HUGE ALLOTMENT MISTAKE! / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

No, no, no, no, no. And it's never happened to me before. And that is so annoying. Good morning, guys. Happy, happy Monday. Welcome back to my allotment plot here in South London. My name is Emma. These are my allotment diaries. I just vlog all about my allotment plot here in South London. As I just said, getting up to lots and lots of things all the time, whatever the weather, whatever, whatever the time of year. I'm always down here doing something. So even if the weather isn't great where you are, you can always switch on to my allotment diaries and watch some gardening. And hopefully, hopefully that will cheer you up a little bit until you can get back outside into your gardens. The last time I was here, we were snowed under. There was snow everywhere. And I sort of panicked about it a little bit. And I covered over the broad beans and I tried to get all the snow off of my greenhouse. And actually, patience was all I needed, because the day after that vlog, it rained and it rained a lot, which has washed away all the snow. So I needn't have bothered trying to get it all off the greenhouse. The only thing is, it's such a mess now, like it's so dirty. It's got like smears all over it. So it needs a proper wash before the springtime. But I'm not going to do it just yet, because I think we are due some more snow and definitely some worse and bad weather. So I'm not going to bother doing that just yet. In fact, I have just checked my weather app and we are due a storm Thursday evening going into Friday here. Storm Garrett, Garrett or something. The French named it, so I can't remember what the name of it is. Gourette, Gourette or something. But yeah, it's going to bring heavy rain and potentially a lot of snow to London. So we'll have to see how that goes. Today, apparently, is the calm before the storm, which is why I've come down here. It's very sunny. It's very still, very calm, not very windy. It's actually not that cold. I wore like three, four layers today. I'm actually quite warm. So that's a good thing, I guess. Right. I think we'll start with our usual job of feeding the birds, making sure they're all sorted and then we're going to unfreeze the pond. See if those balls worked. I put a couple of balls in the pond. And the idea is that it shouldn't freeze over if you've got something bobbing about and moving in there. I think it's rubbish now. Do you know why I think it's rubbish? I went to my local park and the fountain, which is like a really beautiful fountain, it had frozen into icicles. And I just thought, if a fountain with all that moving water is freezing midair, my pond, a ball is not going to do anything to stop the pond from freezing over, is it? Let's just be honest about it. So I don't think it's going to have worked. But let's go and have a look. Right. Where's the bird? Oh, it's frozen shut. Frozen. Hang on, Einstein. It's frozen. Frozen shut. I can't open the bleeding thing. Oh, we got it. We got it. These worms really smell of peanut butter. Why is that? Do they put peanuts on it or something? I'm sure they do. My label's rubbed off, but I'm pretty sure there must be some kind of peanut powder on these because they really smell of peanut butter. Right, no, it hasn't worked. Big surprise there. But it looks like the water has frozen underneath the balls. There's sort of a big old slab of ice now. I'm definitely not going to try and stand on that, though. I probably could. I'm not going to lie. I probably could, but I'm not going to try it. But let's smash that up a little bit. I did get some questions about the pond plants that I put in there. Are they going to be OK? I don't think they are, no. I haven't seen them for about six weeks, so. Oh, my gosh, you scared me. There we are. Another friend. Has he come to wait for the bird? Are you after the mealworms or the bird? Oh, is he coming for a drink? Oh, he's a beautiful fox. It's quite nice to see a fox that's not injured after my ordeal. I think he might want some. He's a beautiful looking fox, isn't he? He's gorgeous. Oh, please don't go in my greenhouse. Oh, please, please. Yeah, the foxes around here, I mean, other than the one that got hit by the car for obvious reasons, but they all look really healthy. When I first got my allotment six years ago, I rarely saw a healthy looking fox. They all have mange or they had like they just didn't look very healthy. Their eyes had lots of problems with them and stuff. They didn't. They just looked dirty and scraggly. But these days, almost every single fox I see looks so healthy, which is nice. It's nice. The only thing is, there's quite a lot of them around at the moment and they are all out in the daytime and they do tend to sort of get hit by cars and stuff quite a lot. I've seen quite a few on the side of the road that sadly didn't make it. But yeah, there you go. Foxes are taking over London, I think. I think the pond plants are no more, so I will just have to get some more and stick them in in the springtime, I think. I think that'd be the easiest thing to do. Right. Now that the birdies have got a drink, let's check on the broad beans because I can see my fleece has flown away. Right. When I put this fleece over the broad beans, I remember saying, make sure whatever you do, don't let the fleece touch the leaves of your plants, because if they're touching the plant, when the fleece freezes over, it will freeze with your plants and your plants will freeze, which just avoids the point of putting any fleece on it at all. That's exactly what's happened. And it's never happened to me before, and that is so annoying. Let me show you what happens if your fleece touches your plants. This is incredibly frustrating and actually it's just literally never happened. But you can see as the fleece is frozen. Oh no, it's pulling up the ground as well. This is terrible. This is really bad. Yeah, it's frozen to the plant. Look, I can't get it off the plant. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, this is exactly what I didn't want to happen. In fact, it would have been better for me to not put any fleece on these at all. Can you see how the leaf is stuck to the... Oh, God. Right, we need to get this off. In hindsight, I should have left him alone. Hopefully they'll sort of be all right. I really hope they will be. I mean, the thing is, is the fleece as it iced over, it actually got really, really heavy. So it sort of crushed them as well. So not only have I frozen them, I've crushed them too. They've been frozen and crushed. But I tell you what, they are quite hardy plants. And I do hope they will just miraculously come back and be stronger for it. So there are many, many jobs to be doing on the allotment. And I mean sort of maintenance, fixing jobs, which is the perfect kind of job to do at this time of year, by the way. I have decided to start with the back of the plot. I'm going to zip my coat up first because it is still a bit chilly. I've decided to start with the back of the plot. I'm going to clear it a little bit and sort of assess what's there. And then the idea is that I want to move everything away from it, clear the ground, put some ground sheet down so all those weeds don't come back and then make a fence. Is that even going to work? If I put the ground sheet down, how am I going to get the sticks in the ground? There's a lot to work out. There's a lot to work out, but we will work it out as we go. Right now, I need to start clearing it away and just assessing the situation. No, no, no, no, no. