FILLING NEW RAISED BEDS / AUTUMN ALLOTMENT GARDENING

I'm the star of this. Emma's allotment diaries, not Einstein's allotment diaries. You know, why would you argue with it? Whack it on. Do you want it? Do you want it or not? Unbelievable. I promised Pips, my house rabbit, that I'd get him another carrot. Oh wow, that's a fantastic sized one. Morning, morning. Welcome to Friday's vlog. If you tuned in on Wednesday, you will know that this is a part two. Oh, I just got a really weird itch in my ear and it made me shiver. This is part two. I basically have got a very long day planned here at the allotment, so I thought I'd split the vlog up into two parts. We'll see how that goes. How are you all doing? How's your week been? I have been busy here doing some jobs and you can see them in my last vlog, but if you haven't watched them I'll quickly catch you up. We found a frog. That was probably the most exciting thing that happened. A very, very beautiful little frog. I was unfortunately destroying his habitat so I very quickly put all the things back for him and he was a little bit happier with me so hopefully I've made peace with the froggy. The bird ate out of my hand for the first time ever, an insane, an insane moment of my life, I cannot believe it, it was as weird and as crazy as I thought it would be. We also weeded some of the beds, just gave it a bit of a hoe, tried to make it a little a little bit neater. I mulched over my My raised bed, which hadn't had any kind of mulch or a top up for quite a while, so I really wanted to do that over the autumn time and I'm really happy I did that. And then we re-planted our, well we re-sowed our sweet peas. And that's where we are so I've taken a little break in here and I'm going to start today by planting out this dill. I managed to actually sow some herbs this year and they've germinated. I've always struggled with herbs. I don't know if anyone else out there is the same but I've always struggled with herbs but this year I've managed to grow this dill which is looking fantastic and also These rows of parsley which I sowed a little while ago. That's a rogue spring onion by the way and there are some rogue tomatoes coming up. Just ignore those. But I sowed these a while ago and nothing happened and I really thought okay there's no way they're going to come up and all of a sudden they've all come up and they actually look like parsley which is incredible. I think there's some brassicas coming up too. Oh yes there is like a little row of brassicas here. But yeah, my sewing has done amazing this autumn, I'm really quite proud of myself to be honest, I mean I didn't really do it, they've done it, they've grown, I haven't really done anything other than put them in the ground, but I'll take the credit anyway because why not. Right, we're going to pop the dew out into my new herb bed and I'm going to see if it might need a little bit of a top up with compost as well, so let's go and have a little look at that. Right, so this is my new little herb bed which I thought would be quite nice because it gets a lot of sun but then because we've kind of got the greenhouse here the sun isn't sort of too direct on it so it's not going to burn anything but it's going to get enough light and it just felt like the right place. Also the soil in here isn't too good and a lot of these herbs don't like really good soil. I think that's tarragon. I'm pretty sure that's tarragon. Is it tarragon or is it rosemary? I'll just give it a little sniff. What are you? What are you? Tarragon, it's tarragon. That is tarragon. Oh, that is my favourite herb. I actually completely forgot I was growing tarragon. That's amazing. I know what the other stuff is, by the way. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just not going to tell you right now. Now. I just don't feel like telling you. But I do know what the other stuff is. This, I think this is a potato. What on earth is that doing in here? This bed has never had potatoes. I think that's actually where I want the dill to go. So I think it's going to have to come out. Right, out you come, mate. I don't know what you're doing in here. Gosh, it's like a random potato plant. That's so random. Where did you come from? Why is there a potato? It's a very nice looking potato. Thank you very much. You grow potatoes in your allotment plot once and you'll just get them coming up everywhere, like every single bed. This bed is nowhere near any of the potato beds and I just found a potato. I mean, honestly, it's another potato. Potatoes. Also the potatoes that you don't actually plant will always be more healthy than the potatoes that you actually purposely plant. They will always come up better and that is just the way it is. Right let's get this dill in here. I think we might top this bed up with some compost. Are you ready to go outside dill? There you go. This is the little discounted bag I got from B&Q, multi-purpose compost because the compost bag had split so they were selling them for a pound. It's