Sprinkler in Ben  Nobleman Park’s pollinator garden creating a rainbow.

PART 1: Rainbows, Sprinklers and Drought

For generations, human beings have wondered how to make it rain. Well, the volunteers of Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard have discovered the secret. And those who grow gardens, fruit trees and other crops may be thanking us for years to come.

You see, this spring and summer of 2016 are the hottest and driest that we have experienced since planting our fruit trees in 2009. Without irrigation, this dry heat will stress and even kill young fruit trees. So we took things into our own hands.

Equipped with hoses, me, Lynn and Sherry spent hours this summer in our orchard park, setting up sprinklers and moving them around the park to give our fruit trees and pollinator garden a good soak during this dry time.

In the process we also inadvertently watered the grass and drenched hot and sweaty runners who jumped through our sprinklers like kids as a way of cooling off after a long run.

So, what is the secret to ending drought? That secret humans have been seeking for generations? Well, the answer is that if you spend 8 hours watering your community orchard, it will inevitably rain within a few days. It’s happened three times so far this year!

Joe Mihevc gets compost from Ben Nobleman Park

Part 2: Compost Magically Appears When You Need It

So it is true that when it rains, it really does pour. And that doesn’t just work for watering. For weeks we were worried and stressed about our fruit trees. Each year fruit trees need nutritious mulch to keep them healthy.

And we hadn’t amended the soil in our pollinator garden for years so the soil there was starting to look hard and dry, sort of like cement. A couple of yards of compost was all we needed both to mulch our trees and to improve the soil in the pollinator garden.

As the coordinator of the Ben Nobleman Community Orchard, I reached out far and wide to see how I could get some compost for our park.

• I called soil and compost companies to ask for donations, to no avail.
• I arranged a meeting with our wonderful City of Toronto gardeners, but they didn’t have access to compost for our park this year.
• I reached out to our city councillor, Joe Mihevc, to see if his office could help. They said they would see what they could do.

But time was running out. We needed to mulch our trees before mid July in order to avoid late season growth and the potential for frost damage. In the end we found a solution and managed to find some money to buy sheep manure for our trees.

But when it rains it pours. And so a week after we mulched our trees, Joe’s office came through for us and working with David Lichacz of Parks, Forestry and Recreation, they managed to deliver lots of terrific compost to our park both for our pollinator garden and trees and for locals to come and take for use in their own yards.

This long weekend a hardworking team used the compost all over our park. We spread that nutritious compost far and wide. We are SO grateful for the support we have from city staff! I think our plants and trees are grateful too!

Lynn Nicholas, volunteer with the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard, with City Councillor Joe Mihevc who has helped us in so many ways, including helping us mulch our trees.

Part 3: Rock Stars

And so that leads us to part 3 of this blog. Rock stars. You see, there may be community groups all over the world growing fruit trees and community gardens. But not all of them have a city councillor and city staff who care so much about our community parks and about the community groups who love to garden and help tend those precious green spaces.

So, we nominate two people to be our local Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard Rock Stars. They are City Councillor Joe Michevc – who has helped us so much over the years and Parks Foreperson Dave Lichacz who has been so patient in helping us to solve any issues that we have in our park. Thanks to both of you for helping us to make our park a better, more beautiful and more interesting place!

As for the readers of this blog, if you want to be a rock star too, do come and join us and become a volunteer in the park by emailing us at growingforgreen (at) gmail.com. Or if you don’t enjoy gardening or don’t have the time, please donate to our fundraising campaign to help us purchase plants, tools and more for our park.

Thanks everyone!

Susan Poizner is the coordinator of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. She is also the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book “Growing Urban Orchards” and the creator of the award-winning online fruit tree care training course at www.orchardpeople.com.