AUTUMN ALLOTMENT MAINTENANCE / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Welcome back to my allotment plot. My name is Emma, these are my allotment diaries. It is September on the allotment and I am, oh is it September still? Yes it is. Next week we go into October. I have just been busy doing lots of autumn jobs so if you're interested in seeing what goes on on an allotment plot over the autumn time, maybe it's your first time with a plot or maybe you're just curious as to seeing what other plot holders are up to, subscribe to my YouTube channel and I will take you with me. I started the vlog by showing you a lot of the areas of my plot that I often kind of miss out and just don't focus on. Obviously a lot of the plot is very well looked after and kept and I work really hard to keep the weeds down there and keep it in check but there are certain areas of the plot that I've just not got around to doing. Obviously this plot here, this is my brand new plot and it's just about to celebrate its one year anniversary so it was a complete jungle and I have sort of transformed it, put in some proper beds, put in some crops this year. The plot just over there with the pink shed, that's my old or original allotment plot and I've now sort of joined them together so you can see it's a significant amount of space. I'm not hard on myself, I think I've done an excellent job this year with the time that I've had and just doing it like by myself as well. I'm really proud of what I've achieved here. I know a lot of you are as well and you think I've done a great job but I do get the odd comment of people saying that my plot is a state, it's not good enough, it's overgrown. Somebody put an incredibly nasty comment the other week just being like I put them off getting an allotment plot, my plot's a state, it's just disgusting and I'm just not looking after it properly. I completely wholeheartedly disagree with those comments and I'm not going to actually defend myself but what I am going to say is that allotment plots do not have to be perfect, they do not have to be neat and primmed and absolutely perfection all the time. In fact it's actually much better if they're not. We are facing a bit of a crisis in the UK right now with the lack of wildlife and pollinators. I've certainly noticed a lack of pollinators this year in my allotment plot and also in my home garden. Yes we did have some but significantly less than we normally would and one of the big reasons for this is that people are just keeping their gardens too neat and tidy. There was a study that came out very recently, can't remember who did it, but it was saying all about how people are paving over their gardens, putting astroturf down and also just keeping their gardens too neat and tidy which is taking away the natural habitat for our wildlife. This may all sound like excuses, I know, I know how it sounds but I genuinely mean what I'm saying. We need to have more wildlife areas. Now I do have a great big wildlife area in the middle of my plot. It's just under these trees here, there's not much I can do with this area because obviously we have the trees. So that's why I kind of made this the wildlife area, it makes sense to make something out of this area as opposed to sort of not. I've got a hedgehog box and we've got the bug box and then we've got the bird feeding station, there's a wildlife pond in there. It's all excellent, if you have the space to do that on your allotment and keep it contained, a little bit like what I did, contained the messiness to the middle, then that's great. But there is a lot around the plot that is very overgrown and very messy. Firstly I don't quite know what to do with it because it does just get really really out of control in the summer. This back wall here just seems to be completely taken over with bindweed but you know what, I just think it's ok. It doesn't affect my plot, it doesn't affect their plot, we both keep it down on either side and we just allow it to take over this sort of boundary. And it's the same with over here, we've got this big boundary between our plots, I actually think we both prefer it because we've got a bit of privacy from each other. Anyway, each to their own, you might think that I'm just keeping a very messy plot and just making excuses or you might agree with me and say that it's good to make it a little bit messy because it helps the wildlife and nobody can be perfect, takes the pressure off a little bit. You decide guys, you decide, you garden your way, it's your allotment plot and it's your opinion. That's all I can say. I wasn't quite sure where I was going with that at the end but I think I made the point I wanted to. I think my point sort of got across. Anyway, how are you all doing? Happy Friday. Today on the allotment I'm going to be clearing a few areas, working on the wildlife area under the tree again and just making sure that that's ready to go into autumn time. Next week I'm going to be planting out my garlic and onion and yeah, we're just going to get on with it today and just see how far we get. So let's do it. scared me again. Yeah, you keep turning up. This cat just keeps turning up randomly. I'm in one of the most craziest places, don't you? My hands are a bit muddy, Rocky. Do you not mind? You do mind. Gosh, he just scares me so much when he just turns up like that. Right, what am I up to? It's a good time just to take a breather. So, this area of the plot here always gets very, very overgrown and I really struggled with it this year. I tried to just sort of do my best to ignore it but I want to do something about it now. So I'm taking up a lot of the grass here and I'm going to wood chip it over and hopefully it will sort of end up looking like this bit of the plot which is a lot more manageable. I do still get weeds over here but I think hopefully it will be less. What are you up to, Rocky? What's he up to? I tell you what, I was not planning on doing that job today. I didn't have it in my head that I'd plan to do that. I knew I wanted to do some clearing but this feels quite productive. It feels very satisfying. This