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. It's the fox in my face. Oh, out, out, out, out, out. This is why I have to have the door closed all the time. Cheeky little bugger. Thankfully, what I thought was under here is actually under here, so that's a good thing. It's just all logs from the tree that I've just sort of piled up at the back of the plot here. And I think I'm going to make more a better structured fence out of them, like a natural wildlife fence, the one I showed you in my last vlog. If you haven't seen it, you can go back and see on Friday. I've got plenty of logs here to make it with, so I'm really happy. I'm getting through all this stuff. It's taking a while. And what I want to do is dig out all of these canes as well, because there's a lot of blackberry bushes. If I don't dig out the canes, they're just going to come back again. Not one year has gone by since having this allotment plot and the other one as well, where I haven't had some big maintenance job to do in the wintertime and some kind of clearance. I end up with so many thorns in my in my fingers, even though they're thorn proof gloves. It doesn't seem to matter. They seem to get through somehow. And I end up with thorns all stuck in my fingers every single year. But of course, it is going to be worth it, because whatever you do now in the wintertime, it will have a massive effect in the spring, summer, and you'll be so thankful you did it. So just keep going. If you are clearing your plot, just keep going. I will say as well that I share some of my journey of when I cleared this plot for the first time, because it is quite motivating for people to see, I think. And you guys know because I filmed the whole thing that I cleared this entire plot by hand by myself. But whenever I show footage from that on Instagram or on Facebook, I always get some people commenting saying, I don't believe you. You didn't do it all by yourself. You definitely had help. I definitely didn't, guys. I definitely didn't. If you don't believe me, go back and see the vlogs where I actually showed you day by day how I cleared this plot. I actually did it on camera. And what's really annoying is recently I showed an Instagram clip where my husband was dropping off some compost because it's too heavy for me to drop off. And someone put in the comments, oh, so you did have help. You do have a husband. He is helping you. It's infuriating because no, he doesn't help. This is my allotment plot. This is my space. This is my job. This is what I do. Sometimes he helps to drop off compost or do jobs like help me put the polytunnel up. But that's it. That's it. He hasn't done any of the clearance. I did all the work. Anyway, a bit of a rant there, but it is infuriating as a woman. Yes, I did do it all myself by hand. Anyway, I think I'm going to clear for a little bit longer and then do something else because I'm going to get sick of this job soon. And it is a big job. Einstein's loving it. He's hopping around. I don't know what he's looking for. What are you looking for? There's two of you. What are you looking for? Worms? I don't know if you can find the worms. Can you find the worms? I don't know if you can find them because there's not much ground here. He seems pretty confident he can find something. You carry on, mate. OK, marginally warmer in here, especially with the sun. It's amazing how warm it can get with the sun, even in January. It's just incredible. I love it. I love it in here. Right. It's looking a little bit better. I've cleared quite a lot of all the the overgrowth from last year. I think it's mainly bindweed that I'm clearing away. All of those like stringy, weedy things need to dig out the canes, move the logs and then make the fence. So it's a job that will be ongoing throughout January. And I'm excited because I feel like you can make so much more progress at this time of year when you're clearing stuff. It's just so much easier. This down here I got wrong. I've said in two vlogs that it's radish. And then a lot of you said, no, it's not radish. It's like salad crops. It's cut and come again salad crops. So this stuff here that's flopping over and that's why it's not coming back to life. It's not it's not radish at all. It's actually lettuce. I can see it's lettuce now. Look, that is so obvious. It's so obvious that it's lettuce. Now I'm looking at it. I don't know why I didn't think it was, but it looks great. So I'm going to pick some of this for my lunch today. I think I might have. I went to grow. Oh, my gosh, there's a sweet pea growing here as well. Look at this. What are you doing in here? I think I was going to grow radish and I ended up growing salad crops instead. I want to do is I'll pick some for lunch, but instead of like picking them because you are supposed to pick the leaves and they grow again. I'll sort of thin them out as I'm going. So I'm going to sort of take whole plants and pull them up. And I can take all these little slug on that one. Have I never a bit of added protein on that one? And what I'll do is I'll I'll thin the plants out as I go. So I'm taking the whole plants up with the roots and then these should have more room to spread and grow. And then I can pick leaves. That's a good amount, I think. There we are. It's a nice little handful of salad crops for my lunch. Lovely. And then these calabrese, I might actually end up moving these in the springtime. I might sort of use this. I might just sort of dig them up and move them because I think they're going to get very big. But we'll just see how we go. All right. That, my friends, is it today. I hope you've enjoyed my blog. And we are really getting going with the big jobs on the allotment now. I think on Wednesday, my video will be a seeds I'm sowing in January video because I'm going to be sowing some seeds very, very soon. Of course, you don't have to sow any seeds at all in January. I'm just doing it because I've got my greenhouse now and I want to make the most of it. But honestly, you can wait till later on in the springtime to start your seeds and everything will catch up. You'll still get lovely harvests. So don't panic. I don't mean to rush or panic anyone. But yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the blog. If you have, do subscribe. I'll see you again when I see you guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.