Allotment Vlog. April Plot Tour & Garden Plans. – Gardening with Nature. Biodiversity Matters.

Welcome to my channel dedicated to gardening with nature.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with various ways of growing as much food as possible for the least amount of effort and without spending too much money!

I’ve done this due to nesseaty. Gardening with a disability isn’t easy, but there is a separate channel for that.

I’ve adapted my approach for the modern urban environment but have very much drawn huge inspiration from dozens of other gardners.

the information in this channel isn’t new. it’s just been forgotten.

my sole aim is to help people grow some food and prioritise nature in their garden.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via Instagram.

www.instagram.com/grow_your_own_life

hi folks I hope you’re all keeping well it’s a little bit windy today so um I hope you’re getting this and it the sounds not rubbish cuz I forgot my microphone as always anyway uh everything’s going really good uh it’s still very wet but this is the first dry day I think we’ve had in a while feels like about four weeks U sadly though I got a bit on today doctor’s appointment other things I I can only come down here do the chickens and then um do a very quick Potter a sort of where i’ quite like the whole day here but sadly uh not today hopefully though if the weather stays as it is I can get down here tomorrow and Saturday and get cracking but I’m going to flip the camera around uh and you can see what I’m seeing Oh I’ll tell you what I’m going to do I carry on talking and I’ll take some footage of the plot and I’ll cut it in afterwards like a professional yeah so everything’s been going really well things I’ve got growing so far uh potatoes are in and they’re in pots at home and I’m growing in those big 30 buckets you know how uh Tony does at simplify Garden uh simplify gardening yeah uh it’s a I mean I’ve always grown potatoes in containers I mean even before I knew who Tony at simplify gardening was uh his method though is very very good uh I do it a variation on that because basically create own compost and I also try and book things out with straw and mulches and other stuff but it works works very well uh a very lazy way of growing potatoes and a very easy way of getting nice clean potatoes I’m not going to teach you how to grow potatoes you want to know to grow potatoes stick some potatoes in the ground watch them grow pull them out about what 90 days later or watch Tony’s videos cuz they’re pretty good um yeah so I’ve got those in I’ve got all my cabbages my kale uh cauliflowers salad leaves a lot of herbs uh they’re all in if some of them are now good size uh some of them have only just germinated but hopefully if we get nice Sun like this they’ll start to develop foliage because I don’t know if anyone’s noticed but basically because it’s been so rainy I noticed this on someone else’s video the other day that they were saying that things aren’t growing the same uh and a lot of it is due to the Rain uh because obviously plants need light once they germinate to focus sympathy and so can’t say the word photosynthesis and grow and if it’s cloudy and there’s not much light in the early part of the Year anyway and then it’s cloudy and you block at even more light it’s going to stunt growth it’s actually a thing happened in the Middle Ages where the whole of Europe was covered in uh I think there was some volcanic ash and also some really bad weather and for for a whole season uh it like rained for like I don’t know 150 days or something and CPP yields went down and everything and that’s mainly because the clouds block out the Sun so if you’re all struggling with plants at the moment and you’re all struggling to the and you don’t understand why things aren’t growing quite the way they were before it’s because of the clouds not just the rain the clouds as well because obviously things are too wet and they’re also too dark uh yeah I also noticed in another video day who was I video from someone talking about compost forget it I’m sorry if I remember I’ll pop it up here um but people were complaining about like compost not doing the same uh I’ve had this problem now for a while with the peak free compost um cuz last year I tried about six different bags of budget cheap uh budget cheaper PE free compost and I had weed kill problems and all sorts and if you remember I did a series of videos and I was going to look at each compost what I found out from um the video was uh and from people commenting that it’s batch problems so you might have one bag of this budget you know homebased BQ Wilco whoever Peak free compost uh and it might be good but then the next batch might be bad and it’s obviously because they’re just collecting green bins from around people’s houses and if people spray Nettles and then chop them down and throw them in the green bin you get that weed killer in Mr Bug you get that weed killer in your compost and then it kills your plants so obviously the best Peak free compost you can get is stuff that’s come naturally Harvest from you know Bracken and straw and mushroom compost and all that kind