THE BUGS ARE BACK! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

[Music] Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay. Minor minor disaster in here. It's okay. It's okay. Right. Nobody panic. Everybody stay calm. Everybody stay calm. You're still alive. You've fallen over. Because I didn't tie you in, did I? Right, I better tie you in. Gosh. Sorry, little tomato planty. That is my bad. I've sort of staked them, but then I've not tied them in because they weren't big enough. You weren't big enough to bother with when I first staked you. That's what the problems then. But now you are, obviously. Right. There we go. Is that better? You okay now? You all right? It's got quite a few little stray bits to like pick off. No, you're okay. You're good. You're fine. What's quite remarkable is that he's only been lying down for a matter of hours really cuz it's just overnight I've not been here and his stem has already look started to bend towards the light again where he was lying down. So, we're going to have to sort of unbend his stem. And the way we do that is just literally tie him in, keep him upright, and hopefully he'll just sort of start to come back up again. But isn't that remarkable how quickly they will bend themselves towards the light. And look at the top. How squiggly wiggly it is now. All squiggly. You silly plant. Did you think I was not coming back? Good morning everyone. Welcome back to my a lotment diaries. My name is Emma. These are the a lotment diaries. I vlog all about my a lotment plot here in South London. Just tying in another tomato. If you are enjoying my a lotment diaries, please do subscribe to my channel um so that you don't miss any of my videos. is I vlog three times a week and I also put up a home gardening vlog every Sunday. So, if you don't have an a lotment plot or a lotments are not your jam and you want to see my home garden instead, tune in every Sunday 9:00 a.m. and um I put up a vlog all about that. Right, it's another beautiful day. Yesterday got up to 25° in in London. I think it's going to get there again today, which means that there's lots of watering to do, lots of looking after. I also really need to get these cosmos out. The cross moss are looking fantastic. And I pinched these out as well. So, these have been pinched, which means they'll be bushier with hopefully more flowers. So, we're going to get these out today as well. Let's check what the temperature is in here. 26.5° C already. It's 9:00 a.m. in the morning to give some context. No face. 51%. No face. Will he ever get a face again? We don't know. Will I ever see him smile? That's the question. Have we seen him smile? I think maybe once we've seen him smile. Um, but only for about an hour. Right, all my plants in here looking okay. You know what we really need to do? Sort out where these melons are going to go. I've got four melon plants, guys. That's quite a lot of melon plants, isn't it? Um, and I really wanted to plant them in the greenhouse, but like where? Do you know what I mean? Like, where? That will be a problem for another day. I just don't feel like doing it today. It's too hot in here and I just can't bothered. And I think the melons can last for a little bit longer, right? Can they? We better do it soon though. I will do it soon. I promise. Okay, right now I want to get those cosmos planted outside. I've got so many. How many have I got? 2 4 6 8 10 12 13. Unlucky for some. Hopefully it'll be lucky for us, right? 13 cosmos. Let's [Music] go. Right. I feel like it's a bit of a risk planting them here. This is going to be my pumpkin bed. So, pumpkins and runner beans will go here along the archway. And then I was thinking of having cosmos along the back here. All flowering, all looking beautiful. It is a risk because of slugs and snails. Obviously, it's quite near to the next plot which is quite overgrown. So, we could get a slug problem, but you know what? We're going to put them in anyway. We'll take the risk simply because we have so many of them. We have so many of them to play with that if these didn't make it, you know, there would be other cosmos flowers hopefully somewhere else. So, yeah, it's got good roots. Of course, that mean nothing when the slugs get it, but you know, it's a good start, right? I don't know if these ones will survive, but we will whack them in anyway. [Music] Do you know I went to the garden center the other day and I was left feeling quite disheartened. I saw they're selling cosmos there for £750 each, right? And I did buy a couple cuz I'm a sucker. But they're massive, right? They're already massive and they've got loads of flowers on them. And I thought, gosh, you know, I sewed these cosmos really early in the year. I've done everything right and they're nowhere near as big as the ones in the garden center. What am I doing wrong? And anyway, it turns out after a bit of research, i.e. asking people on Tik Tok and Instagram, cuz that's how I research now, it turns out that garden centers force plants to flower earlier, um, in order to entice us to buy them. So, if you're going around the garden center now and everything's looking in flower and you've sewn stuff from a seed and it's sort of not done as well as the garden center stuff, it's nothing you're doing wrong. They force it. They grow it earlier in big poly tunnels and green houses and they force them to flower earlier so that we buy them. How crazy is that? But it did put my mind at ease. So, hopefully it'll put some of your minds at ease if you're feeling the same. But yeah, these these are doing great. These are fine. There's nothing wrong with you guys. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Okay. You flower in your own time. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] Right, this is my flower bed under the apple tree. We'll whack some in here as well. I think just sort of everywhere now. Like I said, I've got so many left over. Why not just whack them all in? You know, why not? Who's going to stop me? Slugs. That's who. Slugs. Snails. Slugs. [Music] Right. Oh, Einstein's turned up. We better feed [Music] him. There you are. Already waiting for me. [Music] Straight [Music] down. Oh no, not my camera. Oh, he's on you. He's on you. He's on you. Oh, [Music] Einstein. Right. I actually want my cosmos to go here, which is where all these tulips were. So, I'm going to do something you probably shouldn't do, but I know you shouldn't do it. I'm going to pull all the greenery of the tulips up early. You're supposed to leave the greenery of tulips to die back, and that's to feed the bulb for next year. But, you know what? I'm not a professional tulip grower. I'm not growing them for cut flowers. I just like them. They look pretty. And I don't want this space to be wasted for too long. So, what I'm going to do is pull it all up. It's not the correct thing to do, but it's what I'm doing. And I still think they will come back next year. