We were back at Thorlands as we are every Saturday to continue with the community garden project.

This week, Simon asked us to concentrate on the kitchen garden as we needed to get the woodchip bark down on the soil before it started to compost itself.

But, before we get into the nitty gritty, we had a new member show up with Tilly! It was Holly! A warm welcome Holly to GoodGym and to Thorlands. I hope you got to see what we're all about - getting fit and doing good. Even though, Kaz had done a couple of other Good Deeds in Lambeth and Wandsworth, this was his first at Thorlands - running 5k via Brixton to get there! 💪

We split the teams as soon as we arrived in the kitchen garden - we had Kaz, Holly and Tilly on clearing out the roots in the patch where we were going to lay down the cardboard and woodchip. They seem to find a family (ans their relatives) of worms as they digged out the bindweed roots. We rehoused the worms to the leave mound. Nathan had the job of cutting and clearing all the brambles that had piled up. Finally, Sam was raking all the leaves that had fell.

By the mid-way point, Jessie had shown up and started to dig out the soil against the wall as this was creating damp. Simon told me afterwards that the builders should have put gravel to ensure the water would drain under the building rather than create damp patches as soil obtains water. Building 101 lesson passed! ✅

Nathan and Sam noticed it was coming up to the end of the session, so we started to prepare the cardboard and turn the soil. Meanwhile, Kaz, Holly and Tilly had moved on to cutting back the buddleia tree.... giving it a fresh trim (back and sides).

By the end of the session, we had laid down the cardboard and put down all the remaining woodchip (next delivery in the Spring). It was a fantastic team effort and Simon was pleased with what we had done.

Don't forget on the 18th is our last Thorlands session of the year and so afterwards Simon is preparing mulled wine, mince pies and there is a wreath making session to join if you want.