COVERING OVER BEDS FOR AUTUMN / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. It's the morning of parakeets. I've just got to my plot and there's hundreds of parakeets flying everywhere from tree to tree. They're absolutely incredible creatures, so noisy. There they go. I don't know if I got their colour on camera but basically they're bright green everywhere this morning, just fluttering around everywhere. They're bright green birds. It's still so weird to see these parrot-like birds in London. I still find it fascinating. I mean they're so noisy parakeets. They're like rodents the way they make sounds. It's like really squeaky. Apparently somebody at some point in the UK had them as pets and then released them into the wild and they bred like wildfire and they adapted to our conditions here and stuff and now they just live here among us. Apparently that's what happened. For a long time I didn't see them here in down the country and eventually they've ended up in London and in my area and in my allotment plot and here they are living in my allotment. Isn't that just crazy? Isn't that just weird? Anyway enough bird talk, let's get back to gardening. How are you all today? Have you had a good gardening week or has it been a little bit crap? Pretty much sums up mine I think. I think we are due a little bit of sunshine for the next few days so hopefully next week the videos will have a little bit more sunshine in but until then we're just stuck with this sort of grey cloud all around us and lots of wind and quite a lot of rain as well so that's pretty much how my gardening week's been. It's just been trying to get here as much as I can really. I don't know if you're going to be able to hear this through all the wind but they are just going crazy the parakeets. That's all we're going to have in the background of this vlog is just that squawking sound. Squawking that's a good name for it, squawking. Right I thought we'd start today with a bit of a slug and snail hunt because like I said it's been quite rainy here in the UK. I want to make sure they're staying away from crops that are still growing and from what I have learned from five years of allotment gardening the best way of dealing with slugs and snails is to physically find them and remove them from the situation. We'll also check on the whitefly situation as well see if they've come back. I think they probably have but you know so we're going to start with the slug hunt. Right so slug hunt completely unsuccessful no slugs are out excellent the whitefly does seem to have reduced a little bit. Oh I didn't check the kale let's check the kale together. So the brassicas whitefly seems to have diminished a little bit there which is really good news. Let's see the kale because this is where they were really congregating you know. This was their little party pad. Right there are a few so I'm going to give it another little spray. Let's make sure they've definitely reduced in numbers so maybe they didn't all get the memo you know. If you didn't get the memo you've been evicted. If you didn't get the memo come on you're gone. No it cannot be saved. You see that there that that is a raspberry structure I reckon I can make that. If you want to buy that it's 135 quid. It looks like three poles and some wire going across I reckon I can make that there. What do you reckon? I'm not spending 135 quid on that I reckon I can make that and I want my raspberries in that bed now so I'm gonna make it. What we need is some really heavy log things. Easy easy. It is actually really hard to dig a really deep hole. It's like once you get past a certain point in the ground the ground just like becomes resistant to digging anymore. Like I can understand how people like bury bodies in like shallow graves and then get caught because it is impossible like I'd give up right now. If I committed murder and I was trying to dig a grave I'd have given up by now. That would be as deep as the body would go. That would be found. A rabbit would find that. I wouldn't even need a sniffer dog. I can't go any deeper. It's like I've hit the end of the earth. That's it. That's how deep it goes. I'm convinced. That's it. There you are. Look at that. That ain't bad is it? So then the raspberries will go along the bottom. I'm going to plant them in now and then I'm going to use wire across there. One bit of wire, two bit of wire and then I'm going to sort of net them. How am I going to net them though? I didn't think of that bit but you know what we'll think about that bit another day. That's this is all we can think of right now. You can only think of one thing at a time. If you think of too many things at a time you'll never get anything done. Let's plant the raspberries along the bottom. Now yes I know you shouldn't be moving raspberries at this time of year because they're in active growth blah blah blah but it is their first year on the plot so I figured I could just be a little bit mean to them and sort