Welcome to Victor for your first GoodGym session! 👏

After clearing the space 2 weeks ago, we now needed to remove the old rotting raised beds to install new ones, allowing the school to use the space as an educational growing area.

Some wooden beds were very rotten and came apart easily, with Ben and Victor carrying the pieces to the waste disposal area a short walk away. Others were less rotten, making the pieces heavy and took a while to saw in half!

Fanette and Hazel saved the strawberries for future use, while the mattock, hammer, and saw got a good workout to pull apart the old beds.

As we were dismantling, Peter from the school started piecing together the pre-cut pieces to produce 1.2 m x 2.4 m beds. With fingers crossed the drill batteries would hold and a spirit level, the beds were made, stabilisers were used to stop bowing, and waterproof sheeting used to try and reduce the speed of the beds rotting down.

With as many shovels as we could fine and lots of elbow grease, we managed to build and fill 2 new raises beds, in the 2 h session, with all the deadwood taken for disposal - the wheelbarrow flat tyre didn't hold up for this and meant we only got a small layer of fresh top soil too.

Top effort to get it done this evening! 💪 Certainly earned some food and the water/biscuits after a heavy workout.

Welcome to Ruth for your first GoodGym session! Great to meet you.

This evening, we were asked by Peter from Acacias Community Primary School to help clear an area for a growing/gardening site, accessible for the pupils and parents to use for growing herbs, fruit, and veg. Before that, a lot of weeds and rubble needed taking out, which is where we came in.

With a variety of tools, including a pickaxe and smaller hand tools, Ruth, Fanette, and Ben made their way around the the site removing anything that shouldn't be there, including lots of Galium aparine (otherwise known as sticky weed or sticky willy). In the process, we unearthed a few self-seeded trees and old compost bins, the latter we used for some of the green waste, while an extendable saw was used to chop overhanging branches from the neighbours.

Peter, fresh from the Manchester marathon (congrats) as a long-distance memory now, joined to chop the branches into smaller chunks and tried to remove as much of the underlying membrane as possible.

Given the speed of the weeding, we even managed to clear the raised beds, leaving the healthy-looking strawberry plants to keep growing. We also potted up some smaller horse-chestnuts that had sprouted, possibly to use for a science class to show the seed and parts of the plant. We also found a cat scarer/deterrant, mistaken for a garden meter (?), that thankfully isn't now in use.

All in all, a productive evening and we even managed to stay relatively dry despite the circling rain clouds. We will be back in 2 weeks to help dismantle the rotting beds and re-build new ones so the pupils and parents can make full use for the plot.