A great start to a Saturday with our goodgym mission today, as we offered to help the wonderfully new Cardiff Community Orchard.

Help us enhance Bute Park’s new community orchards

Cardiff Council have granted permission for new community orchard planting in Bute Park. The project is being developed and led by a community group with support from the Friends of Bute Park. The project follows a community-led campaign set up in the wake of the vandalism which occurred in September 2021, which caused thousands of pounds worth of damage. Something which goodgym Cardiff did of course support.

Edible cardiff supplied the plug plants. EdibleCardiff is all about supporting individuals and groups of local people to come together to grow their own food, flowers and produce

It was a great morning of raking the grass, scarifying parts to remove dead grass and then opening up the soil in other places ready to sow the wonderful seed mixes. Some other volunteers were busy in different areas of the orchard on their hands and knees plantnig the plugs for a quick hit of plant delight.

Hopefully we will be back here a few more times this year, keep an eye out for the tasks and the Orchards socials - facebook & Instgram

At long last a dry looking Tuesday, Daylight during the run out - Spring is most definitely on the way.

Croeso

To our two new runners from tonights, Charlotte and Alex. It was great to have you along for the run and the task, hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Two different routes tonight to mix it up as we made our way out with T's emblazoned with the goodgym for all to see, a good temperature = crew on brand! Cwtch together is a great regular run for us now, and we always enjoy helping out there - it's been so wonderful to see it develop over the years. You can see what they are about here

Tonight was all about the prep for Spring, as the nicer weather looms ever nearer, the children and young people will want to run around the outside areas even more. So, to action........

• Remove the weeds at the bottom of all the fencing
• Reattach a board to the bottom of the front gate
• Clear up the leaves from the side of the building
• Lay two bags of white pebbles at the bottom of the fence (look for the gaps)
• Mow some of the lawn......

Mow the lawn at night?

Yes, you did read correctly. Thankfully we have the ever trusted Bat Lights....No to be confused with the Bat Signal.

With no time to spare, everyone got busy, let's see how much we can get done. Michael even joined in tonight tackling the mowing duties as much as possible. 30 minutes went by before we knew it, and we had managed most of the list, with some of the lawn still to do. We had saved time with the grass by mowing without a grass catcher on the back - and letting the clippings remain on the garden for those wonderful worms that we learnt about in a previous report.

https://www.goodgym.org/reports/u-leaf-t-me-up

Learning Time

• Grass clippings contain 4% nitrogen, 2% potassium, and 1% phosphorus along with small amounts of other plant nutrients.
• When decomposed, grass clippings also serve as a food source for microbial life in the soil - including our friendly worms.

Thanks All, see you again, same time next week.