TRYING NEMATODES FOR SLUG DEFENCE / WILL THESE WORK?

This is my first time doing this and I'm probably going to get it all wrong. Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name's Emma, these are the allotment diaries. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that I cleared out my greenhouse last time I was here. It has made such a huge difference, not just to the actual space but to my mental health as well. Just coming in here and seeing everything clean and organised and sorted out at last and the weeds gone. Oh my gosh, I just feel fantastic. The difference that walking into a space like this has made to my mental health is so fantastic, I cannot tell you. Look how neat it is, look how fantastic the tomatoes look except this one on the end. This was the one that I was far too ruthless with and unfortunately look it's still continuing to wilt. I had some hope that it would kind of come back, I mean these sort of bits look okay with these tomatoes but a lot of it is starting to wilt. Look at all that at the top there. So I might have killed this one I'm afraid. The other ones are looking okay, I mean they're actually looking really really good. It's a shame about that one, I think I was just too ruthless and I must have snapped something at the bottom. I'm sure if I investigated sort of further down there'd be a snap or a tear or something but I'm just sort of going to leave it alone now which I think is what my plants always want me to do and I'm going to hope that using its tomato superpowers because they do have superpowers, it will just magically come back to life, we will just have to see. Seeds on here. Completely neglected to water the last time I was here just because I was so caught up in everything else. These are patty pans, these all need a water pretty urgently so that's the first thing that we're going to do. And then today's main sort of goal is to put these out in my garden which are nematodes, nema slugs. So these are something that a lot of you always go on about and tell me that I should try, I have to try it and it's a sort of a natural slug control by putting these sort of slugs in because I believe these are slugs but they eat other slugs and it's sort of like introducing something into the ecosystem to help deal with your slug problem which I do have here. I have never tried this before and this is the year I'm going to try it. I always get lots of comments from you and questions, have you tried nematodes, do they work? We're going to find out today so this is going to be our main job of the day but first we're going to do some watering. I've just spilt that water all down myself, literally I'm soaking wet, thank goodness the sun is out. Here you go my friends, before you finally bite the dust, let's give you some of this. God I'm flooding him. This pumpkin is miraculously coming back to life but it actually looks like a patty pan because it's um, I didn't label them unfortunately because I never do but it's growing quite bushy, it's not getting that kind of vine so I'm having a feeling that this is a patty pan which means I might have to move it potentially. The other ones are also doing pretty well at the moment but the reason why I want to put nematodes down is for these little guys in here, these ones here. These are my Jack B Littles, I've got two planted very close together just because I've been planting them and they've been dying and then suddenly growing back. These are what I am determined to grow this year, I love Jack B Littles and these are what the slugs seem to like the most. So at the moment I've got this stuff down which has made a really good defence against the slugs and snails. I always want to say defence against the dark arts but that's Harry Potter. These are wall pellets and they have been absolutely fantastic at preventing them but not fantastic enough because as you can see this guy is sitting in the middle of all these wall pellets and he has been eaten so they've not been that great. So while the wall pellets have been semi-successful they've not been completely foolproof like no slug and snail defence really is. Another thing I've done is to try companion planting so I've got a lot of nasturtiums. Unfortunately the slugs around here don't seem to like nasturtiums. So the idea of all these nasturtiums planted along where the pumpkins are going to go up the archway is that the slugs will prefer these to the pumpkins and basically eat them. So they're kind of like a sacrificial crop however as you can see they're looking fantastic guys. I think the slugs literally just use these as a hotel and then the pumpkins are kind of their morning buffet breakfast. So they'll sleep in here and then slither out and eat their breakfast in the morning. So not an ideal situation going on with the pumpkins. I've wanted to try nematodes for a very long time. Today's the day we're going to do it. I'm holding it upside down. So the instructions are on the back. It looks fairly easy. We basically have to dilute them into water, put them into a watering can and then water them on to our areas where we want them to be. This is my first time doing this and I'm probably going to get it all wrong. But we'll give it a try. The idea is that you have to dilute them. So what I'm going to do is dilute it straight into the container I'm going to pour them out of. So instead of using the whole thing we'll just