We were blessed once again by some fabulous weather. This October has been exceptionally mild and sunny. Making up for a rather cool and wet Summer perhaps?
The major building works today are two new composters so off to Travis Perkis in Dorking to pick up the insulating sheets and marine ply. The composters are to be situated next the newly thinned tree area and work started with levelling the ground and securing five strong pallets donated by the business of one of the Project Team. The composter design – courtesy of Compost Works - is fabulous and very effective. We’re getting quite expert at building these now and the two new composters look much better than the first one (largely because we’re using new ply). Maybe we can offer our services elsewhere!!! We managed to shred some of the cut vegetation from last week but our plan to finish both composters AND fill at least one backfired. We ran out of time (and energy?) with the 2nd composter 90% complete. Perhaps we would have finished it if we didn’t have that photo break!
There was a very good turn out today with several new faces from the community complete with strong determination and muscles! Taking advantage of this the construction manager actioned various site clearance and reclamation tasks which included transferring large bricks, surplus soil and rubble from the front of the site to the patio at the rear and lifting some recently revealed paving stones from the grass. These will be used in the parking area at a later date as we plan to extend the parking facility to reduce the chance of garden participants adding to the parking in the surrounding roads. Apparently the paving stones were put down by the Leatherhead Children’s Centre when they used the site a few years ago and formed the pathway to a Wendy House.
Early in the day one of the volunteers noted “I haven’t seen one worm on this site yet”. Whilst not intended as a challenge, this proved to be the trigger for a worm collection and relocation exercise (to the full composter) as tens of worms were exposed in the front garden digging. We had mooted buying some composting worms – we’ll probably not bother now!
Work was well underway on the front garden digging out soil to reduce the bed depth to 4’. Before the soil was able to be transferred to the patio we had to clear the weeds, grass and roots, separating the compostable matter from the hundreds of white convolvulus roots which were discarded. The team was under the cosh somewhat as we planned to bring the sleepers to site the following week to build the bed support.
The site was undergoing a transformation which was completed with the pegging out of the 4’ paths either side of the site. What a psychological moment that was. The weekly progress is fantastic and so rewarding for all involved. Roll on next week?!
The major building works today are two new composters so off to Travis Perkis in Dorking to pick up the insulating sheets and marine ply. The composters are to be situated next the newly thinned tree area and work started with levelling the ground and securing five strong pallets donated by the business of one of the Project Team. The composter design – courtesy of Compost Works - is fabulous and very effective. We’re getting quite expert at building these now and the two new composters look much better than the first one (largely because we’re using new ply). Maybe we can offer our services elsewhere!!! We managed to shred some of the cut vegetation from last week but our plan to finish both composters AND fill at least one backfired. We ran out of time (and energy?) with the 2nd composter 90% complete. Perhaps we would have finished it if we didn’t have that photo break!
There was a very good turn out today with several new faces from the community complete with strong determination and muscles! Taking advantage of this the construction manager actioned various site clearance and reclamation tasks which included transferring large bricks, surplus soil and rubble from the front of the site to the patio at the rear and lifting some recently revealed paving stones from the grass. These will be used in the parking area at a later date as we plan to extend the parking facility to reduce the chance of garden participants adding to the parking in the surrounding roads. Apparently the paving stones were put down by the Leatherhead Children’s Centre when they used the site a few years ago and formed the pathway to a Wendy House.
Early in the day one of the volunteers noted “I haven’t seen one worm on this site yet”. Whilst not intended as a challenge, this proved to be the trigger for a worm collection and relocation exercise (to the full composter) as tens of worms were exposed in the front garden digging. We had mooted buying some composting worms – we’ll probably not bother now!
Work was well underway on the front garden digging out soil to reduce the bed depth to 4’. Before the soil was able to be transferred to the patio we had to clear the weeds, grass and roots, separating the compostable matter from the hundreds of white convolvulus roots which were discarded. The team was under the cosh somewhat as we planned to bring the sleepers to site the following week to build the bed support.
The site was undergoing a transformation which was completed with the pegging out of the 4’ paths either side of the site. What a psychological moment that was. The weekly progress is fantastic and so rewarding for all involved. Roll on next week?!
