Yes, you might use jconsole (bundled since Java6).
Here you have a view to the running JVM and invocation of GC.
Local you need only the PID, remote you must enable the access via JVM option.
The JConsole watch the given JVM, but if you observe too long you affect the application because some (statistic) data will be stored in the observed JVM.
Also an explicit call of GC should only be done for test, production enviroment should run without.