just multi-purpose compost, and we'll just whack it in. It looked like the bag has split, actually. I don't know why this was discounted, but there we go. It's my bargain now. There was no hole in that. It says it's multi-purpose compost for use in pots, hanging baskets, and seed trays with added nutrients. So what's the difference between that and normal multi-purpose compost? Maybe that just put people off buying it, and people didn't want it. Well, I'll have it then, if it's a pound. Added nutrients, that'll do. What's wrong with it? Fine. So obviously my big job of the day is to fill up those new raised beds which are going to be outside my shed. It's a great time of year if you are starting a new garden, a new allotment, a new growing bed or a new raised bed. This is the perfect time to do it. I know it doesn't feel like it because it's cold and people aren't normally out in their gardens at this time of year but if you do it now in the autumn time you will reap the rewards in the spring. Plus at this time of year There is an abundance of natural material that you can use in your beds for free. So I've got a lot of fallen leaves. You might have crops that have finished that you can pull up and chop up small. All of these things can go into a new raised bed. So it's the perfect time of year for that. That's why I always fill up my new beds in the autumn time. Okay I'm trying to think about where to put them and I need to get this right because if you get this bit right then you won't have to faff about moving them again and it's not that fun trying to move beds about trust me especially when you've mulched them all up and everything so I'm really trying to make sure I get it right first time. Now there is a second one of these which I think will just go along a little bit but it's currently got carrots growing in it so I can't use it yet so it's just these two that I'm trying to fill up for now. I've moved this one back a little bit and I wonder if there's something I could put... I'll use the chair. So a really simple way of figuring out if this is going to work is to lay them out and then use it. Pretend that they're growing and use them. So let me show you and the chair is going to be the second bed. See that didn't work. Okay I think that works. You see how thorough I was being when checking. I've got to check with the wheelbarrow, I've got to lean over them. Obviously I'm being a little bit silly but that is the best way. So lay out your beds and use it. Get your wheelbarrow and walk around the beds. Can you get the wheelbarrow through okay? If the crops are growing over will you be able to push the wheelbarrow through? Can you lean over the beds? Can you sort of rake them or I don't know plant into them and reach the middle and stuff like that? Physically use them. That's the best way of knowing where to put them. and i think that's right. okay the first thing that's going in the bed is cardboard, a layer of cardboard. the thing is i don't have much cardboard at the moment because i've not been ordering enough stuff so and i don't really want to buy cardboard so i'm just using what i've got which isn't much but we'll see. obviously you don't want any sticky tape on your cardboard so if you see any sticky Take your tape, take it off. That's not going to do anything for the bed. Ideally you want a really thick layer and you want it to cover the entire floor of whatever bed you're covering and it's going to do a few things. Firstly you know it's a brown material so mixed with all the green stuff that you're going to put in it's going to turn into compost basically you can put cardboard into your compost so see cardboard as a natural it's not natural but a brown material secondly by putting a great big thick layer over your soil you're going to stop all the weeds coming up weeds find it really hard to get through cardboard just because it blocks out the light and weeds need light seeds need light in order to grow so the cardboard blocks all of those out Also adding cardboard really helps to retain moisture in the bed which we definitely all need to be thinking about especially after the drought we had last summer. The worms love it as well and worms are amazing for your soil. They're the best thing. The more worms that you can attract to your soil the better. They digest all the nutrients and then poo it out and it makes really great it's like worm poo goodness or something like that. So worms are great and it attracts worms. And also, because it's a brown material and it kind of breaks up quite nicely and easily when it gets wet and soggy, it really helps with your soil structure, so the structure of the soil. You're really looking for soil that you can squish in your hand and it kind of makes a ball, but then you can kind of crumble it up again quite easily, and that's really good for that kind of soil structure. So I always start with cardboard. So you must always choose matte cardboard, brown matte cardboard, no toy packaging or like fish finger packets