Spring is in the air

First some good, nay excellent news to report. Thanks to Local Givings donation matching for March 2012, the green gym has received nearly £3500 in generous donations. This will allow us to complete a huge amount of work with adding yet another dividing structure (which will be a natural hawthorn hedge), recover the 2nd polytunnel and to buy plants and tools.


Spring is definitely in the air. Another pleasant morning for the good folk at the green gym.
The biggest sign of this was the incredible amount of frog spawn in the pond - I can truly say I've never seen so much. 

Now that spring is well and truly here (but beware those late frosts) it's time to get down to the real detailed and nitty gritty work. The first big job today was to clear one of the compost heaps so that  the ground beneath it could be levelled ready to store a number of compost (including a comfrey bin) and general waste bins. 

This, in addition to finishing off the base for the new shed and should see the end of the major infrastructure work this year.


A number of new raised beds have been built and the compost from this particular corner was used to fill them. I hope to add a plan of the site in the next week or two as well as planting schedules to show what we'll be growing.


Plenty more seeds and onion sets have been planted this week. Work is also continuing on the area down the side of the polytunnel that was reclaimed. There is a phenomenal amount of glass and other rubbish buried down here and it's looking increasingly likely that we'll only be able to plant more raised beds unless the top foot of soil can be removed. Mind you, with the average age being 102 perhaps raised beds aren't a bad idea ;o) There is also a lot of ground elder which I'm sure has huge benefits - to someone - but is very invasive and it's roots take over everything. It's very therapeutic removing it though!


So what of the coming week? The weather is looking promising for another dry day for the green gym (I will not be held responsible for this proving not to be the case) so if you enjoy reading what's happening, come along and join in. New volunteers are always welcome.


More photographs from this week can be viewed here.


I'll leave it at that for this week, have to make some bird boxes if we're going to catch any birds that have yet to nest this year.


See you next week
@seftongreengym