MY BIGGEST REGRET THIS YEAR / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

[Music] Good morning everyone. Welcome back to my lotment diaries. My name is Emma. These are the Aotment Diaries. It's a sweltering hot day today. I think we're getting up to 29 30°. Lots of sunshine. Wasn't actually predicted to be sunny today, but here we are with the sun. Not complaining. I am so glad that I took the time to prune and look after these tomatoes the last time I was here. Um, it was a really awful, awful job and I hated every second of it. Honestly, I hated it. But I'm so glad that I did it because they just look great now. They look fantastic and they look more manageable. And actually, a lot more of them are changing color. Or maybe I'm just noticing that because I can actually see the tomatoes now. I can actually get to them. I'm noticing a lot more orange ones on this plant. Absolutely hundreds. I'm going to have to pick loads today. And then I'm also noticing red ones here. I mean, these look fantastic. These look absolutely ready to pick. How brilliant. Anyway, I will be picking lots of tomatoes today, but the very first thing I need to do is give them all a good water. I'm going to remulch the ground because ever so slightly concerned about blight. Now, blight is a horrendous disease. It takes over plants. Things like potatoes um and tomatoes get them quite often. And once it take once it takes hold, it will affect all of the fruit, the whole plant. You just got to get rid of it. um and it will spread to all the other plants. And one of the ways that you can protect your plants from blight is firstly cutting them back and allowing air flow between the plants so that they don't get too moist and humid, which is something I should have done earlier, but I've done it now. So, hey ho. And the other thing is to mulch around the ground. More information online. It's probably best you Google it to be honest. But that's the first job I'm going to do today. Try and save your lives, little tomatoes. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] This must have been with me of my silly bothering them. So, I better pick them all up. Ones. Oh, there's a red one there that's fallen. I don't want to lose him. So, then I'll just add another layer of this hay around. Don't really want to see any soil. That's the aim of the game. Hide the soil, we'll call it. Fun for all the family, all ages. Hide the soil. Hide the soil. Hide the soil. Ideally, you don't want any of your plant to be touching the soil at all. But we don't live in an ideal world, do we? And I neglected these and that's what's happened. So, we'll just mulch underneath them. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] My poor strawberry bed is looking very neglected. Um, just looking very sad. It's very crispy. Lot of leaves have gone brown and crisped up. So, I'm going to take care of it today. Going to give it a bit of a weed. Going to tidy up some of those old leaves and give it a feed as well. They just did so well this year and gave me so many strawberries. I feel like the least I could do is take care of them. I like to reward my plants when they uh when they help me out and actually grow. I like to make sure I look after them properly. Um, normally I wouldn't touch my strawberries until the autumn time when they start to sort of give off those little mini strawberry plants and then I start potting them up, but I just think I just think they could do with a good old tidy up. So, let let's do it. And also, let's give them a plant feed as well because I think they'll like that. You never know, we might get another sneaky strawberry harvest with the weather we've been having. Who knows? [Music] [Music] I can hear him. Where are you, Einstein? [Music] I can hear him chirping around, but it's like that warning sign that birds do. It's not like his usual little song. I'm pretty sure it's not the same Einstein. I think it's a new Einstein. I think it's a new Einstein. I think he's been defeated Einstein cuz Robins are very territorial and they will often sort of fight for territory. So, I have a feeling this is a new Robin, but he just doesn't know the rules here. He just doesn't know that I feed him. Anyway, if he does come by, I'll try and catch him on camera. But we might need to make friends with this new robin soon, guys. That's That's the strawberry. You can stay, mate. Sorry. Sorry. [Music] As I was sitting there weeding that bed, I was thinking, "CO, There's a really horrible smell. It's really unpleasant. I keep getting a woof of it. I was thinking, "What on earth is that disgusting smell on my plot?" It's this. It's a It's our stinging nettle plant food. It's absolutely stinking right now. It's reeks. So, I'm sort of wondering if it's ready. Should we have a look at it? One thing about me is I can never for the life of me remember when I do these things. So, I don't I don't know how long it's been. I I doubt it's been long enough. But let's have a look what it's doing. Oh gosh, it just stinks. It absolutely stinks. It's like I can't even get near it, guys. It's horrible. It's like turned into a black sludge at the moment. To be fair, I might actually be able to use a bit of it on the strawberries right now. I know it might not be totally ready yet, but I reckon I reckon I could still use a little bit of it and it would do something good. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. [Music] [Music] [Applause] There he is. He's here. Oh my goodness. Just flown down to the back of the plot. Oh wow. Oh, I haven't seen Einstein for absolutely ages. Right. Like I said, oh gosh, it really stinks, guys. It's horrendous. Like I said, it's definitely not ready yet, but I think it will do something good for the plant. So, this has got holes in, by the way. I don't have a jar or anything, so there we go. That should maybe I'll put a little bit more in if it's not quite right. You still have to water it down. Oh god, sorry. I just cover it up. You still have to water it down into some uh rain water. Yeah, should be good to use. [Music] Oh, it's really heating up in here now. What is it? It's 30 38.2° in my greenhouse. Fantastical. I brought some packets of seeds with me today. I brought some carrots, but I'm not going to sew these today. Um, but I want to put the bed where it's going to go and show you how I'm going to sew these carrots. Um, you can sew them right up until July and I reckon it will be a September October harvest. And this is sort of dependent on the weather staying quite good. But July is the latest I can say. The carrots they are the Amsterdam forcing three. Quick and easy to grow it says. So fantastic. Oh, cropping in 12 to 14 weeks. So, 3 months. So, I should be able to get away with putting these in as long as I do it after the weekend. I also got some more beetroot. Um, I've already got some growing which has all germinated fantastically. The thing about beetroot is it doesn't mind being in a bit of shade. So, if you've got sort of a half sun, half shady bed, stick in some beetroot. It's amazing. You can sew this up until July directly. So, this is the last month you can sew beetroot directly. And it's the burpees golden. So it's like a golden variety. In my experience, all beetroot tastes the same when you cook it. I I can't notice the difference. Whereas like with tomatoes, like this tomato tastes different to this tomato. I can tell the difference. But when it comes to beetroot, I'm sure you'll tell me they all have different flavors. But I have tried different ones together and they just all taste like beetroot. So there we go. Right. We're going to put these out directly in a bed right now and we're going to sort out where the carrots are going to go. Okay, let's do that. You might have noticed in some of the clips that I've left these um onions, and it's just because they're so small, I wasn't sure whether I could actually use them or not, but I think I'm going to take them home today. It's just that I got some really good ones that I used and then I sort of felt a bit sad about these being so bleed and small, but um this is where the beetroot's going. So, we're going to have to clear them now. I'll find some use for them, I'm sure. [Music] Okay. So, because the soil is actually quite dry here, what we'll do is the same thing that we did with the other beetroot. We'll make our drills and then we'll water it. Then we'll plant and then we'll water again. Once again, that water pooling is just a sign of how dry it's been. The water's Oh, it's actually it's doing okay. It's doing better here. It's probably that rain that we've had that's really helped it out. But when it pulls on the top, it's a sign of how dry it's been. Everything really dries out, right? Always find it easier to pour seeds into your hand before you sort of scatter them cuz it's easier to control it than from the packet. You don't have to. You do you, Glen Coco. You do you. Right. All right, we're going to sew a million in the hopes that a few grow. You want to get two beetroot, sew a million. That's my advice. Right. [Music] the most illogical way of carrying this [Music] This is going to be the container for my next set of carrots. I really do think when you grow carrots, what you need to do is have a container and fill it or a high raised bed because I have tried so many times to grow directly into the ground and it does not work. Even if you dig it out, maybe it worked for you. Hasn't worked for me. So, I'm going to try the container method again. Going to pop out at the weekend, get a big bag of uh multi-purpose compost and some horicultural sand. Mix it all together. That's where the carrots are going. Very exciting. [Music] Guys, I know I made a pretty stupid mistake with the other sunflowers. I basically chopped their heads off in the hope that more flowers would appear. Now, that can work if it's a multi- stemmed multi-headed sunflower like this one is. So, if I chop that one off, hopefully the others will bloom really nicely. But, if it's just got one flower, don't please don't chop the heads off prematurely. It was a big big mistake. These ones, these ones I think I can because they are actually multi-headed sunflowers. So, I'm going to do that. Also tie them in a bit. Make sure they don't snap because these are doing really well. They got off to a slow start, but actually they're doing quite well now. [Music] How gorgeous are these though? Absolutely stunning. So, this one has only got one head, so I will not chop his head off. I promise. Whereas this sunflower has thrown up lots of different lots of new heads so I can keep him. My only regret with the sunflowers this year has been not growing more. Um, so many people on the a lotment, their sunflowers are just starting to flower and they've got hundreds of them and I'm so jealous and I really wish that I'd just planted more or succession sewn them. So, I think next year I will definitely succession sewn my sunflowers. And let me just super quickly show you this person's plot because I can see it from mine and it's stunning. Can you see just a couple of plots away all of those sunflowers over there? How beautiful. Let's go see if we can have a sneaky peek. Hopefully they won't mind if we just want to have a sneaky peek because they won't be around for much longer. We're going into July there. Look at that. It's like a sunflower farm. That is absolutely stunning. And then look, loads of potatoes underneath. Oh my gosh, they are beautiful. There are so many. And also, they're huge, but they're multi-headed. I thought I thought multi-headed sunflowers were only like the smaller varieties, but these are giant. And they're multi-headed. There's hundreds of heads on each plant. That is absolutely insanely beautiful. [Music] Wow. Wow. Wow. Seriously inspired by those sunflowers. Definitely going to grow loads next year if I can. All right, that's it for me today. Got to get going. Got to get home, have my lunch. Hope you've enjoyed my a lotment vlog today. If you have, do hit the subscribe button and the thumbs up. Leave me a little comment. Let me know what you thought of those beautiful sunflowers. Thanks for watching. Bye.