of move them about a bit. What are they going to do about it eh? Revolt? Do a protest? Go on then mate. Go on then. He's like yeah. Ow. Yeah he's fine. He's happy. Come on then mate. Come on. Come on. There you go. Yes. Put you that way. Really good. Well done. I feel like he's going to live you know. I just have a feeling. Right so that's one little raspberry guy in and I actually really like the structure. I think it's going to work. I think it's a good position to have the raspberries. I'm not going to move the other two raspberry plants because they are in active growth and I mean like actually giving me raspberries. So because they're actually giving me fruit right now I just think it would be silly to move them. They're going to be moved in about a month's time when they finish actively growing and giving me fruit. Let's try some raspberries. I didn't even know this was actually growing raspberries so this is exciting. You can't have any. Mad at me. Ow. I keep forgetting that raspberry plants are spiky and I keep hurting myself. All right let's try a raspberry. That looks good. Oh yeah they are delicious. Absolutely love raspberries. But I do find when I buy raspberries in a shop they go off so quickly. I put them in my fridge and literally the next morning they're like rotting and going horrible. So so nice. So nice just to have some fresh raspberries to be able to pick. Right this is my old sweet corn bed. I'm going to cover it with cardboard just over the net for the next couple of months because the weeds are still growing. The weather's not cooled down enough that the weeds are dying. They're still growing and I've just sorted this bed out. I've weeded it. I can see some weeds coming back and I think it's better just to cover it over and make sure that I don't get any more. Otherwise all that hard work would have been for nothing you know. There's a lot of debate about using cardboard in a garden. I think the general rule of thumb is remove all sticky tape and labels because you don't want that on your soil and make sure that you're using matte cardboard not the shiny stuff. The shiny stuff is like um if you have a box of fish fingers that's got a shiny coating on it to make sure that it doesn't get wet and it stays like nice and keeps your fish fingers nice. Toy packages anything that's shiny and kind of has that like smooth kind of surface don't use that because it's been absolutely coated in a very nasty chemical. This may very well have a few chemicals in it but not as many as the shiny cardboard so don't use that stuff. Try and use the matte stuff. Brown cardboard usually like amazon boxes and stuff that's usually fine in a garden but the choice is yours. The choice is yours. Nothing that you do if you put cardboard down chances are it's not going to be 100% organic. You're going to have something in it. You're going to have a glue in it. You're going to have some kind of chemical in it. So the choice is yours. You need to do your research on it and think about if you want to use cardboard in your garden or not. I love it. It represses all the weeds. It keeps the weeds from coming up and the worms love it. It gets soggy and it breaks down. It's a brown material so it's like a compost as well like breaks down and helps the soil structure. I love it. I use it all the time but the choice is yours. The choice is yours. Right guys I heard on the weather forecast this morning that the first frost is officially on its way. So the first couple of frosts probably things will survive but after that if the temperatures continue to drop things are going to start dying. So a couple of things to think about. I need to cover my potatoes. So the next time that I come here I will be covering my potatoes with some fleece to stop the frost getting to them. This is a little bit risky because potatoes really hate frost and these are nowhere near ready yet. They won't be ready till sort of beginning of December really. So I'm going to cover them and hope for the best. The cucumber is going to have to buck up his ideas and get on with it because he's not going to like a frost at all. So that's a little bit concerning. Blooming cucumber deciding to grow right at the last blooming minute. Typical. I'm going to harvest the rest of my tomatoes now because once the frost comes the tomatoes are over. So. Stop it. So good. I hope you've enjoyed my vlog today. If you have do subscribe to my channel. I'm going to get out of here. It's starting to get quite windy now. Windy is the worst weather at an allotment plot because it is actually quite dangerous when things start flying about and trees fall down and stuff. So I'm going to get out of here. Hope you've enjoyed my vlogs this week. I will be back next week doing lots more autumn winter jobs around the allotment plot. Just trying to get it you know okay for the autumn winter I suppose. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you again on Monday. See you Monday guys. Bye.