It's been over 50 consecutive days - and counting - without any rain in some parts of London, and Western Road Urban Garden in Southall required a constant effort from Janpal and volunteers to help the site keep up with the ongoing heat. The exotic vegetables inside the polytunnel were doing well, and the veg plot we had cleared, woodchipped and partially planted only a month ago started already producing crops such as aubergines and tomatoes! None of that came without a price. Manual watering of veg beds took a lot of time and energy and wouldn't be sustainable in the long term. That's something the architect of Western Road community garden Ash wanted to address for a while.

In February this year, we had taken first steps towards executing Ash's vision of installing two 1000-litre rainwater containers. The mud wasn't going to serve as a reliable base for a tonne of water in a single container, so after digging out the soil, we'd been looking forward to pouring the concrete into the square spaces for a few months. Today was the day to make Ash's vision reality!

Seven GoodGymers came to support Western Road on a Saturday morning in August:

• Walkers: Angela
• Runners: Sevan and Kash
• Cyclists: Scott, Amy and Steph
• Cyclists/parkrunners: Richard

The Plant Squad

Angela, Amy and Janpal had plenty of tasks to do: from weeding the bed alongside the polytunnel, to harvesting and watering the new veg plot. In the polytunnel, they discovered a watermelon that looked pretty good on the outside, but a closer look revealed a small hole and the fact that the fruit was half eaten inside! Judging by the size of the hole, it looked like a rat, rather than Mr Fox, was the prime suspect this time. To save the other juicy crops, Janpal ordered the harvesting of the green tomatoes before the rat laid its eyes on them. Amy found some very long chili peppers, and everyone had a chance to see ripe snake gourds.

Janpal's top tip for cooking a snake gourd:

"Make sure to take the skin off and discard the seeds. We haven't done it last time, and that was the most bitter thing I've ever had!"

The Concrete Cowboys

The group keen to learn concreting skills joined Ash and started with combining the mixture for a base for the water container:

• 4 parts shingle
• 2 parts coarse sand
• 1 part cement
• plasticiser.

While Steph, Richard and Sevan mixed the concrete in a tray to wheelbarrow it to the destination hole surrounded by a wooden frame, Scott, Kash and Ash cleared the weeds inside and around the frame, assisted with pouring the mix, then levelled and tamped the concrete.

The team used up all the resources allocated for one of the bases, then threw in some rubble to bulk up the base, but there wasn't enough material to finish off that stage of the project. Despite great teamwork and solid progress, we'll need to come back to finish off the job when more materials are available. Join us next Wednesday!

The scorching sun had already climbed high above Elthorne Park, and the meadows where Hanwell Carnival was about to take place offered very little shade. Since the morning, Kash had been battling tangled strings, Pythagorean geometry and an acrylic line marker alongside a couple of Carnival volunteers. Luckily, reinforcements were on their way.

At 11:00, GoodGymers Angela, Chris and Harvey arrived to lend the event organisers a hand in setting up Hanwell's big community celebration. Little did they know that their task would involve marking out stall pitches rather than assembling gazebos.

"I've marked football pitches before." - Harvey.
"Great, so we have an expert now!" - Kash.
"No, I wouldn't say that..."

By GoodGym standards, Harvey was definitely an expert - and Angela and Chris quickly rose to that level, rapidly gaining experience on the job.

The team rushed to finish a batch of stall pitches before the midday break (it was really hot, so a break was very much needed!). Perhaps feeling a little too confident, they left one corner of a rectangle unchecked. It soon became clear that the shape didn't satisfy the Pythagorean theorem - in other words, it wasn't straight. The rectangle wasn't really a rectangle at all, but an impostor quadrilateral.

The mistake was quickly corrected, and the rogue white line on the grass was sprayed over with red paint. Kash kept hold of the red spray can to mark the pitch numbers, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

"Kash, you're a tagging natural!" - Chris.

When you think about it, GoodGym offers a rare opportunity to do graffiti-style tagging without being accused of vandalism. How cool is that?

Having marked and divided the large rectangle into smaller pitches, the team moved on to six more boxes around the crafts tent, which was still being erected. The speedy GoodGym crew finished their grass graffiti before the tent was completed and just in time for a well-earned lunch break.

Great work, everyone!

There was a big group this month for the walk over Horsenden Hill to the Feeding Ealing site. It started out dry and got more wet the closer that the group got to their destination, with umbrellas popping up and waterproofs being worn. Given the threatening grey skies, everyone was happy when Joseph said that they'd be working inside, in the polytunnel. On a day like today, Joseph had no desire to get soaked and he didn't want anyone else to get wet either.

Walking through the site, Joseph pointed out the changes since GoodGym's visit last month, with the Dudhi plants being well established in the muddy holes that were dug last month. Inside the polytunnel, there was a lot of new growth too, with tomatoes, peppers and more shooting up in the raised beds and some exotic beans climbing up the walls.

It was the tomatoes that Joseph needed help with today. As they grew, they needed to each have a bamboo cane that they were tied to for support. Kash, Angela and Maxime grabbed string and scissors, cutting it into lengths for everyone to get tying. Part way through, Joseph came to the team with a with a new task and each person could choose the one they found the most fun:

1. Tying the tomato plants to stakes
2. Dismantling old garden furniture that was inefficiently filling the skip

Maxime, Angela and Delphine found their happiness in placing stakes and binding the tomato plants to them. Steph, Kash, Kaja and Sevan on the other hand went for destruction. They grabbed the wicker chairs out of the skip and got kicking, stamping, twisting, sawing and pick-axing. Anything they could to turn the bad 3D seating into good 2D seating that would neatly stack back in the skip.

With both of Joseph's jobs completed, the rain got heavier and everyone took cover in the polytunnel. While they waited out the heaviest of the rain, Joseph told everyone about last year's harvest and the plans for this year. He encouraged everyone to come back at harvest time to pick some crops and make their stomachs happy. That's the most important thing in life, according to Joseph.

The session wrapped up early and team GoodGym headed home or onto their next tasks. As they left the site, the rain stopped and the sun beamed down... for a few minutes at least, until clouds returned overhead.