TIDYING UP THE MESSY ALLOTMENT PLOT / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Good morning everyone. Welcome back to my a lotment diaries. My name is Emma. These are the a lotment diaries. Uh if you are enjoying watching my a lotment diaries, I would love for you to hit the subscribe button. It only takes a second just to go below, click subscribe. You don't even have to come out the video if you're on your laptop or mobile. You can just click it. It just makes a huge difference to the algorithm and keeps my channel kind of going and uh if you're enjoying them, it would just be a really nice favor to me. Also, in October, my new 2026 a lotment planner will be coming out, which is going to have loads of recipes in it this year. Um, I've been cooking loads of my produce and taking pictures of everything I've been cooking and I've written all the recipes down. So, the recipes will be in the planner as well. That would be the ideal way that you could support this channel. But please, there's no obligation. These videos are free. I create the content. You do not need to send me anything at all. Um, you don't need to buy anything. That was weird. That's weirded me out, that little conversation. I'm very British and I do not like talking about that stuff. But, um, so many of you ask, so there you go. Right. It's absolutely boiling in here. It's roasting. It is sweltering. It's horrendous. It's humid. How are you guys doing? You all okay? So many of them are going red since I pruned them. I feel like I'm seeing an extraordinary amount of of different colored tomatoes now. Whereas before they all sort of were green, now I can just see so many that have changed color. So I have to pick some of these today. My temperature thing keeps falling off the the bleeding wall, doesn't it? What's it saying then? 30.1° C. I have to get a new sticker for him. He just needs a new sticker. 30° in here already. It's not even 9:00 in the morning yet. It's just before 9, guys. How are you coping? Do you want a window open? A window. I'm actually not going to be here for a couple of days. And tomorrow, the weather's going to be super warm, like 28°, but not that sunny. And then it's dropping to like 20°. So, I don't quite know what to do with the greenhouse because I can't close it all up because tomorrow it's going to be too hot. But then the next day I'm not going to be here and it's going to be a little bit colder. So, I think maybe I'll leave the windows and close the door. It's so like complicated when you have a greenhouse. You really do need to be here a lot if you have one of these to look after it. But, we are coping. We are coping with what we've got. I have brought with me some seeds today. I've got some seeds from Seed Craft. They sent me these. They send them every month in a seed seed subscription box. Um, and all the seeds that they send you can sew straight away, which is what I love so much about them. Seed craft. Do have a link to them below so you can have a look. I've got colabi, American crest, land crest, which I thought might be quite good for covering over a bed that I'm not growing on right now, and Swiss chard, which might be quite fun to sew. So, want to sew those. But the very first thing I need to do is tidy up my a lotment plot. I have been here so much recently that basically I've just been like running away when I finished what I'm doing and leaving stuff out. So it really does need just a few minutes of me going around tidying it up, picking stuff up, putting it away. And that's what I'm going to start with today. So let's get going. It's just because I come down here and then I think I've got more time than I have and I do all these jobs and then I've suddenly got to leave. So, I sort of leave things out, leave pots around the place where I've been like planting out and it just becomes a bit of a mess. So, let's sort it all out today. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Okay, that actually felt really good just going around giving it a bit of a tidy up. Haven't the pathways fared well this year? Hardly any weeds in them at all, which really keeping the plot really nice and neat. The pathways are just, if I can find it, like a plastic ground sheet that I've covered over with wood chip that we get for free. When it gets wet, it absorbs all the water. I don't get those puddles. I don't get loads of mud everywhere. So, it means when I get to my plot, I can kind of stay here in the autumn winter. But there's other things that you could put down. And I suppose some stones or um paving would work just as well. But anyway, that's what I've chosen to do with my pathways. Let's feed Einstein. I can hear him. He's been chirping away. It's not windy today as well, so he might be out. Let's have a look. I will have to buy him some proper meal worms actually very soon. I can hear you. There are worms in here. Einstein. There are some meal worms in this mix cuz it is a robin mix. So, he has got some things that he likes in here. It's just he has to forage a bit for them. But, I think that might be good for him, you know, to forage. I think animals sort of like foraging for their food, don't they? Don't they? I don't know. I'll see if I can catch him on film again. But, I think this is a new robin now. So, I think I've got to make friends with him and start over. So, we'll get there. We'll get there. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Right, that actually felt super productive. I would definitely recommend at this time of year, if you sort of come down, you don't quite know what to do and it's getting on top of you, set yourself a timer on your phone for maybe 15 minutes, half an hour, and just do a power half an hour or 15 minutes or whatever the time is. But just literally set your timer and go for it. Just pick up anything, put things away, snip back things that you've been meaning to snip back, do a bit of weeding, trim a little bit of grass down. like just literally a power half an hour and just put your headphones on if you have to and just work. Just do it. And then step back after the half an hour, have a little look around, see what you've achieved. And I tell you what, it will be more than you think. Just picking up a few things that I've left out and about, trimming the grass a bit, doing a little bit of weeding, cutting down some of those brambles. It looks like a