Richard and Sam met up with Simon to tackle the bindweed that had overtaken the Kitchen Garden.

The hour and a half was concentrated on the area by the fence on either side as Simon believed the mother/source was around this area. We managed to get a wheelbarrow and black bin filled with these pesky bindweed ivy.

More to do next Saturday!

It's been awhile since we did a group run to Thorlands Gardens and although, we have our Saturday sessions there, Simon was looking forward to a bigger group to come and complete loads of tasks.

Sam opened up Old Spike Peckham as Maria, Lindy, Alex, David, Daryl, Nelly, Isaac and Paulin all gathered to catch up with one another as a few had been away for the summer.

As 18:45 arrived, Sam promptly went through his usual GG intro speech and his ice-breaker question for tonight was to do with the Olympics as the Opening Ceremony is just two days away! However, Isaac said it's Cambridge Folk festival on the Friday too, so we added a question about your favourite folk artist on top of the sport you are looking forward to see at the Olympics.

There's just too many sports to choose from, but the classics like track and field events plus new sports like Breaking and Climbing also got mentioned. Yet, we all agreed the fact you can switch and watch any sport and get invested in it, is the highlight.

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Need someone who's OCD

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group out through the backstreets of Peckham and up Chadwick Road (the hill) and down towards Denmark Hill station and King's College hospital. Maria backed mark to ensure no one got left behind. Upon arriving at Thorlands Gardens, the group met up with Simon as well as Benjamin and Richard, who both cycled to the task.

Simon had already gathered the tools we needed, so we proceed to the "Kitchen Garden" to put down the tools and split the group into two:

• Benjamin, Daryl, and Nelly took the wheelbarrows to do the woodchip run.
• The rest concentrated around the division between the "Kitchen Garden" and the "Wild Garden" to tackle the bindweed that had grown back after months of neglect as we have been concentrating on the "Wild Garden" development.

We needed to be thorough as if we pulled out a bindweed and left even a small part of its root, it would come back with a vengeance! Even in the 40 minutes, we were there we couldn't justify putting down cardboard and woodchip as the area had not been completely over turned to eradicate the bindweed.

We did the best we could knowing that we will be back. After putting back the tools, we said goodbye to Simon, Lindy, Benjamin and Richard before running off back to Old Spike.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! We are back to our regular monthly sessions at Thorlands Gardens, which Simon is always appreciative for. Thank you to Maria for backmarking the runs to / from Thorlands Garden and to everyone for getting stuck in.

Fortified with coffee from task owner Simon, we set to work weeding one side of a garden area, making sure we got the roots out to discourage re-growth.
Then we dug a trench at one side of it. The next step was to lay cardboard (as previously used by Hello Fresh) on top of the earth, adding a good carbon source to balance the nitrogen-rich materials in the compost which was to lay on top of it.
Next we made several trips to collect the compost by wheelbarrow. We tipped on top of the cardboard. So then we had nitrogen-rich materials to balance the carbon source! Having sorted that out, we returned the tools and barrows to their shed and looked forward to our next visit.