ALLOTMENT FLOWER BED / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES / MARCH 2021

Morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. My name is Emma. I'd love for you to subscribe to my channel if you're new. This is my first allotment plot, I'm on my second year and I'm just getting ready for spring. It's March so there's lots of digging, lots of getting ready and just following my journey of my plot and you know I can hopefully I can help you out and give you some kind of tips. Though I don't have many, I'm not an expert and that's kind of my whole thing is just that I'm just getting stuck in and giving it a go. So if you're worried about getting started with gardening or whatever I'm probably the right person to follow because I make all the mistakes and I'm always making myself look like an idiot so you don't have to. Excuse the sweaty face, I've just gone and got three wheelbarrow fulls of wood chip because I'm going to do my flower bed today. I need to sort out the bed at the back for the flowers, the flowers are being moved this year and they need quite a rich compost so like a rich growing condition so I'm going to get some manure as well but I need to dig out the bed and I'm gonna make it all neat with some wood chip and just get it ready for flowers because the flowers will be going out hopefully mid-April maybe like beginning of April and I'm talking about dahlias, gladioli, calendulas, things like that. So we're going to dig out the bed, it's a proper work day today so I just woke up and decided let's do loads of really hard work. Right there's a lot of noise going on today I'm so sorry I think they're still cutting the trees down or something. Last year my flowers, my dahlias, my gladiolis, my noreens went into this bed here. They did a really good job here but the dahlias were massive, absolutely massive so I thought this year I've got my tulips here but they'll be gone soon. This year this bed's going to be more fruit and veg maybe courgettes or something and this great big bed at the back here is going to be all for flowers which hopefully will give them some more room because the trouble of not having enough room for dahlias is that they started to snap and overcrowd each other and go rotten in the middle and stuff so hopefully I'll be able to space them out a bit better. So this bed here is the one I'm going to be digging out today making nice and neat putting some manure on hopefully and neatening up with a nice border so it doesn't get too muddy. There it is so I've already got some cardboard on it over here I might dig that in I think I think that's what you're supposed to do or maybe I'll take it off and dig underneath I don't let's just let's just uncover it. That's where it all starts to go wrong I sort of start off sounding like I know what I'm talking about and then as I start doing it I'm like I don't know what I'm doing now. I can talk the talk but can I walk the walk? No. These ground sheets on there all winter and the hope was just so that I could suppress the weeds and I've had some cardboard on it too to hopefully attract some worms so I'm trying to sort the soil out but at least there's no weeds that's that's the first step isn't it getting rid of the weeds. I don't really know what to do about the cardboard I feel like I should take it off really maybe put it in the compost but it's done the job because look at the worms I'm not sure if you can see them all but I can see loads of worms so it's definitely done its job in attracting the worms and suppressing the weeds but what do I do with it now? I don't think I should dig that in I think what I might do is put it in the compost and just start digging this over and getting some manure in here I think I'll do that but like I said it's guesswork because I don't know I don't really know I'm digging it over with a fork because I'm going to try and get out as much bindweed as I can bindweed is like a horrible weed that like wraps itself around your plants and strangles them to death and the roots and things look like this white spindly roots you really want to get the whole thing out and here's another no that's not one here's another example bindweed root so if you can get them out now before the bindweed starts growing that's a really good thing to do because it just takes over so if you've got anything like this on your plot get it out while you can but it's such annoying stuff it's just so annoying gets everywhere what I meant to say was I'm digging with a fork because you don't want to snap it if I dig with a spade or a shovel I might snap it and every time you snap the root it grows into a new bindweed plant so if I do it with a fork hopefully there's less chance of snapping the roots does that make sense now? good I am trying to give away some valuable advice I've learned but sometimes it just comes out as like bleh so hopefully that helps you if you've got bindweed but I'm no bindweed expert I'm still battling it I've won the battle but the war isn't over wow that's heavy I didn't I forgot how heavy manure can be um I thought about filming myself shoveling that but then I thought do you are you really going to miss me shoveling shit into a wheelbarrow I thought no so I won't film that sort of stuff but yeah great big wheelbarrow manure is going to go in the top it's starting to rain now I realize why no one's here everyone's read the weather forecast I never I never look at the weather I just look out the window it's starting to rain now but I'll get going I'll carry on I've just got to dig that bit out I don't know what this bleeding root is and it's like a tree root I hope it's god's sakes why do I keep falling on my butt here I need to dig it a bit no victory like pulling out giant root victory we meet again my arch enemy has come back fate another day not today bindweed another one the thing about bindweed is people will tell you you've got to get every single tiny bit of it out to stop it right so you've got to dig every single tiny bit of root out it's never going to happen just stop now there's no bloody point you're never going to get every single bit of root out that's like trying to get every single drop of wine out of a wine bottle when you come down the next morning there's always a little bit left that you missed it's impossible don't even do it to yourself you're setting yourself up to fail what you've got to do is dig as much of it out as you physically can and when you get to the point where you think I can't do this anymore I'm just going to jump off a bridge stop and you've probably done enough and then just keep on top of it and keep digging out every year and just keep cutting it back when it grows that's as good as you're going to get guys don't try and get rid of all of it it's impossible you are setting yourself up for a massive fall so I've got as much of it out as I can be bothered to do and now I'm gonna cover this with poo all right what I've done is I've put the cardboard for the path and I'll put the wood chip on top of the cardboard somebody said that cardboard's good because you want your paths to be able to breathe I didn't know that a path had to breathe but everything has to breathe apparently even paths have to breathe so I'm gonna let it breathe by covering it in cardboard and wood chip that's how they breathe I'm not taking mimic by the way it's great advice I'm just knackered right sort of starting to look like that now um so I'll just pop the manure on the top just as it's starting to rain I've finished that job I might go and grab one more wall barrow full of wood chip because no one's here so it's a good time to like get my hands on stuff but I'm really happy so this is the flower bed obviously it needs to be really rich compost which is why I put the manure on the top might need another wall barrow of manure as well but I'm really happy with that look the transformation absolutely fantastic so my plot now extends all the way from the top all the way down to the compost which is exactly what I wanted I'm massively chuffed with that um I hope you enjoyed the vlog today I'll see you in my next video hope it's inspired you to dig out a few raised beds and not give up if you've got bind weed everywhere which we've all got so don't worry about it and I'll see you next time guys thanks for watching bye