of stuff uh and the budget stuff which comes from green waste I think it’s got a massive quality problem a massive batch problem I will eventually make a video about just how bad I think it is but yeah I try and steer clear of it so basically I’ve bought myself some soil conditioner which was 40 pound a ton from a local building place it’s got bits of twig in it and all sorts there’s a little bit of plastic in there as well there’s nothing I think Plastics riddle The Whole World’s ridd with plastic Now isn’t it um and if I save that through and I and I mix it with a bit of uh uh strch strch is that how you say it the straw mulch stuff or I mix it with some hay mulch or anything else it’s pretty good actually and when it rots down into have on next year I’ll have really good compost and my plan is to grow my potatoes in this compost that I’ve made this year uh potatoes will then grow and get the benefit out of you know the rich nitrogen goodness that’s in this soil conditioner fingers crossed that’s what I’m planning uh and then obviously when I harvest the potatoes I can siiv through it and that’ be really good potting compost for next year always thinking folks always thinking so fingers crossed that will work this year but I don’t know I genuinely don’t know I’ve also started working on the compost bin obviously because I need to make as much compost as possible um over the next couple of years to fill up some more raised beds because I need to raise this side of my plot off the ground because of the water situation because I’ve been fighting this now for a while and I’ve left this area here look this has been deric for close on like 12 months now since it flooded and the chickens got washed out So the plan is obviously that this will be the compost production area and I can get loads of compost made in here um and then hopefully eventually when I’ve I’ve got some more funs um I can put a ra bed in here there somewhere and because it’s in the shade quite a lot I mean we’re we’re almost midday now and it’s still in the shade um and once the Sun Passes around it gets a bit of sun and then it tails off in the afternoon um I’m thinking about growing mushrooms in this area area uh so yeah I’m thinking oyster mushrooms at the back of the alotment uh and you know they’ll be a nice easy crop because I can put them in uh very little maintenance and hopefully for a couple of years I can Harvest really good ooster mushrooms so we’ll see how that goes as well hello be how you doing mate do you want to not sting me you can go behind me if you want there a be in the green house you go past me you go follow me follow me come here I’m over that’s it follow me over here come on down this way down this way B come here come here be here be he probably going to get annoyed and sting me it’s a honeybee bumble bees aren’t too bad are they they just kind of buzz around and bump of the glass and B off now there’s two bees oh look at you you’re amazing let’s put the camera down get the bees out of here shall we right so the bees is gone if ever you want to get a rid of a bee out of your Greenhouse I found plant pots are really good you literally just follow the bee around with a plant pot like this and then when you get near the door you eventually just go and if you catch it right the bee and the plant pot go out of the door at the same time and the bee FES off and so far for the last two years that’s worked brilliantly and the bees don’t get hurt so yeah anyway so yeah I chopped the uh grape vine down over winter because apparently that’s what you’re supposed to do to get more grapes not that I can eat any more grapes and I got last year cuz if you remember I had bags and bags of grapes and I was giving them away to people but yeah um it’s come back I didn’t kill it we’ve got growth we’ve got growth yes and I just need to sort the other one out now as well so take the camera around and I’ll show you what’s going on over there now I currently can’t really get in this greenhous well I can but it it’s so wet under foot um I’ve just piled stuff in here at the moment um because obviously this is the corner that floods really bad and because of that um the Grapevine here is in a pot cuz I don’t want it to get rotten in the water but what I need to do now because it’s going to outgrow its pot I need to cut the bottom can you see I need to cut the bottom of the pot off so it will still be in the pot but then the roots can go down into the slightly wetter soil Bel and hopefully that will mean that it doesn’t well die because of being too constricted although if you remember last year I was saying that I grew these green grapes in a pot to restrict growth because I’d uh watched a documentary on how to get really tasty grapes and how the Italians I think it was the Italians might be the French either way some of those folks they they restrict the growth of the roots of the grapes by using rocks and bricks and other things and that means that because the grape vine is stressed it produces really sweet grapes and I don’t know whether that was the reason why but those grapes last year were absolutely beautiful so we’re going to try again and I don’t know