FIXING GUTTERING, PULLING PARSNIPS AND ASSESSING PROBLEMS / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

But then I'm not mended the king and I'm not a horse, so maybe I could put it back together again. Good size as well. Look at the pool of water sitting there. Good morning guys, welcome back to The Allotment Diaries. My name is Emma, these are The Allotment Diaries. I'd love for you to hit the subscribe button if you are interested in seeing allotment life and all its ups and downs that come with it. I don't gloss over the hard times here and I show you all of my failures as well as my successes, I suppose, when I have them. But yeah, if you want to see a very realistic side to allotment gardening and see what it really takes to have and look after a real allotment plot and not just see the how-to's and the good times, but actually see like the nitty gritty work behind it, then this is the channel for you because that is exactly the point of this channel. The point is that I don't gloss over anything and I just try to really show you what it's like here. And it's not always easy and that is the harsh truth, allotment gardening can be really tiresome and difficult and hard work and sometimes you just don't want to do it, but ultimately it's worth it and if you can just find it, if you can just dig deep and find that motivation on the days where you really don't feel like it, then you will be so thankful for the days days then you come down and everything is just so beautiful and perfect and you just have like the best time here um but you have to kind of get through those hard times to reach those good times and i'm here to motivate you hopefully hopefully that's what you get from this channel a little bit of motivation and just i don't know someone else to kind of watch and see what they're up to and to know that you're not alone if you're making mistakes and if you're finding things hard you know you're not alone you're not the only one And that's what the channel is all about. I've come down today, I'm not going to go on and on about the weather because it is a bit dark and gloomy today and it is a little bit cold. My hair was nice this morning and now it's puffed up and gone crazy. I am actually leaving the windows open in my greenhouse at the moment because it keeps getting very misty in here and It's wet and damp and the other day I had all the windows closed and I came into my greenhouse and it stank Like a stank of damp and I was like that can't be good for anything in here It's just gonna mold all the plants, get mold on the plants I think plants can get mold on them and it's gonna rot all my seeds and stuff. So I was like, no, no, no, no No, I haven't been down here for a few days just because there's not that much to do here anymore So I'm kind of pacing myself a little bit A little bit. I'm... ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO! Bless me. I've also had a bit of the sniffles so I've sort of you know taken a little bit of time out. I need to check on the sweet peas first. So these are my autumn sown sweet peas and I've sown them in the autumn time because they do it does make stronger plants in the springtime and sweet peas are my favourite flower so I just really wanted to get some sown. I don't know if they've Germinated or not? I can see one that's germinated but I think that's the same one as last time. We've got one little lonesome sweet pea and none of the others are germinated yet but the good news is the mouse has not dug in here so I think my little fleece idea has worked. Somebody said that the fleece might encourage him to set up a little bed in here and go to sleep under there and I was really hoping that wouldn't be the case but it seems that he's left them alone so the fleece has worked. Got a few little bits growing in my greenhouse down here, got some winter lettuce, some parsley, a few little brassica seedlings that I can see popping up and then got my lovely cauliflower in here which is doing fantastically as yet not been eaten and I reckon we can get it bigger. So we're going to be daring and we're going to leave them a little bit longer and I hope that he gets a bit bigger because he's got a lot of foliage at the moment and not much substance, Not much cauliflower, but I think we will just leave it a bit longer. Right, I can't hear the birdie right now, so I tell you what, we'll hold off on feeding the bird just a little bit longer. I want to check on my carrots and I also really want to check on my parsnips. The only thing about parsnips, and I always forget this until I go to pick them up, is you must wear a glove when handling the foliage. The foliage is the thing that can bring your hand out in blisters. So when you are harvesting parsnips or if you're doing anything to the tops of parsnips, I think if you snap the foliage, there's like a liquid that comes out of it and that liquid on your hand can cause blisters And can cause you to kind of... Burn your hand, basically. So if you are handling parsnips, you must wear a glove. Let's have a look at the carrots and then the parsnips. Right, the carrots have been growing for quite some time now. I actually can't remember exactly when I planted them. The issue that I have with them is