that have got that shiny coating because that has been coated with a chemical. I can't promise you that all matte cardboard hasn't been coated with a chemical, it's a risk that you have to decide if you want to take. I think matte cardboard is usually seen as quite safe. In terms of the ink on cardboard, because I get a lot of questions about this, black ink is normally safe. Coloured ink normally uses some kind of chemical dye in them, so maybe steer away from coloured ink if you're worried about that, and stick with anything with black print on, I think should be fine. I feel like personally the benefits of using cardboard, so the less weeds, a better moisture retention in beds, an easy way of mulching things over, I find that those things outweigh the negative, so I keep using it at my allotment, it makes my life so much easier, but it's completely up to you if you use it or not, that's my base layer. Right let's collect up some leaves. Like I said in the autumn time there's an abundance of free natural material you can use and fallen leaves are fantastic. Now they don't contain much nutrients and goodness in them but they're really good for soil structure. You can collect them up and make leaf mold that takes about three years or you can collect them up stick them straight into a bed and that's what we're going to do and maybe throw them a bit as well and have some fun. I am leaving a lot of the fallen leaves that have gone right sort of up close to my tree. I'm leaving them alone because I think this is a great habitat for creatures. So I'm sort of taking my share, but you can see I'm leaving them piled up here. It's always quite important in the autumn time to get the balance right between tidying up and then also leaving some messy areas for the wildlife because they really rely on those messy areas to hide in for their habitats so they can sort of sleep. I'm going to sleep. I don't know what they do in there, throw a party, you know, have a dinner party. I don't know, whatever they get up to, they need somewhere to be able to do that in the wintertime. So just leaving some messy areas. Obviously it's quite difficult at an allotment because you are required to keep it quite neat and cultivated all the time. I think here 75% of our allotment has to be cultivated all the time but you can kind of do little bits bits like this like leave a little messy area and I think it works out fine. It's just about getting that balance right so all around my pond here obviously I won't touch any of that around there. I expect we've got some frogs hiding in here somewhere um hopefully and there's my pond but this is definitely where wildlife is going to congregate so I'll leave this quite messy for them. Right there's my next layer in the raised bed so we're sort of sandwiching it up. This is sort of like the no dig approach. No dig always gets it sort of gets a bit of a bad stick these days online. I don't really know why people saying just go back to digging again. No dig is just basically layering up your soil instead of digging it in. So when you get a new bag of mulch or you get a big wheelbarrow full of manure just pour it over the bed and leave it alone. Just don't dig it in, there's no need to, because it will end up in the ground anyway. It's just about layering it up instead of digging it in. It's really not that controversial. Just by doing that, literally just by doing that, you're helping so much wildlife. You're helping all the microbiome in the soil because you don't disturb it by kind of digging it all up and mixing it all around. Obviously, there's all talk about helping the CO2 stuff, whether or not you believe that is up to you, because I always get stick whenever I say it, but the truth is digging in the soil does release CO2, so that is just a fact. But there are so many additional benefits to doing no dig. The first, the most, the... The biggest benefit is that it's so easy, it's so much easier than having to dig everything in. Think about how much easier your life will be just literally throwing mulch down and leaving it alone. Throwing some leaves on the bed and leaving it alone. You know, how easy is that? But that's all no dig is. It's really not complicated and I promise you, it's not scary. It's literally just whack stuff on, leave it alone. That's it, if they just said it like that, you know, why would you argue with it? Whack it on, leave it alone. Right, this is the bit I'm dreading, trying to get that bag into that wheelbarrow and then get it over to the raised bed. I'm going to do my best. People always advise me to cut the bag in half, or like just empty it into the wheelbarrow and take it in bits, but I just can't, I just want to take the whole thing in one go. I can't bother to keep coming back. I make this work for myself, guys. I wonder if I can take two. I'm going to try and get another one. Stronger than I look, but I tell you what, I'm going to fill that later. I'm going to regret it. Hello. I was like, you're still here. Can you