WORKING ON MY NEW ALLOTMENT PLOT PATHWAYS / ALLOTMENT GARDENING

It's not very good when it's free. Come on, grab it. Hi Einstein! Hello! Oh, look! Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name's Emma, these are my allotment diaries. They're happening right now, you're watching them. If you are watching them for the first time, I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. It just really helps me out with the algorithm and everything. Not that you need to know about that, but you know, it's nice to have more people watching and enjoying allotment life and seeing the realities of it, I think. And I recently hit 29,000 subscribers, so thank you so much if you are one of my 29,000 subscribers, you mean the world. And we are on the way to 30. I have to do something special at 30, I think. Something exciting. I don't know what yet though, don't ask me. Oh, it's Christmas. I don't know. It's kind of eerie today. It's quite foggy here. They said it'd be sunny. It's not sunny, it's foggy. I don't think they know what it's going to be in the morning now. I'm pretty sure someone just looks out the window and goes, might brighten up. Say it's sunny, John. And then they just say it's sunny, but it's not. It's foggy and misty. So I've got a job this morning that I've been thinking about the whole way here. Why is my throat so weird today? I did see a little bit of wood chip left, so it's sort of, we had a wood chip delivery, and I wasn't here for it. Can you believe it? I wasn't here for it. I've been waiting for it for months, and it just arrived randomly, and I wasn't here to pick it up. There is a little bit left on the floor, and I thought I'd just take the wheelbarrow down and just try and collect as much as I can. I might get one wheelbarrow full. One's better than none. Do you know what I mean? But the wood chip situation is becoming desperate. Now I'm going to say that. It's becoming desperate. So, you know, first world problems. When I said there might be a little bit, what I mean is the absolute dregs at the bottom. The absolute dregs, but I might just be able to sweep up enough to make one wheelbarrow load, basically. Let's do it. Very good. But it is what it is. It's not very good, but it's free. Come on, grab it. It's absolutely terrible quality, but it's free. It's free. Actually, there's quite a lot here. I'm excited now. It's very eerie today, isn't it? Very quiet and eerie. I do like it at this time of year. I do definitely find myself coming down here more at this time of year because I know it's going to be empty and quiet. I find something quite beautiful about the off-season of gardening. I just think people just don't do it, and it makes me want to do it more, like want to come here more because I know that other people just shut their plots off, and I don't know, there's something quite beautiful about that. I don't know why. I'm not explaining it very well, but I do just love the quiet and the peace and the calm. It sets me up for the day. It looks like the sun might be coming out as well. Maybe John was right with the weather. You can definitely see a little bit of blue sky up there. Right, I don't know what the quality of this is going to be, but we're going to find out. Thanks. Apologies for all the drilling and building work going on. It's always at this time of year. I'm just going on about how peaceful and quiet it is and calm, and then I come back to this. Anyway, this is what it looks like. It's not too shabby. Not too bad for just a load of stuff to walk on. I think it's alright, you know. I'm going to go back and get a couple more wheelbarrows, I think, but it is making me realise just how much wood chip I'm going to need to do this plot, but we'll get there. We will get there. Getting ahead of myself a little bit. I always do that. Oh, hi Einstein. Hello. This one is definitely Einstein. Do you like your new bird feeder? Yeah, you do. Have you been on it yet? Come on then, Einstein. Guys, it's happened. It's happening. Look at you on there. Oh, look. He loves it. I think he was a little bit wary of it yesterday. I think he was a bit scared. Oh, that's moved my day. I think he was a bit wary of it yesterday. I was wondering if it was the colour because it's quite red and quite bright. I sort of wondered if maybe that put him off a little bit because everything here is quite subdued. Do you know what I mean? In colour. I was thinking, gosh, is red like a horrible colour for robins? Which would be weird because he is red. But then maybe he found that threatening. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the ins and outs of robin life, you know. And now he's singing. Oh, I think he loves it. That's really good. That's made my day. I'm glad you like it. Wow, look at the difference. Look at the difference of that. From just being the black tarpaulin to being like the wood chip. It's made such a massive difference. It looks incredible. There's not a lot in gardening that kind of gives you that really instantaneous kind of result. But putting down wood chip over a new path it gives you exactly that. The change is amazing and the whole difference it makes. It kind of just lifts the whole space and makes it look like a real kind of allotment plot. Do you know what I mean? If I show you it from over here it's quite a lot. It's only three wheelbarrows and it wasn't even good stuff. It's really made a big difference. It's not even like the good stuff. It's just the off stuff. I