that when we have a really hard frost and the frost is on the way, Gosh, is that you, Einstein, straight away? You're so annoying. Yeah, the hard frost is on the way, and after a frost, they're very difficult to get up out the ground. So it's always a good idea to try to harvest them before the frost, but... Someone's pulled this one up. I wonder if a little birdie's come and pulled that one up. That's not very good. That's not very promising in terms of the size. That one's very promising in terms of the size. There might be a few that are dumb. I'm gonna have to reassess this and have a little think as to whether it might be time to start pulling all of these out now because I want to move the bed as well. So he's turned up at the most inappropriate moment. It's so frustrating. We better feed the birdie though. Yeah, I'm in two minds about whether to pull these up now. I know I'm getting very impatient with them, but like I said, I just, I really need the bed as well. I need to move the bed. It might be that I just cut my losses and sort of pull them up so that I can get things sorted at the allotment before the freeze comes. Apparently we're due a really, really cold winter, so he's fluttering around now. Right, we're going to have to go feed him. So impatient. No. Oh no, a mouse has eaten this. I've just opened it up, it's empty. There's a load of mouse poos in here. Not rat poo, it's mouse poo. 100%. Oh, that's so annoying. I was supposed to put them in here and seal them up so that the mouse couldn't get it and I must have forgotten the last time I was here. And he's just got in and eaten the whole pack so I've got no mealworms for him. I'm actually gutted because is that going to destroy the relationship that I've built with Einstein now? Is he not going to trust me anymore? Joking! That is actually so annoying. That is so annoying. I was so looking forward to feeding him today as well. I was so excited about it. He's not going to take seed from my hand is he? Easy. Einstein please don't do this to me. I do have some seed here. I don't think he's going to be happy with the seed but it's sort of all I've got. Can you eat this up my hand Einstein because he's just not going to be happy with it. So I don't want to upset him. Is there any mealworms? There are a few mealworms in here though. Actually, there are some mealworms in here. I wonder if I could collect these up and then just make them... Yeah. Okay, hang on. I'm scared of you today. I don't know why. Sorry, Einstein. I didn't mean to be. I really don't mean to be. I'm just a little bit... a little bit scared. There you go. I didn't get it out of my hand. See them in here and them, didn't you? Come on then. There are some worms there, too. Look through. I'll give you a little bit more than you need, actually, because there are some mealworms. Here you are. Yeah, luckily there are some mealworms in there, so... All good Einstein, I think our relationship is intact and actually he did just take two seeds and he ate them so I think he seems quite happy with them. Right these are the parsnips here, not had a very good year to be honest because of the extreme temperatures we had over the summer. So I might just... Couldn't seem to look after them to be honest and they also they germinated really late so I sort of didn't know they were here for a while in my defence. I didn't know they existed. So actually reading an article in Grow Your Own magazine recently. If you get the Readly app and I'm here to talk about the Readly app. I love the Readly app. I partnered with them for a very long time on this channel and if you get the Readly app you can read the article yourself online without having to purchase a paper copy of the magazine which is something I love about the app. But at the beginning of the magazine, there's an article on sort of jobs to do in November. And I love those kinds of articles because they really give you. really concise lists of things that you can be getting on with in your garden all throughout the year. So I really love those kinds of articles and I always look for them and then I bookmark them so that I can come back to them later. One of the things that it did talk about was making sure that you pull up any carrot before it gets too cold because it's really difficult to get any kind of root vegetable out of the ground when it's like really frosted over and that's what's made me want to check everything today. However I think with parsnips when they go through a cold They actually taste sweeter and it's advised to harvest them after the frost. I think what happens is that their starch inside them turns to sugar in an attempt to kind of stop the plant from dying and freezing over so it's like it's got its own antifreeze inside it so when it gets really cold turns its starch to sugar and if we harvest it then it means that they taste sweeter. On the Readly app as well you know you can backdate all the editions of magazines so when I said like in that one there's jobs to do in November but if you missed you know last month's edition October or even September you can backdate the editions so you can go back and have a look at those articles and see if there's any jobs that you've missed and like I said being able to