give me some food, please? You want some more? He's like, I thought you'd gone home. He wants more now, he's waiting for me. Oh gosh, he's coming over. Einstein, seriously now? Now you want some more? All right. Let's see if he'll take it off my hand. I've got a glove on now, so I feel a bit braver. Guys, what happened? What just happened? Oh my gosh, I love him so much. Let's see if I can get a close up of this. Guys, I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna cry. I love you so much. Oh my gosh, did you just poo? Why would you do that? You just ruined everything, Einstein. We were having a moment. It's on your bird table, Einstein. I'm not your personal chef now. I'm not a waiter. Come on, it's on your thing. It's on your bird table. It's around here. Come this way. Just come this way. Come this way. Come on, look, it's here. It's here. He wants to be fed by hand now. I'm turning, yeah, what, it's on the bird table. I'm turning him into a little diva now. It's on your bird table. I think we'll just do the one today because I'm a little bit knackered. I've been here quite a long time now and that was quite strenuous and my back is already hurting. Ouch. So he's literally staring at me now. He won't leave me alone. It's getting a little bit creepy. I keep forgetting that I'm not 20 anymore and I keep picking up heavy things and trying to do stuff and then I feel my back go and go, Oh my gosh, I'm going to feel that later. That is one bed filled up. If I had horse manure I would have put that in now. If you are using any kind of manure and it's fresh you have to put it in now in the autumn time because it needs to be in the bed for six months, at least six months, before you can plant new crops into it because otherwise it'll be too hot and it will burn the roots of new plants. So if you're using fresh manure put it in now in the autumn, I don't have any. If you're using well rotted manure you can put it in whenever. Excuse me? He's getting involved now with the vlog. We don't know what you're saying, Einstein. We don't know what you're saying. You give them an inch, guys. You give them an inch and he's trying to take over the vlog. He's trying to vlog now. I'm the star of this. Emma's allotment diaries, not Einstein's allotment diaries. Shall I see if I can feed him here like that? Oh, don't fly my hand yet. Hang on, I don't have anything. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Let's see if we can do this. I'm like, look at me. I'm like a real life Snow White. I really am. A real life Snow White, a real life Snow White, that's your cue Einstein, that's your cue. When I say Snow White, when I say Snow White, see this is why you shouldn't work with animals. Go on. I'm like a real life Snow White. Einstein, seriously, I'm going to lose the blood, I'm going to lose the feeling in my hand in a minute Einstein, can you, do you want it? Do you want it? This clip's been going for eight minutes, do you want it or not? No, bloody hell, what was that? Okay, I did promise Pips, my house rabbit, that I'd get him another carrot. I know they're not quite done yet, but I just sort of don't care at the moment. I just really want... Oh, wow, that's a fantastic-sized one. Oh, that is beautiful. Okay. Maybe they are nearly done then. Oh, that's a great-sized carrot, that is. That is too much for Pips, to be fair. I might have to get another one because that's too big for him. Oh, yeah, that one's better. This is a better size for a rabbit. There we go, with all the foliage at the top. So you did like it last time. That's for me. For me and Pips, you see. One each. Right, I am going to leave the vlog there. I hope you've enjoyed Friday's edition of my allotment diaries. I'm going to take those carrots home for me and Pips. I've also just remembered I've got a couple of potatoes there. A couple of rogue little potatoes. They actually look really good. So I had those for my lunch. I feel like I've done some real good progress on the allotment. I didn't get around to planting out those spring bulbs. So that will be the job for next time. and we filled up one of of the raised beds we've got two more to go but they're only small the other two so i think it will be fine and there's plenty of leaves yet to fall down so i think i might wait a couple of days wait for the leaves to fall and then i can collect up some more for the other beds yeah great fun on the allotment me and einstein and our bestest buds which is always exciting i mean we were buddies before but now we're like that's the one soulmates we are soulmates now so that's pretty exciting Thank you for joining me today. I hope you're getting on okay with your allotment plots. If you are filling up any new beds, like I said, perfect time of year for that. So good luck. It's time to start mulching, sorting things out. Anything that you do now will help you out for spring. So it's all good. Nothing that you do now is wasted. I'll see you in my next one. Thank you so much for watching. See you next time. Bye.