is just an area of the plot that just became so overgrown and all it was was a walkway. All I do is walk through here and just walk past this bed. Nothing grows here. It's under the trees. It's under the shade. There's lots of tree roots. So it just makes sense just to kind of wood chip this bit over. I agree it doesn't look like very much right now but it will, I promise. It's a lot of progress that I've made and I feel very very good about it. I'm going to trim some of the boundary back a little bit because it is getting a bit out of hand. I'm aware that I've just done this big speech at the beginning talking about wild areas being great for wildlife and stuff and now you just see me like hacking everything down. But what I'm trying to do in this video is show you that it's ok to have wild areas. You can kind of contain them and make them sort of seem more under control and maintain a really nice tidy plot whilst keeping really good natural habitat for wildlife. That's sort of what I'm trying to show you. So I'm just trimming this back so that it doesn't come onto my pathway, onto my boundary. But the wildness is staying. Does that make any sense? I don't know. I'll just do it and then I'll show you the results. Right there you go. You can see the boundary stays neat. The wildness remains intact. Same at the back here. I mean it's a little bit more messy at the back but to be fair that is mainly bindweed that will all disappear in the winter. But the boundary pathway is intact and everything else is kind of contained. I'm just trimming my sweet pea flowers back. I'm still getting new growth and new sweet peas. I cannot believe it. The stress I went through this year to get sweet peas to grow up as teepee was insane and now they literally will not stop flowering and growing. It is amazing. Honestly it's just making me so happy. I had no idea that sweet peas could flower for this long. Like I've never done it before this long. There is a lot of new plant growth at the top here and lots and lots of new flowers and even more flower buds waiting to open. This is absolutely incredible and the one thing I do know about sweet pea flowers is that they can tolerate a bit of frost. So hopefully we will continue to get sweet peas well into November. Just going to throw November out there. Come back to my vlogs in November and see if the sweet peas are still flowering. I bet you they are. This pumpkin plant here was my most successful. You can see it's all dying at the top but look at the bottom. It's got all this lovely new growth. It's even getting new leaves. My plants are so confused this year and so am I. I was wondering if I could kind of loop this around the side of it. I think that would probably be better for him. So we're going to clear this and then loop the pumpkin up. I say we, I mean I'm going to do it and you probably are going to watch plant murder right now. So have fun with that. Get my gloves off. I can't tie the bleeding string. I'm panicking now. OK good. I don't know if that's done anything productive but I mean it looks a little bit strange now but at least it's up off the ground and he's going around like that. I didn't expect him to still be growing at this time of year so it's a bit of a mystery to me. This one up here I think is almost done. In fact I think he is done. I'll pick him next time though because I'm not mentally prepared to pick a pumpkin today. You either completely understand what I mean by that or you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. The other side we have got one Jack Be Little pumpkin plant growing which is a miracle. I cannot believe I'm getting any of these at all but there's one Jack Be Little pumpkin and at the bottom there is another. I think they may be about ready to pick very soon. There is a pumpkin plant in here but he hasn't done anything. There is a pumpkin there. I don't know. I have no flipping idea. He probably needs a bit of support actually. Totally and utterly gave up on my pumpkins this year. Completely gave up on them. I just thought no stop it and I've got like three pumpkins so not bad for neglection. Where can I tie you? I'll tie you there. Right I'm going to leave the vlog there today. I hope you have enjoyed it. It's wet, it's a little bit cold today and I've just run out of steam so I'm just going to go home, have a nice cup of tea, edit this vlog and dream about all the things I'm going to do with my garden next year. It's almost time for planning. The planner is a go. I've ordered myself a tester copy so that I can go through it and proofread it and make sure there's no silly spelling mistakes as there usually is but hopefully not this time, fingers crossed. It is self-published, the planner, so please bear that in mind when you buy it. I don't make much money from the planners so if you would like to support this channel and support me making these vlogs it would be really lovely if you just brought a planner and then you get something out of it. I would never take a donation for nothing but buying a planner would just be wonderful and it really does help me out. Also I love them, they're very useful. I'm also trying very hard to publish an allotment handbook which will also be self-published. It will be pretty much the same format as the planner so like in terms of the quality of it, it will be like a notebook but it will have lots of information there for sort of your first allotment plot. I'm in two minds about it at the moment because obviously my dream is to release an actual book by an actual publisher but it seems I'm being turned down by everyone at the moment because nobody cares about allotments apparently. I mean I do and we do so I know there's an audience there but I'm thinking about it. Watch this space basically. If it does go up it will go up at a similar time to the planner so watch this space. And I will see you again next week. Have a lovely gardening weekend. Hopefully it's not going to be too wet and rainy where you are. If it is, watch back my vlogs and just dream about the spring. See you on Monday guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.