different a lotment plot. And I suddenly feel this new surge of motivation. And I like I can't wait to get out there and do stuff now. It just feels more manageable. You might just say, Emma, why don't you just pick up after you when you leave the plot? I know I should, but like I said, I'm often I overrun here and then I run out of time and I just have to leave everything and just run home and think I'll be back tomorrow. I'll tidy it tomorrow. Today is tomorrow. That's what I say. Right. Going to do a bit of watering and then what was it I was going to say? American crest colabi and Swiss chard. Okay. I have a bed in mind for this stuff. I have a bed in mind. Right, let's water a few of the new crops that I put down so they don't dry out. [Music] right with this pea structure here. So, we've got some main crop peas growing up here, which I'm very excited about. Great time of year to grow some more peas if you can. The birds have been pecking at the twine that I've put across and they pecked at it again and taking it down again. So, what I'm going to do is put a net up. I said before I don't like using nets, but the thing is is when I use twine, which arguably looks better, works just as well, and um it's slightly more natural cuz it's like a natural material, the birds just eat it and peck it and think it's a worm or something. So, the best thing I can put up is a net, a plastic net, because it's the only thing that the birds are going to leave alone, and then my peas are going to grow. So, anyway, what can you do? You can't win them all, can you? Right, let's stick him up. [Music] Disaster strikes. I think I might be the biggest predator to these peas to be fair. [Music] Going to use my trusty paper twine just because it is so much easier than tying it in with twine, honestly. It's brilliant stuff. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] This is the bed I was thinking for the colabbi, the land crest and the chard. Or maybe just the chard and kabi. The thing is is a lot of it in here is flowered and as you can see the bees and pollinators are loving them and actually I'm loving them too. These are I think lettuce flowers and also pack choy flowers. And they are gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. I can't get enough of them. They are just beautiful. I'm wondering if there's a bit of room in here where we can sort of reso stuff. Maybe we can prop these up a bit. Do we have room there? Be nice if we could keep the flowers up so these could get some more light. Yeah, let's see what we can do. [Music] Oh, okay. I was completely wrong. So, the purple flowers, which are arguably my favorite ones, are actually radishes. Look at the size of those. I completely forgot I planted radish in this bed, to be honest. I got so distracted with everything else. I did put it in quite early. They've done really well. That's so annoying. I've forgotten about it. But I'm just taking some of the front ones out so I can sew something new. But I'm leaving plenty of flowers for all the pollinators cuz they are loving them. [Music] Look at this lettuce. Look at this lettuce. It's absolutely stunning. It's not even gone to flower yet. So, this is perfect. I'm going to take the whole thing home. It's so funny cuz last year we had such a bad slug problem that I wouldn't have been able to grow any anything close to this. And this year it's bigger than my head because I'm going to use this bed to sew something else. I'm going to take the whole lettuce home and use the whole lettuce in one go. You could just pick leaves and pick and come again, but I'm going to take all of it. Look at the size of this lettuce. It's bigger than my head. It's literally bigger than my head. That's insane, isn't it? I'm going to eat a lettuce bigger than my head today. That's crazy. I'm so thrilled with that. Brilliant. Right, I think what we're going to whack in is chard. We're going to whack in the chard. So, let's do it. [Music] [Music] As with everything I'm sewing at the moment, I just watered the drill before putting the seeds in. And it just gives them a head start, especially when the weather's been so hot and it's been so sunny. It just helps out the soil, right? Lovely big seeds. So, we don't need this many. [Music] [Music] Right, there's our Swiss chard planted. And I think what we'll do, we'll give the whole bed a bit of a water because I don't want any favorites in this bed. I don't want anyone getting bullied for having more water than someone else. So, we'll water the whole thing. [Music] [Laughter] It is literally starting to rain just as I did all that watering. But hey ho, you never know what the weather's going to do to be fair. So if in doubt, it's always best just to water anyway. even if you end up watering half in the rain. Right, I'm going to harvest spider. No, wasn't a spider. Okay, it's good. Um, I'm gonna harvest the rest of these tomatoes, all the ones that have turned color in the hope that it will stimulate the growth of the other ones. Um, and also because I want some tomatoes. They look blooming delicious. [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Right. So, I'm going to take this nice Oh my gosh, why do I always do that? I'm going to take this little pot of tomatoes home and enjoy that for my lunch. and I'm going to have to go. Um, it was a fleeting visit today. I only had an hour uh to do a few bits and bobs. So, I actually got quite a lot done for an hour. Sometimes it's not about how long you spend here. It's about what you get done. And little and often is often better than coming for one day and doing everything in a day because gardens become overgrown very quickly. It's something you have to do regularly, little little and often. There's no point weeding your entire a lotment plot and then leaving it for two and a half weeks and coming back and expecting it still to be weeded. It's not going to work. It's much better to do a little bit of weeding every time you're here and come every 2 days than to come once every 2 weeks. Do you know what I mean? It's just one of those things that that the more often you can come, even if it's just for a short amount of time, the better it is. Anyway, got lots done today. Very, very happy. So, I'll be back again on Friday. Have a lovely rest of your gardening week and I will see you here on the a lotment plot on Friday. Thanks for watching guys. Bye.