NEW BEDS FOR THE PLOT! / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Having a bit of a standoff with a fox. Are you going to move first or am I going to move first? We're just kind of standing here staring at each other. Who's going to move first? Are you going to move first? I'm going to move first. Now what? Now what happens? Exactly. Honestly, what drama. You could have just gone that way the whole time. Yeah, what? He's looking at me now like I put him out. I'm so sorry mate if I put you out. Look at it. He's fuming with me. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name's Emma. These are the allotment diaries. And what a gray, cold, miserable day it is here. Little bit windy out there today as well so we'll see how we can go with this filming because the wind is the one thing that I can't seem to film in so we'll see how it goes. It also gives me a really bad headache, I've actually got quite a bad headache, I've just walked down here. It's like a 25 minute walk from my house to the allotment plot and the wind, it just seems to mess with my head or something. So I'm hoping it dies down a little bit, and then some fresh air will kind of help. Though you could say the fresh air has given me a headache, so I don't know how that's gonna work. Anyway, I've got some jobs to do today. Last time I was here, I filled up one of my raised beds. Today I want to do the other one. I want to check the carrots to see if we can move that raised bed, though I don't think we can yet. I'm very impatient, I know, I'm very impatient. I am waiting for these carrots to finish so I can pick them. And I am just the most impatient carrot waiter. I just want to pick them all now. But I know that if I wait a little bit longer, because we've not got any frost yet, I can't just pull them up. Anyway. Someone stop me, seriously. Got a little bit of clearing to do, got some tulip bulbs still to plant out, so we'll see how much we can get done today. I think I really wanna feed the bird, but it's really, really windy, and I don't think he's gonna come and eat out of my hand, and if he doesn't do that today, I feel like I'm gonna take it very personally, because he ate out of my hand for the first time last week, and it was insane. It was such an insane, amazing moment that I just want to replicate it all the time. Is it too windy? Because he won't fly to me if it's too windy. He doesn't like it. It's not that windy to be fair. I think he can still fly. Let's give it a go and feed our birdie. There you are. Oh you came straight away. Okay, do you want to eat out of my hand today? Let's see. Yeah! Do you remember? Right, are you ready? Poison ready. On my phone as well because my husband didn't believe me. I hadn't edited the stuff yet. When I got home I told him and he just didn't believe me. Look at this! I'm like proper mates now. It's craziness. I just can't believe it. Sitting on you right now. Look, can you not, can you come off the camera? I probably ruined that shot a bit by trying to film it on my phone as well. But honestly, I'll show you that footage actually that I literally just shot on my phone because I can't get over the fact that he's actually eating from my hand. It's just insane. And I'm so worried that he's like, it's a fluke and he's not going to do it again. He's going into my greenhouse now. He's sitting in my greenhouse. It's so funny because I've been building this rapport with the robins here for a very long time and I've never got close to being this close to them, like where they're actually eating on my hand and like coming into my greenhouse and like sitting on the camera like... Maybe it's me, maybe I'm just sort of giving off more kind of confident vibes, you know. I really think they can tell when you're nervous or when you're kind of stressed or when you're upset. I really feel like animals can really tell that and I think maybe recently I'm just giving off very confident positive vibes, like I'm not as scared of them anymore as I used to be. It is truly, he's on there again, it's truly an amazing feeling honestly. This was to be expected really, it looks like the fox or the cat. I'm guessing the fox because I've seen him about quite a lot already today. He's sort of been digging in here so I might need to cover it with something so I don't get a load of fox or cat poo, whatever it was. This is the real annoyance of filling any kind of raised bed at my allotment. When you fill a new one the fox will come along and dig in it. It's so annoying, he's not interested in any of the old beds but the new ones he loves them. They just seem to have a fascination with a newly filled raised bed don't they? They just want to dig in it and see what's in there. But obviously there's no worms, there's no insects or anything because it's brand new. So I don't know what they're expecting to find. Right we want to fill this new one today. So I think actually this way, this way is better. We'll burrow through there will I? So the difference with this one is because the other one was on a bed already, a strawberry bed, so it's going into the soil. This one here is going into woodchip, which is, look, on top of a ground sheet. So I expect to get the best out of this bed it's probably a good idea to cut I'm going to cut. a square out of the ground sheet so that any roots that go down really far are going to go straight into the earth and also how are any insects and worms and stuff going to come up if there's a big thick ground sheet