bookmark those articles is so useful on the app because it saves them into a nice concise list and then you And you don't have to go searching for that article again. You can just save it. in your bookmarks, and then it's just there ready for you whenever you want to reread it or have a look at it again. I've used the Readly app for a very long time now, and I do bang on about it on this channel, but honestly, I use it pretty much every single day. It really does save on all those paper magazines, which is one of the things I love the most about it because I no longer have to, you know, dispose of loads of magazines every month. I can just read them all online, which is so much better for the environment. So if you do want to try Readly, as always, I do have a link that will give you two months free. It's below in my description, or you can click the QR code on the screen now. It will give you access to the Readly app, thousands and thousands of magazines, all different categories, all of those features I talk about, and you can get access to it for two months for free. And you can cancel at any time, it's super simple to cancel, but you might as well sign up for two months for free if you haven't already, and if you have, why not send that link to a friend and they can sign up for two months for free and get access to the app. I think what we're going to do is we're going to pull up one of these parsnips and see what's going on under the ground, because if they're all still really tiny, it's unlikely I'm going to get any good parsnips this year, so I'd like to know now. I always have homegrown parsnips at my Christmas dinner, it's tradition, so if I'm not going I'm not going to get that this year. I'd rather know now. What's this? This is a potato plant. Right. That's not a parsnip. That's a potato. That is a potato in my parsnip bed. This bed I don't think has ever had potatoes in it, but there we go. There's a potato. So one potato for my Christmas dinner. I'm only going to pull it out with my gloved hand, obviously, because I don't want to get any nasty burns. And the way that you normally pull them up is you push and then you pull, Which sounds counterproductive, but, you know. So the way you're supposed to do it, hang on a second, I can feel the parsnip, I'm going to have to get my little digging device. It always catches me off guard how deep these parsnips like to grow. I think that's done it. I just heard a little pop. It's always surprising to me how difficult it is to get these things out the ground. Oh, okay, right. That's actually, that's probably one of the smallest parsnips I've ever grown, but that's a pretty decent size for, you know, roasting. That's not bad, I think I've accidentally pulled the other one up as well, so we might as well get him out. Pretty good size as well. That's a pretty good size. I'm pretty happy with them. Oh, it smells so parsnipy. And then if I just have a look at the one next to it, that's a bit of a whopper. You have a look at this one guys. Have a look at that. That's a bit of a whopper under there. The parsnip variety that I always grow is gladiator, gladiator variety, and they do get quite big, and that's why I enjoy growing them, because I really like pulling out those massive parsnips. However, the smaller ones do taste better. They taste so much better. I think when they get too big, they can taste a bit woody. Yeah, they kind of go a little bit woody, and they lose their flavour, basically. The bigger they go, the less flavour they have, but the The smaller ones are always so, so delicious. These are like a great size. These are a great size. The only thing is we haven't had a frost yet. So they do smell pretty sweet though to be fair but because we haven't had a frost what you can do is you can go home and put that in the freezer for a little bit and freeze it up and then it will it will do the same process. It will turn its starch to sugar and you'll get a sweeter crop. So you can kind of cheat it a little bit but they look pretty good to me. I wish I had some more because I could make a parsnip soup if I had more. I just don't see the point of taking two little lonesome parsnips home. So I might actually just pull up a few more and see if we can make a parsnip soup today. Snoop? Soup. Yeah, I think it's a good idea because I don't see what the point is of just having two parsnips. So let's get this big enough. That's a really good size. That's a solid parsnip size, I would say. That's excellent. I'll just get enough for soup for one. I'll make it for my lunch. We might need to get the old shovel. Where have you gone, shovel? I'm trying to loosen it a little bit, if I hear a bit of a pop, that means I've got it. That's a nice one, that's a very nice parsnip, it's an okay parsnip. Sorry mate, I'm not going to say you're great when you're not. Right, this one as well. What do I need to make a soup? I can't quite visualise it. That one's too small, we'll leave that one. This one might make a good soup. Oh yeah, he's a great size. Hang on, I think there's a good sized one here, I think we'll pull him up. Yeah, he's good, that's an excellent size that is, that'll do. You know, that's a pretty good harvest actually. I'm pretty happy with that. I'll see