tip in a little bit of it. What it actually wanted me to do just for reference is to mix all of it into a great big container containing four litres of water, mix it all together and then use that to dilute into a watering can. I'm kind of skipping that step and just diluting little bits into a watering can. I don't have a container that can contain four litres of water. I mean, who does? That's a big bucket. Right, same process again. I'm pretty sure I'm doing this all wrong, but I'll keep going with it because, you know, it's better than nothing, I suppose. Right, and that's all I can really show you of the nematode situation today until they start to work. I don't know how long. I think it lasts six weeks. So you have to retreat to every six weeks. We'll just have to wait and see because I do have some new Jack B little pumpkins to plant out very, very soon. So I think time will tell and that will be within the next six weeks. So if it's worked, hopefully we'll have a lot less slug and snail damage. I think slug damage is really the damage I'm worried about. Snails don't seem to be too much of a problem, do they? Snails tend to leave things alone. I don't mind snails. It's the slugs. It's the slugs that's the issue. Fingers crossed and I'll keep you updated. I was just looking for my fork and I thought, did I leave it in my compost heap? It's been absolutely overtaken with bindweed. Look at that. I can't even get it out. Give it back bindweed. It's not yours. I've only got three, three things on it. I must've forgotten that I broke it over the autumn winter. I need to get a new one of these. All right, bees. All right, bees. I'm not here to bother you. I've got so much borage about this. Just buzzing of bees everywhere. Right. The last couple of visits to the allotment plot, I haven't been in the best head space. I feel a bit better today. Um, cleaning the greenhouse last time was something I really needed to do for my mental health and it really helped. Um, but it means that I've neglected a few garden jobs that I need to do. For example, digging out the potato bed. So I took out all of my early potatoes, but I didn't dig out the bed after. And I thought I was going to do it the next time. And then we had a terrible, terrible allotment visit. Everything just went wrong and I ended up going home. Today's the day we're going to dig it out. You can already see a couple of potatoes that have magically made their way to the surface. It's like they're saying, come on, find us, find us. You've taken all our mates, come back for us. Almost straight away, we found a really good sized potatoes. There's definitely more in here. It's really difficult to dig at the moment because it's been so dry. We've had so little rain. Um, the ground is really hard. I'm also using my three, my three ponged, what are they called? Pongs? They're not called pongs. Thongs? They're not thongs. I can't remember what these things are called, metal things. I'm using this fork so that I don't like slice through the potatoes. If I used a shovel, there's a risk that I could slice through them. I mean, I still could, but there's less risk. Prongs, prongs, not thongs. Oh my goodness. Cut that. There's so many. I'm going to choke. Oh, wow. I mean, I knew I'd missed a few, but I had no idea I'd missed this many. I mean, this is a whole new potato hole. Oh my goodness. They're good sizes as well. They're like little salad, salad potato size, which is fantastic. Perfect for what I like. God, I had no idea there would be this many. There's also quite a lot of bindweed roots under here. Trying to get out as many of those as I can. I've just done exactly what I said I wanted to avoid. I've gone straight through the potato with one of my prongs, one of my fork prongs. See, if that was a shovel, I could have literally sliced it in half. Though if I'd sliced it in half, I could probably have replanted it. A bit exhausted digging in that because the ground is so hard. I think I'm just going to get rid of that one because we've got enough good ones to work with. Right, there we go. That's the second little, and these are red duke of yorks, a first early variety. My second hole from the same bed just because I didn't dig. I'm pretty sure there'll be a lot more under the ground. There's only so much digging I can do in one day. I've got out quite a lot of bindweed as well, which is quite productive. So this bed here will be mulched over and then I'm going to be putting my autumn winter brassicas in here. I am getting a lot of questions about my sweet peas which have, as you can see, finished flowering. These have well and truly finished now. The flowers are sort of very far and few between, even at the top. There's hardly any flowers at all, but can you see all of the seed pods? So what I'm actually going to do is leave these where they are until the seed pods start to go brown and get really nice and full, and then I'm going to pick the seeds of all the different colours. I sort of remember where the colours are and then I will sow them again in the autumn time for next year. Yeah, even though it's finished, it's still such a nice big sort of plant here. So I'm going to wait until all of the pods, oh look, some of them are starting to turn brown, I can show you. You see here, I'm going to wait for them all to turn like that before I pick them. Right, butterfly rescue. I've got him, I've actually