8 GG Yorkies supported the YUMI organisation with their allotment. Sara equipped us with forks and loppers and put us to work. We were asked to remove all the Cumfrey that had grown in the allotment, and whilst some of the more green-fingered among us got straight to work, the rest of us were baffled and needed pointing out which plant the Cumfrey was. Turns out it has some deep roots, which presented a fun challenge for us.

We had fun trying to identify the various herbs around the allotment - is that Oregano or Marjoram? And many chats about our next running challenges were had. Michal is planning his training for the 12Ks of Christmas and Taymar is now convinced that she loves running and is signing up to a marathon soon...

At the end, we were given lots of lovely fresh produce to take home. Pumpkin and squash that people tried to figure out how they could carry home on their bikes. Pak Choi that many people were keen to get their hands on and Tay took some lettuce home for her house rabbits.

After a torrential afternoon we were lucky to have a drier spell for our task. YUMI volunteers were waiting for us and Jane quickly took the lead in explaining what needed doing, the main subject being removal of the invasive comfrey. This plant is actually believed to be the organic gardener’s best friend. Thanks to its high content of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium it can be turned into a brilliant fertilizer. YUMI allotment however wasn’t a destination for it to settle at and the team went on a pull out and dispose mission.

Lucy was keen to find a new home for it and decided to take some of the comfrey to plant in her own garden.

After an hour of weeding we could confidently say that the allotment was now comFREEy! Well was it? I guess we will find out on our next visit.

Ten of us joined Yumi to help finish clearing one of the long beds on the walled garden, with five of us achieving a double digging double! We welcomed Ciara who joined us for her first Goodgym task. We started with continuing to dig trenches to get out all the roots, a task we had started last week. Part way in we were told that we needed to get it dug over and levelled in the next half hour ready for the school next week. Amy and I set to levelling the big mound, by passing down the earth, accidentally showering a few people in earth down the line along the way. This prompted an interesting, if not entirely appropriate, discussion about which Goodgymer you would get to help you bury a body! At the rate at which she was digging Amy T was the popular choice. Yumi were really impressed with our efforts and we were given goody bags of chard, plums and an apple.

We did our third task helping Yumi to get the walled garden ready for Danesgate school to use. It was great to welcome two new runners Ellie and Jonathan. James, Andy and Maddy cut back the brambles and the rest of us were tasked with digging over and levelling one of the beds we'd got some of the roots out of 2 weeks before. We got shown by one of the task owners how to "double dig" the bed, digging foot deep trenches and mounding up the earth to the side, removing the roots right down so they wouldn't come back. It was definitely one of the most thorough Goodgym weeding attempts we've done! We now need arrange to go back and do the rows in between. The title was a quote from one of the task owners who asked us to stand by our mounds so she could photograph us.

7 hardy GG yorkies dressed in as many waterproofs as they could find and helped tame the wild walled garden at Fulford Cross Allotments.

It had been raining all day so we avoided the muddy allotment beds and focussed on clearing brambles which were overpowering the polytunnels and hiding a 'secret garden'

While most of the team worked on uncovering some hidden raised beds, James and I tackled the soon-to-be gap between polytunnels from opposite sides, finally meeting in the middle.

Within an hour we'd made a massive difference to the plot. But never fear - there's still plenty more to do next week

Ten of us headed to help Yumi clear the Danesgate school garden. We were expecting to be tackling lots of thorns but somebody had already cut them down so our challenge was to dig all the stalks and roots out of 2 large beds. We welcomed three new Goodgymers this evening Nicola, Victoria and Carwyn so give them lots of cheers! We successfully got most of the roots out despite bending a few children's forks in the process. At the end we all got party bags full of chard and blackberries!