if I can make some soup. If I do, it'll be in my Sunday vlog on Sunday. So look what I brought with me today. I thought I would have a go at putting that guttering back up on my shed. So when we put the shed roof on, I took all the guttering down. We were going to kind of redo all the guttering but what I'm thinking is we are due quite a lot of rain this week and I really want to collect it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly put it back up so I can collect as much water as possible in my little water bin. Collecting water is something obviously we have to really think about at the moment. Do I need a drill? Do I need... I think it's quite an easy job so let's just go and just like literally just give it a go. Okay looking at it in more detail it might actually not be that straightforward because the way that we've done the shed is we've got these things hanging off the end here because we weren't quite sure what to do with them because the issue isn't can I put it back up because I can the issue is is it actually going to collect any bleeding water if I put it back up because is that bit too is that now overhanging too much. Right, obviously there's a way of figuring this out isn't there? We'll just get some water, give it a go. So, I think it's doing it. It obviously has to be at a bit of an angle, but I think I'm going to make it at more of an angle than it was before. I hope that does something. Right, the important part is that the water can come down the roof and go into that, and I need it to come off the end here. So when I pour the water up here, it comes down there, and then off there. It's just all about getting that angle right, and I think I've got it right. It's raining. That is exactly what I wanted it to do. Fantastic, now we've got to somehow catch that water. You see, we've got to catch it, Derry, catch it. We've got a series of pipes, it's a bit like Mario, except there's no bowser in there. With your guttering, it's just all about getting the angles correct. You see, it's going down there, in we go, there it goes. Look at that, that is so fun, that is so much fun. The only thing I need to make sure I do is I need to change this. This is just a bin that I found along the edge of the allotment path one day years ago. I need to get a proper water butt because not only can it hold more water, it's also going to have a little tap thing at the bottom so I can actually attach my hose to it and also it's going to have a lid to stop all the water evaporating. That's my biggest concern with it and that's what happens, all the water evaporates from the top which is so pointless of collecting it. It tends to last okay for the spring though so for now we're going to keep it here because I'm not wasting any water. When I get a water butt I will just empty this into it. We've just we've had so much rain I can't keep letting this rain go like I need to collect it somehow. It's so much fun making guttering. If you're ever worried about making guttering just go down your local hardware store buy a bunch of random pipes and guttering stuff and just attach it to the shed. It's so much It's so much fun. If you've ever played. Marble runs. As a kid, if you ever played marble runs, it's the same thing. We're all able and equipped to do these jobs. We've been trained through childhood without even knowing. So all those times when you played with the marble run, it was preparing you for putting guttering onto your shed. You just didn't know it. You just didn't know it at the time. My husband's not going to be happy with it, but it works. And who can argue with that? Alright, Einstein. Thank you. Now this, which everyone's telling me it's made out of fibreglass, this fibreglass container that I found, and I'm using it as a kind of like a dipping pond. So it's basically, it's going to be filled with water and I can dip my watering can into it, but it's also going to have some pond plants in here and stuff for wildlife. This is already connected to my greenhouse guttering. I don't know how effective this guttering is. Actually, especially the fact that a lot of my windows have popped in, which is a bit of a shame because that means that it's not, it's not got like a smooth surface to kind of run down into the water. It's sort of dipped in, which is not ideal. So I'm not entirely sure how effective. This will be, we could give it a go with some water and see, but I've got this blue water piping on the end, which I do need to snip off a little bit. And then I'm slowly filling it with rainwater so that I don't have to fill it up with a hose pipe, basically. Basically, um... Let's get the watering can. I think it might be worth, yeah, look, look at the pool of water sitting there. I don't know if you can see that. It shouldn't be doing this. This is just silly. It should be flush with this so that it's going into the actual guttering and unfortunately the windows are just sort of caved in, which is such a dreadful shame because I think I might need to get some more panels actually and just fix this properly because otherwise I don't know how the guttering is going to work. Right sorry I know the vlog is a bit chaotic at the moment. I'm just trying to figure all these things out and see what I might need to repurchase, what I might need to fix. Six. I don't know how to fix this polychannel, but I think the metal frame has come away a little bit. I really don't know how that would be fixed. Stay there and let me know if this does anything. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure if the guttering will even work. If it works, we should have water coming out this blue thing. Oh, it's there. It's there. Oh. Oh. Oh. It's there then. Not really an ideal situation. That's actually really quite frustrating. I think the guttering, I think the whole side of that greenhouse has broken and I don't know how to fix it. My crazy side of my brain says I want to take the entire polycarbonate greenhouse apart and put it back together again. And then my logical side says if you do that you'll never put it back together again. But then I'm not Men of the King and I'm not a horse, so maybe I could put it back together again. Yeah, it's just bowed in the middle, that's the problem. Right, okay, so we've established the problem, I just don't know how to fix it. Um, and this obviously isn't going to fill up from the guttering like I wanted it to because it's not, it's not a good enough guttering. It's quite frustrating, it's quite frustrating because this really isn't that old. Um, it's only a couple of years old and I really would have hoped that it would last longer than this and... It's just getting rotted everywhere. All of the screws that we've used, and we used the screws that came with the actual polycarbonate greenhouse, they've all rusted and are sort of coming apart a little bit. And it just seems like why it like, I just feel like they knew it was gonna be outside. So it should have been created to be outside for longer. Just a little bit frustrating. I don't think there's anything that can't be fixed. Anyway, oh yeah, I wanted to check on the peas as well. Right, let me just quickly go and check on the peas before we head off. Oh, that tree is finally starting to lose its leaves, so I'll be able to collect some of those up soon, which is very exciting. Next time we come, we'll be collecting a lot of leaves. But down here... Down here on the ground we do have some peas and yes they have survived. They are doing so so well. Look at these. These are one of the few things that you can actually sow in November. These are autumn sown peas and they will give me hopefully an early harvest in kind of like February, March time. You can also sow broad beans right now as well but peas and broad beans those are the things to be getting in the ground. These look so great don't they? They're just doing so well. Got some fantastic looking leeks down here too. The thing is with these leeks though, guys, and this is actually a question I wanted to ask. I've sown them out in sort of clumps. So you can see there's two here and there's two here. There's two here, there's three here, mainly in pairs to be fair, I'm not sure why I paired them all up, but somebody said you can plant them sort of in clumps, but then do I leave them in clumps now that they're getting bigger, or should I separate them, because I've never really had much luck with leeks, they've never really got very big, and I'm wondering is that because I'm leaving them paired up together? Should I be sort of digging them up and separating them now or are they okay to sort of stay with their mates? I have grown leeks successfully but just not very big and I really want them to get to a really nice good size so I can use them in a soup or something you know. That would be ideal. But they're looking really strong and healthy they're obviously really happy. Maybe they're just happy because they're with their mates. What do you think? Is that a thing? I don't know. Yeah let me know if you would separate these or not. Right I'm going to leave it there today. When I come back next time I've got quite a few kind of pottering jobs to do and also I'm going to plant in some garlic into my new beds. I've really struggled with garlic and onion. I'll tell you more about that on Monday but because I've got these new raised beds now I think I might be able to get away with growing a bit of garlic in there or maybe even some onion sets we'll have to see. But yeah I'm going to be back on Monday at the allotment doing some more jobs or I'll catch you again on Sunday And my home diary, and you might... You might very well see me making some parsnip soup because I'm about to go home and do that. So hopefully that turns out quite nice. I will see you when I see you. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to check out Readly. The link that I've got guys, if you sign up to that link it will give you two months free. So you don't have to pay a thing and you can cancel at any time. So you might as well just use the link, send it to a friend. Christmas time is coming up. It might be a nice little gift to give someone. Two months free for Readly. Try it out and then you can just cancel if you don't like it or stay subscribed if you do. The choice is yours. But you do get access to all of those magazines and all the features with that link for two months. I will see you when I see you. Thank you so much for watching today. Hope you've enjoyed it. Bye.