Over the past few weeks, GoodGym Ealing have been clearing up after the growing season in a few different community allotments and gardens around the borough. Today was no different as at Feeding Ealing, Kash, Beck and Sevan worked away in the polytunnel to clear out this year's produce and prepare for next year's planting. That was lucky as they stayed pretty dry while rain showers came and went outside.

The team were asked to say "toma-go" to the tomato plants and "bean-ough already" to the beans. Everything removed was to go onto the compost heap to provide nutrients for next year's crop. After discussing the best tools to use and choosing their favourites, they discovered that everything could actually be pulled out by hand, no tools required, making the task a bit easier.

Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and there was a cloud too to the simplicity of pulling the old plants. They were tied to bamboo stakes and other supports using nylon string and that needed to be removed. Who may have done such a dastardly thing as using non-biodegradable string? Well, that might have been Sevan... only because there was nothing else available back in July when he and Gus were asked to tie the crops up. Much effort went into destringing the plants to not pollute next year's compost.

Towards the end of the session, Joseph decided that any remaining crops could also be pulled as it was too late in the season for them to ripen, with the weather overnight being too cold for the chillies. So, the group said "chillio" to the chilli plants as they were also pulled out of the soil. A few green chillis were recovered that Joseph said would be added to his chilli chutney. In fact, there'd been a bumper batch of chutney this year. The earlier green chillis had also gone in the pot as well as 60kgs of green tomatoes, producing 16kg of tomato chutney. Nothing's gone to waste from the urban allotment's growing this year.

As everyone wrapped up for the day, Joseph said that the next cycle of fruit and vegetable growing will start in December. There are plans to create deeper beds and to start enriching the soil with manure and other nutrients, so we'll be back next month to make 2026's harvest an even bigger success than 2025.

Busy double shift today at the community cupboard. Due to banana overdose early in the morning we did our best to lure the local kids to take some as well on their way to school.🍌 We welcomed Beck to the team🥳 who was greeted by a 45 mins delivery delay before she could eventually experience the speedy and efficient work this wonderful group does every Monday morning.