind of flowers like corn flowers and Cosmos and stuff they are pretty good at just growing you know in like really harsh environments flowers usually are um I always find that if you give flowers quite difficult conditions they do tend to do quite well I think there is a logical reason behind that why flowers tend to do well and vegetables kind of need all that richness and goodness something to do with the fact that if you think about what a flower is a flower is a plant's way of reproducing itself so in the middle of the flower you get all the seeds and if you put a flower plant under stress it thinks it's going to die and so it produces more flowers and it flowers quicker like just with more of them because it wants to produce itself more it thinks it's going to die so I think there is that is kind of the logic behind the fact that flowers can kind of deal with anything you can just Chuck them onto any soil and they kind of grow whereas vegetable plants very much need richness goodness manure you know all that good stuff I think that's the logic behind it I can't be sure but that's how I've always seen the difference between flowers and vegetables so there's a little um little bit of emoris for you there there I don't know if it's true or based on fact but that's just my experience so here we are on the allotment in the Sun what are we going to do today we're going to plant in some more potatoes I know I know and the thing is is I'm not a potato look at me walking backwards like I'm a TV presenter oh there's a branch there don't want to hit my head I'm not a potato expert but I am growing a lot of potatoes this year I think potatoes are a fantastic crop just a whack in the ground anywhere where you're not sure um it doesn't seem to matter how much sunlight they yet they they do need sunlight but I'm just going to whack them in everywhere I'm going to trying a shady bed down there I'm trying a sunny bed here and I'm trying a half Sunny Shady bed here as well we're just going to keep whacking them in [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so this bed here at the back of the plot is kind of like a last minute bed that I threw together just because I had so much kind of wasted space here and I thought the best thing to do is whacking some potatoes cuz like like I said ifin out whacking potatoes that's what I always say now it's the first time I've ever said that um I'm not going to lie to you but I think it's a thing I'm going to say from now on so the bed isn't in great condition it's absolutely full of weeds and these horrible sort of like roots of weeds and stuff which isn't ideal but I always think if you have a bed that's particularly bad the best thing to do in my opinion and this is just from my own experience is just to start growing into it just start putting something into it something perennial something like potatoes um nothing no little tiny seeds something big and robust plug plants something like that and the sooner you start growing stuff on it the sooner you can kind of sort out the soil and uh fix it all up plants are good plants bring goodness plants bring worms plants bring food sometimes so we look a tennis ball wow tell me you've got ADHD without telling me got ADHD a tennis [Music] ball so this is the variety I'm growing here at the back of the plot is Desiree I've actually grown this a few times before they've got a lovely red skin to them when they come out they're rather exciting actually it's the main crop I got it from B&Q £30 and um I haven't chitted them but they have started to sort of chit themselves they've been sitting up on the top of my fridge so they've had lots of sunshine um and they've sort of got chits on them already so you don't actually you see me there it's terrible lighting um you don't actually have to Chi your potatoes somebody sent me a comment saying that um Farmers don't their potatoes they just whack them all in the ground and they all grow fine so it's not necessary it's just something that we like to do to get ahead but like I said it's not necessary these have already got quite healthy looking you can't Sim me at all hang on I think lighting is a little bit better here it's so difficult at the back of the plot cuz we've got all these Shady spots I don't know where to film and but you can see you might be able to see I don't know if it's going to focus on it focus on that they've got some little chits coming off the top in they go chits up chits facing upwards like that we'll get four in there I reckon they might be a bit smaller if we plant them closer together but I I just want to get more in so that's what we'll do [Music] [Music] [Music] so there we go we've got one two three rows of main crop potato in the back here doesn't look like much does it doesn't look very appealing but you know what it will look better than if I just allowed the weeds all to come up so I once again I didn't quite explain oh hello Einstein I'm not sure there's any worms there for you but you might find something I didn't quite explain cuz I've done this a million times but I've dug trenches and left a mound of Earth at the end of each trench and that's so that I can pull it down and Earth them up later on um and that's my main crop in there I've got seven left I've got seven left and I've got a little bed here that I thought I might just whack them in because otherwise I'm just not going to use these and that just seems such a shame so this little bed here hasn't been topped up with any new compost this year manure nothing it's just um the be ground and I've just sort of