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Right, these are my broad beans. Okay, I thought they were doing fantastic. I mean, they are doing fantastic. They're really big. They're bushy. They're incredible. They're giving me some broad beans now. But we do have is it blackfly or is it aphids? One or the other. I think it might be aphids. We have an aphid problem on it. Um, and they are swarming it. I thought we might have missed the aphids this year because I planted them over the autumn winter and apparently sometimes when you do that with broad beans, you do miss the bugs. Like the bugs leave it alone. They have not left it alone. I do see some ladybirds. So, there are ladybirds here combating it and a few ants. But I think we might need to help them out a little bit. Can you see? Yes, you can see them. Can you see the amount of them? Oh my goodness. They are smothering this plant. There is Mr. Ladybird in there. So, there are a few ladybirds and I have seen a few about and they will eat them. I've also seen some ants hering them. Apparently, ants sort of heard them or something, but you can see the sheer amount of them. There are just too many. So, the first thing I'm going to do is pinch out the tops of these plants. And that should reduce the amount of them on the plant because they tend to gather near the tip of the plant, near the top. The very tips of the plants are coming out. Right now, I'm going to use a product on them called Bug Net. And this was gifted to me by Andimat Home and Garden. It is pesticidefree and it is beneficial friendly and that means that it doesn't kill things like ladybirds um which are like a beneficial pest because they eat the bad pests. It forms a microscopic invisible net which traps things like aphids, blackfly, green fly, um all those bugs that kind of damage your plants. and it started to be rolled out in agriculture a lot as an alternative to using pesticide sprays on bugs, which is excellent. So, I'm going to try it out today on these crops and we'll show you how well it works. So, the way that you use it is you dilute it into a spray bottle of water and then you spray it over your pests. So, that's what we're going to do, right? So, follow the instructions on the packet for how much you need to use into how much water. And then let's see. Ooh, have I done it? Have I got them? I think I got them. They've all sort of [Music] [Music] stopped. Right. So, if you want to get your hands on Bug Net, I have a discount code for 15% off. It's bug 15. I'm also going to leave a link to the product below. Remember, it is pesticidefree, beneficial friendly. It won't kill any ladybirds or any good bugs. I also stick the link to their fertilizer, which is a plant-based uh plant fertilizer, and also their plastic free netting, which is very popular. I know you guys love the plastic free netting. So do I. It's absolutely fantastic. I will leave those below with the discount codes as well. So, if you want to get your hands on those three products from Anime, I will leave the discount discount codes and the links below in my description and you can go have a look at them. They are a fantastic eco-friendly, environmentally friendly company and I love working with them. [Music] Just noticed some of my sweet corn down here being absolutely ravaged by um by bindweed. I mean, look at it. This is the problem with bindweed. Okay, this is exactly what bindweed does. So, it's an invasive weed. It grows up and wraps itself around anything. So, it could be structures. It can even be plants. and it wraps itself tighter and tighter and tighter for as tall as it can get and it basically smothers the plant is the issue with bindweed on an aotment plot is that it will literally smother your plants to death. That is the biggest concern with it. There we go. Oh my gosh, Betty. Betty feels so much better now. He's been released from that. Unfortunately, there is just so much bindweed at my a lotment plot and it's something I'm just probably never going to get rid of fully. So, I just got to keep pulling it out. [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] I did bring my strimmer battery today, but I'm a little bit scared to use it. I don't know if I can bring myself to do it. Oh, let's give it a [Music] go. Right, I did it. I strimmed it all. I didn't show too much of it cuz I thought you might be mad at me for wearing a dress. Um, but it's all been strimmed. I'm safe. Everything's fine. Obviously, probably better to wear jeans or something or something. I realized that the second I started doing it, but I'd already started doing it and I just wanted to do a little bit. So, that's all of my excuses, but obviously safety first, guys. There we go. Look at that. All strimmed back. Doesn't that look so much better? I can't believe it. I've never used a strimmer in my plot before, and so this is the first year that I'm seeing how neat my plot could actually be. It is getting hot now, so I think I'm going to have to call it a day. Um, it's it's that time of year where it just gets so warm so quickly that you kind of need to get down here as early as you can, do as many jobs as you can, and then just call it a day before you melt. But I'm happy. I'm happy we're having so much sun this year. It's made such a difference to the crops, and it's just so nice to be down here. It really is. Everything is thriving and hopefully it continues to. So I will see you again in my next vlog. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget I will leave all of the links and the discount codes for Andamat products down below in my description bar. So do go and check them out and get yourself a discount if you want to purchase anything. And I will see you in my next vlog guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.