if you can see this but my asparagus is up which means I’m going to munch them here I am and I get a knife I’m going to eat those asparagas let me flip this camera around there we go picking asparagus already oh look at them Beauties all right they’re going to get eaten on the way back to the car they are current Bush as well seled that’s doing all right another one over there self Ceda that’s doing all right now I I left my yaking yaking yaking yaking doesn’t exist I left my yak on uh on the in the ground to see if it would survive a British winter with had a pot on top of it if you remember so I’m hoping in the next couple of weeks I see growth there uh if I don’t it died and I’m boogered but fingers crossed day rhubarb still waiting to be planted out simply because everything’s been so bloody wet but as you can see everything’s going good although it’s a little bit delayed because of the weather although it does look like we might have an absolutely bumper apple harvest this year here fingers crossed we don’t get a late Frost because after I prune them I’ve getting so many little buds look so many Buds and I still got my big pile of rubbish because it’s been so wet it’s been so wet I’ve not been able to get the car down here and as you know from me me walking up and down backwards and forwards I get like two trips in and I’m I’m and I’m done so uh it’d be quite nice if I could just bring the car down load the car up and then drive off but it’s been so wet you can’t even get the car down here so uh to be fair I took a trolley up The Path the other day just with some compost in and I left grooves in the grass just from two bags of compost on a trolley pulling it behind me and it’s like I’m just going to tear the grass up and I know it’s not my grass but you don’t want to tear it up for other people here well I don’t I just I just rather wait for it to dry I know but that’s just me in it so anyway folks so that’s a very quick tour of what’s going on on the main plot um oh yeah and the strawberries are in and they’re coming through so yeah the strawberries are coming through actually got a flower over there as well a you right folks that’s about it really uh yeah I’m not quite sure how long I’ve rabbited on for um a very brief April tour of the plot uh and what I’ve got planned so um have a like And subscribe and hopefully I’ll catch you in a couple of weeks if you’ve never eaten it like this raw asparagus freshly picked washed I didn’t even check that for bugs it’s all protein in it oh my God it’s so good it’s so good it’s probably one of the nicest things I grow on my allotment that when you pick it and you eat it straight away it’s just so different oh my God it’s amazing and I’m not sharing hi folks how you keeping woo I’ve just Blitz the skinny allotment first proper session of the Season really because of all the rain hope you can hear it cuz I haven’t got my mic again and I pooped flip the camera around you can see a bit of before and after here goes there you go folks that’s the carrot beds weeded and morched Braska cage with shots down that side and that side and mulched I’ve done some drop onions in there um yeah it’s basically uh uh the uh is it Ro stde permaculture method of basically you just scatter onions and cover them over uh and see how they go I purposely put some on top and purposely buried some deep as you know from my uh videos in the past or you might not know this I like to pick Green Onions like spring onions so I will plant the sets and I I will probably Harvest them before they even get bigger than a golf ball so uh that’s that be done I haven’t got time to trim my lavender yet that’ll have to be done tomorrow I need to take curtain from my kale pigeons been eating that all winter but I don’t mind got a few of now uh all the cardboard has done pretty well over there and that’s been topped off with uh manure sorry I’m really out of breath at the moment hello Mr Blackbird uh and then I’ve moved the sheets off the paths put them onto the beds one to get the soil all going warmed up and two to suppress any weeds until I get some more compost down here and then all I’ve got to do then is uh quick weed around the edges um and then bark the paths uh cuz they haven’t been barked for like 2 years so they just need a good barking and then they’ll be good for another couple of years but to be honest first proper session pretty happy with that pretty happy with that I just want to show you something else as well every year when I trim my lavender I always cut a few bits and I just cut them and just jab them into the ground next to it and there’s one put that there so no one treads done it and there’s one there look it’s come back this year three lavender plants so whenever you trim your lavender whenever you just cut a bit off for instance I’ll probably cut that bit off there look when I trim it next just cut it off like you would have cut in and just jab it just jab it straight into the ground next to the plant leave it for a year nine times out of 10 you get yourself a free plant all right folks that’s absolutely rapid tour but I’ve got to go into the school run now so uh until next time take care speak here