underneath so I think I'm going to cut it. Obviously you can put a raised bed onto like a patio like a concreted area and you can still grow crops into it. You need to get the depth right so look at what you want to sow. If you want to grow like salad crops like lettuces and stuff I don't think the roots go down very deep so you can get away with having a shallower raised bed but if you want to grow sort of crops like pumpkins and sweet corn where they really send their roots down you just need to make sure the the depth is right, but you can grow on a concrete surface. Easy, Einstein. Time to get in here. All of this wood chip here has turned into a growing material and I can really see it now. Now I'm sort of digging it up. Can you see how it's really kind of composted down and that's why I've got weeds growing in all my pathways. I really think the wood chip, you know I keep topping it up, I think what it really needs is replacing. I think the ideal thing to do would be to literally take it up every year, put it onto a growing bed and then replenish the pathway instead of sort of topping it up because that That is a growing material. In this situation it works quite well for me because I'm going to put it into the wheelbarrow and I'm going to reuse it in the bed. So and I only want to take it up because I want to put cardboard down as my base layer. So just redistribute it and use it again so it goes around like that. Right so that should now just be able to come out square. There we go. So now it officially sort of opens out onto the actual ground and not a ground sheet, which is the same as this one. This one you can see sits on a bed. It used to be a strawberry bed. I need to figure out the edges because if I leave them as dirt like this, it's going to get really weedy. So that's a job for another day. So now we need to find some cardboard. The only cardboard that I have is this box. It's this box, which has got all of my lamb's sheep's wool, sheep's fur, whatever it is. So I'm going to put all the sheep's fur into a bag, put it all into this bag and then we'll use the box. If there's a mouse in this box I'm going to scream and run away because even though I've got spider fear but I've also got a bit of a mouse fear as well. Though I think they're really cute, I just sort of don't want to encounter one. This sheep's wool is really good at mulching over beds and also stopping slugs and snails, it feels warm. Oh god I can't do this, there's poo in there. What the heck is in there? I can't do this. Why do these animals tease me like this? Why? I'm just gonna empty it out. Oh god! The box now, so I've done what I set out to do. There's a poo in there. What kind of poo it is, but it feels warm in my hand. In my gloved hand, guys. Calm down. Ah! Right, so there was a warm poo in there, so if I was like an explorer, I'd be like, right, well, something's been here recently. Was it a sheep's poo, do you think? Do you think it was a sheep's poo that was stuck to the... It might have been a sheep's poo. I was thinking, that doesn't look like a fox or a cat's poo. I think it might have been a poo from the sheep. That makes me feel marginally better. Yes, yes, I think it was. I've got to pay £20 for that. £20 for sheep's wool. I didn't realise I spent that much. God, I must have been desperate. Anyway, we've got our box. Let's take all of the sticky tape off the box now because you can't use any of that in the ground. It wouldn't do anything good, it wouldn't do anything useful so take it all off. Also, this is really weird, it's got a sign on the box saying fragile. It was literally sheep's wool in the box, I don't know why that's fragile, I don't think sheep's wool is fragile. Such a weird delivery. Okay, so we'll just sort of open it out. We just want to sort of lay it down at the bottom. If we can cover the whole base, that's even better, because it will keep all the weeds out. It can, you know. It's absolutely brilliant. Why is it wonky? I don't think it matters. I think it's okay. Now sometimes I will water that, but I tend to water the cardboard if it's the springtime and I want it to kind of break down quicker. Because this isn't going to be grown into until spring, it's got plenty of time to rot, sort of compost down or get soggy basically. And when cardboard gets soggy, I mean we all know what happens when cardboard gets really wet and soggy. If you've ever grown like sweet peas in toilet rolls, which is a really good way of starting your sweet peas by the way, you might notice that the roots sometimes come through the toilet roll like cardboard. So roots can go through cardboard if it's nice and soft. If you've ever had plants that you've kept in a box or something, the roots can sometimes go through. You can see them. It can go through the cardboard, it's not ideal, but when the cardboard is the base layer and then you're putting loads of compost on top of the cardboard, growing straight into it should be fine because by the time the roots or the plants reach the cardboard at the bottom, the cardboard will be super soggy and they can just go straight through. So never worry about putting cardboard in your raised bed. As long as you fill it up with compost and natural materials, you can grow straight into it. And that's all I had to say. I don't know why I ended that so abruptly. Anyway, right, we've got the cardboard in. Let's re-put all of that. No, not now, Einstein, please. He still thinks he's vlogging. Look at him trying to vlog. We