With Deansgate having transformed since the Great Manchester Run yesterday, Derek (first session with the GoodGym t-shirt 👏), Peter, and Ben met up to run the 4-5 km along the Bridgewater Canal towards Old Trafford and Gorse Hill.

After meeting Katie at Gorse Hill Studios with the key, we headed down to the community allotment to tackle any weeds and look after some of the beds.

While Peter and Katie had a handle on what was planted where and helped maintain or thin out some of the beds, including the boom of carrots 🥕 and beans 🫘, Derek and Ben took short shrift to the weeds 🌱

Lots of horse tail, grasses, bindweed, and sticky weed removed, freeing up some of the fruit trees 🌳 and clearing the paths and entry ways in the allotment. The potatoes 🥔 are growing well, with lots of lettuce, salad, and more beans growing, with tomatoes 🍅 and chilli 🌶 growing inside the polytunnel.

It's always amazing how much gets done, and how time flies, when working on the plot, with a final watering giving the finishing touch to a productive session.

We'll be back intermittently throughout the summer so watch this space 💪

Big well done to all the runners today! 👏👏

• Congrats to Caroline completing the half marathon with a new PB!
• Well done to Scott with a new PB in the 10 km!
• We'll done to Ben completing a foodbank run full of tins and pasta in the half marathon, welcomed by Juno at the finish line

Kudos to all the spectators too including Peter coming out on a day of mixed weather 👏

Busy crowds with nearly 38,000 runners plus a lot of spectators!

Makeshift session with Ben involved with organising Pint of Science this week. Just the single runner carrying nearly 6 kg of tins, cans, UHT milk, and some noodles, rice, and packets of pasta sauce. Heavy bag in the increasingly warm weather!

Afterwards, a short run from the Tesco in Stretford to Gorse Hill allotments where Peter was making a start to weed some of the beds, plant out lots of runner beans, and heavily water the polytunnel and beds with the warm temperatures expected over the bank holiday weekend. The corn, carrots, and lots of beans seemed to be enjoying the growing season, with a few potatoes showing promise too, which we covered to some extent.

Likely sessions coming up to help with watering and maintenance on the plot. The garden at the Studios had certainly seen a few changes too, with a new fence and pond!

After a spell of hot weather, Peter and Ben went along to Gorse Hill Studios allotments to help with some of the maintenance on the community plot there.

We weeded a lot of the polytunnel, footpaths, beds, and trimmed back the grass growing around the edges in some parts. With the ground very dry, we watered as much as we could to save the currently growing sweetcorn, carrots, chives, salad, and vast collection of beans that had taken root in some of the raised beds. It was hot work running in the late April sunshine!

On the way, there wasn't much litter near Deansgate, and the canal towpath was generally pretty tidy. On the way home, there was some litter picking close to Rusholme and Longsight that was reported to Keep MCR Tidy.

Welcome to Ruth for your first GoodGym session! Great to meet you.

This evening, we were asked by Peter from Acacias Community Primary School to help clear an area for a growing/gardening site, accessible for the pupils and parents to use for growing herbs, fruit, and veg. Before that, a lot of weeds and rubble needed taking out, which is where we came in.

With a variety of tools, including a pickaxe and smaller hand tools, Ruth, Fanette, and Ben made their way around the the site removing anything that shouldn't be there, including lots of Galium aparine (otherwise known as sticky weed or sticky willy). In the process, we unearthed a few self-seeded trees and old compost bins, the latter we used for some of the green waste, while an extendable saw was used to chop overhanging branches from the neighbours.

Peter, fresh from the Manchester marathon (congrats) as a long-distance memory now, joined to chop the branches into smaller chunks and tried to remove as much of the underlying membrane as possible.

Given the speed of the weeding, we even managed to clear the raised beds, leaving the healthy-looking strawberry plants to keep growing. We also potted up some smaller horse-chestnuts that had sprouted, possibly to use for a science class to show the seed and parts of the plant. We also found a cat scarer/deterrant, mistaken for a garden meter (?), that thankfully isn't now in use.

All in all, a productive evening and we even managed to stay relatively dry despite the circling rain clouds. We will be back in 2 weeks to help dismantle the rotting beds and re-build new ones so the pupils and parents can make full use for the plot.