Published: 13 June 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Hello and welcome back. We are at the allotment on a very, very hot day, so hot that I gave in and wore shorts rather than boil in long trousers. Today the plan is to set up some new raised beds, fill them with fresh compost, and finally get some crops in the ground. It is one of those days where you power through the work and reward yourself with a cold drink afterwards.
Last time I was here I mentioned a damaged shed panel. When the shed was delivered one piece arrived broken, the company sent a replacement, but they never took the damaged one back. My grand idea was to take it apart and build raised beds out of those little pieces of wood. I asked my husband if he could help me, because all of that dismantling and rebuilding is quite physically exhausting.
He gave me a side eye and said, how about we just buy new raised beds instead? I said, but that is quite expensive, isn't it. And he said, well, it is your birthday. So it was my birthday a week ago, and I now have new beds. I painted them the same colour as everything else in my garden and on the allotment, and today we brought six of them in to put together and fill.
I wanted the soil to have something with real nutrients rather than just compost, especially as I am growing a Big Max pumpkin, which can get very, very large and needs to be well fed. So I sent my husband on a mission to fetch some well rotted horse manure from the garden centre.
I am always a bit wary of fresh horse manure because of the weed killer that can linger in it. But I have a few spare pumpkin, squash and cucumber seedlings, so I decided to run an experiment. In the natural bed I made last time I had planted a big pumpkin and a small sugar pumpkin, and the slugs have made a real mess of both. One is barely alive and the other is a goner. I want to see whether the crops can survive in the fresh manure, or whether the weed killer really is the problem.
Once the beds were assembled I spent a while working out where everything should go. I did not want to build too close to the shed because I would like a little resting area in front of it eventually. The width of a compost bag laid between the beds turned out to be just enough space to work comfortably.
I also had to think about drainage. This side of the plot floods quite a bit, and if you remember the winter vlogs, I had a proper lake over there. With two more beds still waiting at home, I set the rows out so the final beds will finish neatly along the edge of the shed. In the end I was happy with the layout and left it as it was.
I lined the bottoms with cardboard from the shed to suppress the weeds, and watered it because it was drying out at speed in the heat. Each of the six beds ended up with one bag of well rotted horse manure and two bags of multi purpose compost, plus some chicken pellets for an extra boost. That should be a strong mix for hungry plants to feed on.
Then it was time to plant. Beans are a great companion for pumpkins and squashes, because those two are very hungry plants and the beans put nitrogen back into the soil through their roots. So the small sugar pumpkin went into one bed with dwarf beans, and the Big Max into another, again with beans. For the sweet corn I planted a block of nine in the middle and tucked the cucumbers around the sides, so the corn can grow up while the cucumbers spread out low and even trail over the edge of the bed.
The onions are doing really well. So many of them have doubled, and a few have even split into three. There is one absolute giant in there too. I checked a garlic as well, and while the bulb may not be the biggest in the world, it is there, and small bulbs would be perfectly fine by me. There is barely any weed in those beds either, which I think is thanks to the cardboard underneath.
The bed under the mesh is where I sowed carrots and parsnips a few weeks ago. For a long time nothing happened, but I could see a bit of green poking through, so I took the mesh off to look. It seems the parsnips are coming up in their rows, but there is no sign of the carrots yet. I gave it another can of water, since a finger in the soil told me it could do with a bit more.
It has been such a hot day, and although rain is forecast over the next few days, the weather has been changing so much lately that I do not trust it. I gave the existing beds two watering cans each and watered the onions too.
I did not water the brand new beds today, because the compost was already quite wet and the seedlings had a good drink at home this morning before I brought them over, so their roots are well soaked. The raspberries are the ones really struggling in this drought, so those poor buggers got a good watering as well.
So that is where things stand at the end of a hot and sweaty day: three new beds planted up with crops, three more waiting, and a second attempt at getting plants to survive in that horse manure. There were biscuits and a cup of tea in the middle, which I definitely earned. I am pleased with the progress, glad the parsnips are germinating and that the garlic is hanging on. I will update you on how it all does when I am next here. If you have grown Big Max or wrestled with slugs and dodgy manure yourself, I would love to hear how you got on. Thank you for watching.
Tags: #AllotmentGardening #RaisedBeds #GrowYourOwn #PumpkinGrowing #CompanionPlanting #MyWindyGarden