made a little bed around it I have no idea what to put in here but it does get a lot of sun as you can see this is now in full sun it gets full sun most of the time the bed we just planted into gets partial shade because of the tree so I think it'd be really interesting to grow the same potatoes in both places and just see what ones do better I mean it's always fun to conduct your own experiments at an allotment plot that is pretty much what an allotment plot is it's a safe place to conduct your own experiments and no one will tell you off um and no one really cares about your findings either you guys might though so let's do it I am going to dig it out a little bit it's a brand new bed I can see some bind weed poking outside I'm just going to give it a little bit of a once over with a fork I'm all for no dig but at the same time when you've got a bed like that you don't know what's lurking under the ground I don't want any nasty surprises [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh oh oh [Music] oh right well there we go that's another potato bed I feel really good for getting something in this bed cuz it was a little bit sort of touch and go at times I didn't really know what to do with it you know I was a bit worried it'd be left all year but you can see I've gone this way just to be different I've got two rows i' got four in there no three in there and four in there and there we go this one's right in the Sun so we'll see the difference between this bed and this one over here which is a bit more shady I mean you can never have too many potatoes that's what I think I do have some eares to go in as well but I'm going to have to find a bed for them um let's check on the potatoes that I've already planted and see if they need any Earth thing up or anything [Music] so these ones behind me here are my early potatoes that I planted I think it's rocket that I planted in and you can see they've all come up really really beautifully I planted these at the end of March I have earthed them up once sort of a little bit but actually early potatoes the rocket variety doesn't need earthing up so many of you messaged me to tell me that and say thank you um I just enjoy earthing them up and also I tend to forget what I planted so I tend to treat all potatoes equally and my my plot just in case just in case I've got the variety wrong but you can see they're doing really really well I mean amazingly well something's actually growing on the plot it's incredible and then just over here in this bed I planted out my main crop potato can't remember the variety um I'll put it on the screen now if I look back at my video because I can't remember it off the top of my head but this is actually starting to grow already this went out probably about what was it 2 weeks ago maybe three um and it's already coming up there they are there they are the little main crop potatoes coming up and so potatoes are very good to grow they're very easy to grow you know I don't tend to overthink potato growing I don't overthink the soil I don't overthink the position of them I just whack them in the only thing that I I know with these ones is they definitely do need earthing up so you can see I've left the trenches you might not be able to see but there are trenches on the side if I run out of that I might get some more compost or even some straw or something and Earth them up earthing up is just about keeping them covered under something that is actually Four potato beds that I've got this year so far I just think it's such a great crop to throw in especially if you've got miscellaneous beds and you're not sure what to plant in them I think it's just fantastic so that's all the potatoes I have got growing and hopefully I mean we're going to have so many potatoes this year I'm going to need so many recipes to know what to do with them all so there is one more job I want to do now something I want to get better out of the allotment plot is companion planting so plants that go together and help each other out I think I've been growing for 5 years and it's always seemed a bit scary to me the idea of like companion planting I don't know what goes together what likes each other what doesn't I can't remember it but I want to get some staple staple Canyon plants in if you know what I mean ones that I can remember every year ones that I'm going to find quite easy um to sort of do that made any this is why I'm not a TV presenter I don't know how to talk properly but I did read that strawberries and onions are very good friends in the garden and they're great companion plants can't remember the reason I think it might be because they wed away the Slugs and snails um so we're going to whack in some red onion sets into my strawberry bed [Applause] all right so I've just made some little gaps you can probably see where I pushed the straw away or the hay away and then I've just um pushed in a few few onion sets it's sort of all dotted about the bed in different places I mean the worst that happens is that nothing happens and if the worst that happens is nothing is nothing happens then it's worth doing in my eyes but there we go we've got some uh some onions in the strawberry bed there we go onions in the strawberry bed it sounds a little bit Bonkers to me but actually it's quite nice cuz I had some of those sets over it's quite nice to do something with them and just whack them in somewhere so I hope you've enjoyed the Vlog today if you have do subscribe to my YouTube channel I will be back again on Friday have a lovely rest of your gardening week see you Friday bye