got him. Are you ready for this? Right, what we're going to do today is re-sow some carrots. So these are Amsterdam 2. Some of my carrots are doing excellent, my carrots at home are doing excellent, the ones that I planted first, sort of early spring, are not doing so well. So we're going to pull them all up and re-sow with the Amsterdam 2. And I've got a really clever trick that so many of you have sent me to try to keep them wet and to get them to germinate, so I'm going to share that with you now. Right, let's go whack these in. These carrots down here are doing excellent, really, really, really excellent, and we might pull a few up in a bit. But the other ones which are over here hiding behind this, these are parsnips which are flowered, aren't they gorgeous? I'm going to try and collect the seeds. I've got loads of seed bags, I'm determined to collect seeds this year guys, that's my mission for the year is to collect as many seeds as I can, so I don't have to keep buying them. And these are parsnip seeds, so I can't wait to collect them. But down here just behind the parsnips that have flowered are my carrots that I sowed in the early autumn, early autumn I think it was, they're not doing very well. Let's just pull them all up. Let's wait for the motorbike, that's okay. Let's just pull them all up because I can see they're not doing well, you can see they're not doing well, they've been growing at the same, longer than the other ones by the greenhouse and they're pretty much ready to pick. Okay have I just told you that that is a very cute little carrot isn't it, but it's so small, it's such a small carrot, it's actually so cute, it's not the cutest little thing you've ever seen. Pippin might like some of these actually, I'll just lay them on there when we pick them. Well literally, look at that, it's like I've grown a miniature garden, a miniature garden, like a doll's house garden this is. Oh god they're so cute, they've actually all made little carrots which is quite incredible, um oh my god they really have, they've all definitely made carrots which is quite remarkable, I really didn't think we'd get anything at all. I have a little bit more hope for these ones because they're a bit bigger, oh okay never mind, not a stubby one, this one definitely looks a bit bigger, oh okay, yeah he's not bad. We're getting some slightly bigger ones now, what about this one here, this one really does feel quite big, wow, oh look he's splitting two, we can make him dance this one, that's such a shame that he split because I think if he hadn't split he would have been quite big. Right let's see what's here, oh okay, we're getting a bit bigger now, maybe this side sort of did a bit, well yeah it did, this side did a lot better than the other side, oh okay never mind, that one, that is so weird, it's like a worm carrot, okay this one feels really big, you ready, oh yes, yes that is definitely a big one, happy with that. Okay it's definitely not the worst bunch of carrots I've ever pulled up, I actually think some of them have got real potential and actually they're very edible and usable, they smell so delicious, oh every time I've pulled them up you could just smell carrots, like it's so nice, they just smell delicious, right so the rest of the bed we're going to pull out, we're going to sort it out, we're going to water it and we're going to sow some more carrots. Right it's very dry so I'm going to give it a water, okay so then we'll just sprinkle them on, I'm only going to do half the pack so that when they die I've got more to sow, sprinkle them on quite finely like this, I'm just going to use my gloved hand just to ruffle them in so they're a little bit covered, give it a little sprinkling, it has had a lot of water already, that looks good to me, right then I've got some soaking wet cardboard, I'm just going to lay it over the top of my bed until the carrots are germinated and that will keep them and that will stop them from drying out and it will also hopefully keep them nice and dark so they can germinate properly. So I will keep checking on them and I will keep watering them as well when I come down but hopefully that's a really good tip and it will work fantastically and I'll be able to say yes look at these carrots aren't they fantastic. Anyway time will tell and thank you very much for the tip, I will give it a go and report back later. Right thank you so much for joining me today on my allotment plot, sorry I'm sitting in the shade, I'm way overexposed, I know it's like bright white behind me, I can't sit in the greenhouse it's just too hot. Another heat wave is on the way so my next vlog is going to be all about preparing your plot for the heat wave so let me know if there's anything in particular you're worried about, anything that happened to your plot during the last heat wave and hopefully and hopefully we can rescue and save our plots together before they get damaged anymore by the heat. Thank you for being here, thank you for watching, please subscribe if you're not already, I vlog three times a week and on Sundays. I hope you're enjoying these vlogs, let me know if there's anything in them that you want to see more of, I just can't capture Einstein right now so please don't ask for Einstein because I'm doing my best but he's very very busy but if I can get him on camera I will. Right I'll see you next time, thank you for watching, bye.