don't know what you're saying. Want some more food? In a minute, Einstein. I think he finds it fun. I think it's like a thrill. I think it's like a thrill to him. He looks at me. Honestly, come on, Einstein. He just flew into the bush and then fell down. Disappeared into the bush The other day I managed to get two of these 100 litre compost bags into my wheelbarrow. I literally dragged them through the greenhouse, lifted them up, put them in there. Today I literally can't even lift one. That was so much effort. I'm literally out of breath. Am I ill? Maybe I'm coming down with something. How could I lift that yesterday and not today? Right, I don't know what's happening or going on here, we're just going to keep going. Magic power's back. Neil, did that seem really, really hard work? And the other day I managed two big compost bags absolutely fine. That was the hardest bed in the world to fill up. But I did it, I did it, it's filled up. It's got the compost in, we've got the leaves, we've got the wood chip, and we've got the cardboard. This is a good bed. It's a little bit wonky, which is slightly annoying me, and some of it spilled out the side when I had to sort of put that bag in and I moved it. But it is what it is, and I think at least I've got two beds filled up now. I really need to cover them. If I don't cover them, the cat or the fox, the fox, is going to come and dig in them. So do I have anything to cover them with? I don't know. All right, there we go, two of them sort of filled up. Like I said before, I will be topping them up before I grow into them in the springtime. All of that in there will compress down, so I will have to top it up a little bit, but it's looking pretty great. I'm actually really, really happy with them, and they're covered over just to stop the fox, not for any other reason. Ideally I'd keep them uncovered so that all the rain and the elements could kind of get to the soil and bring down goodness and help to compress it but unfortunately the fox has plans. The fox has plans with them and I need to stop his plans because they're just not working for me. Right okay that's a good job this has taken me absolutely ages and I'm so cold. So these are our turnips that I kind of destroyed a little while ago by pulling off all of the netting. I had netting over it to stop something from digging in there and I destroyed some of them but look how nicely they've all come back. They're looking so green and fantastic. I don't really know tons and tons about turnips. It's not something... Ow my gosh it's spiky! Okay see look I didn't know that. I didn't know they're spiky so... They're not something I've grown a lot of. These are the purple tops, Milan purple tops. Yeah, they are starting to develop something under the ground that does look vaguely purple, which is very exciting. Yeah, they look fantastic. I mean, there's quite a few here. How many turnips does one person need? That's the question, isn't it? That's very much looking like a turnip is developing in there which is really exciting. I have grown turnips before but not for a very long time and not in this kind of quantity so it does feel quite... fun having something different growing here and it reminds me that I need to be more kind of adventurous with what I'm planting out and I think it can get quite samey sometimes can't it at the allotment plot you grow your cabbages your broccoli your carrots but you need to kind of mix it up sometimes just to keep yourself motivated and to remind yourself that there is an abundance of different crops out there to try that you don't have to stick with the same ones every year so It's a good reminder to myself, um, to try something new every year. And then the carrots, I'm literally checking every single day in the hope that suddenly there'll be done and I can move this raised bed. When I move this bed, you can see it's already topped up. So everything, all the soil in here is basically going to come with the bed. Um, that one looks massive. Should we pull that one up? I feel like we need to pull a carrot up just to kind of balance out all the hard work we've done with a nice reward. You ready? Oh yeah, he's a good looking carrot. He's a good looking carrot. I think he probably could have gone on a bit longer but I'm getting very impatient with these little carrots. Oh my gosh it smells... It smells so carrot-y. I always find it so funny how carrot-y fresh carrots smell. It's like the most carrot-y carrot smell you'll ever smell. Let's get another one. I can have a couple of these for lunch I think. Okay he's a bit small. That was slightly disappointing. I am definitely too early. I am too early. I'm being impatient. Right I'll just take these two. This one can be This is going to be for my house bunny. Anyway I'm going home with some goodies. I hope you enjoyed the little vlog today. I don't think this vlog's going to be very long because all I've done is fill up one bed but I'm telling you it took me so long. I think I must be coming down with something. I really do. It's not normal for me to take that long doing one job like that so I think I'm going to go home, have a nice cup of tea and just kind of try to look after myself a little bit today. Stein's coming right up to the greenhouse. We are seriously close friends at the moment. If I don't get an invite to his birthday party, I, seriously. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed it today. I will see you in my next one. Thanks for watching. Bye.