mean you saw what I was digging up. It's not even that good quality but it really makes a difference. There is probably, I could do another one but I'll do that later. What I want to do is focus on the pumpkin archway now because I sort of whacked the polytunnel in didn't I because I was just like I was going to blow away in the storm basically which we don't want at all. I don't know what's happened to my voice. It's gone really weird. Anyway, I haven't sorted out where the beds are or anything for the pumpkins and also I want a pathway through the middle that I can kind of walk through it. So that's what I want to focus on today. You can see that what I want is the pumpkins coming up the archway there and then on the other side as well and then I want a coherent kind of path through the middle. So I think we'll work on the beds first and then we'll sort out the path in the middle. Wide enough through the tunnel. Do you think that would be a wide enough path? I suppose maybe it could because I could have the pumpkins they do grow quite big and I could have some flowers along there too couldn't I? I could, I could. I think that path is probably okay then. Right, let's get it all secured in. Do you mind awfully not growing? Or do you mind awfully just dying? Thank you very much. Most kind. What's that on the other side? What we'll do is we'll mark out the growing beds with these I think. I can sort of envision this here being a mini little square bed with some like borage in it and the borage will come right up really high and then behind that we'll have the pumpkins in there and the other side the pumpkin bed sort of there and then along there we'll have some flowers like marigolds and stuff like that you know not big flowers, maybe corn flowers could whack those in and see what they do but yeah that's the pathway and there's the pumpkin archway very nice. Behind me there is a little bit of a muddle this is a riddle a riddle that I cannot solve I do not know what that is. The thing is the way that I'm building this plot is sort of so slowly so we sort of see we've got the bed here and then that bit is sort of like quite coherent and even over there now that's a wildlife area that's quite settled and then we sort of have areas like that and I don't quite know what to do because I need access to the compost bin at the same time that's quite a lot of wasted space there could there be another growing bed here don't know it's all a bit of a mystery maybe fruit bushes could go under there for me to pick that might be a nice little area for them but at the same time I'm not sure and at the same time I'm trying to not rush because the back of the plot is stressing me out a lot and I feel a little bit deflated by it and I don't want to bring a downer on it but I do feel a little bit like I might need some help for the back and I hate asking for help because I don't like relying on other people I like to rely on myself but this is quite a lot this is really going to require some really hard work this is going to require an entire kind of dedication to this bit of the plot I really feel like literally just fencing it off and just leaving it for now but at the same time I know I've still got time to do it I just feel like if I look at this I just see how far I've come I don't really want to leave a great big mess at the back that's not completed when I've come so far do you know what I mean? it's just stressing me out at the back of the plot when I look at it I literally just tried to pull up some ground sheet and I couldn't even begin to do it because it's so heavily solidified to the ground yeah oh god it just stresses me out but I think so far it's really coming along now I'm really quite happy with it in a weird kind of way I need to rebuild some of the beds that are falling down and stuff like that but it's all good let's have a look from over here I like just looking at it from different angles because then I can really see how far I've come with it it really is starting to look like an allotment plot I mean it's only a couple of months work and it was a heck of a lot of work and you can see what a big space I've got now all the way over there to all the way over here I'm going to have to leave it there guys not that I want to but just because I know if I stay any longer I'm going to get so engrossed in something that I'm not going to be able to leave and I'm going to be here for hours and hours because I just have the urge just to do really hard strenuous work and just stay here for hours and I just can't, I don't have the time I've got to stop I've got to force myself to just stop but I hope you enjoyed the vlog today if you did do subscribe to my YouTube channel as always I do like I said have a couple of sponsored I do as I said have a couple of sponsored videos going up next week so I hope you enjoy them remember the adverts will only be about a minute it's just me talking about something some products that I find interesting and I hope that you find them interesting too and enjoy those videos and I'm going to be planting out some fruit bushes and what else am I going to be doing probably a load of strenuous work that I really shouldn't do but I'm going to do anyway because it's me and that's just what I do oh we're going to harvest our Christmas dinner too that should be exciting actually I can't wait to get those parsnips up right, hope you enjoyed it today I'll see you again next time thanks for watching, bye