DEATH AND GARDENING / SEPTEMBER 2022 / EMMA'S ALLOTMENT DIARIES

Emma shared updates about her September allotment plot, talked about her YouTube channel focused on her allotment activities, and described her day-to-day work on the plot. She gave insights into transporting a palette from the back to the front of her plot, dealing with slugs, and the work involved in maintaining her strawberry plants and bed.

Emma felt it was not appropriate to put up a vlog for a few days due to events happening in the UK, as she felt her content might come across as trivial during that time.

Emma's big idea is to create a strawberry palette planter. She raised the pallet off the ground with the intention of preventing slugs and snails from reaching the strawberries and planned to staple a bag inside, fill it with soil, and plant strawberries within the pockets of the pallet.

Emma planned to secure the strawberry palette planter by either drilling into the sides to attach it to the shed or using poles dug into the ground and also screwed into the shed for support.

Emma's strawberry bed has been full of weeds and has always been a hassle to maintain. She finds it becomes dormant for much of the year and has decided to use the bed for something else, transferring the strawberries to planters.

Strawberry plants reproduce through runners which are long stems sent out by the parent plant to create additional plants. The runner develops new strawberry plants that can grow new roots, and once rooted, they can be cut from the main plant and grown independently.

The death of the Queen evoked a personal reflection for Emma, reminding her of when her grandmother passed away. She compared the cycle of life and death she observes in her garden, where the end of one thing often signifies a new beginning, to her feelings about the loss of loved ones.