Local children help harvest one of the cherry trees in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard.
Fruit trees really can be the gift that keeps on giving.
Tonight was a cherry harvest night for the volunteers of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. We have 14 fruit trees in our park including apples, cherries, apricots, Asian pears and serviceberries. But this year the first one to provide us with a huge, delicious organic harvest was our Lapins sweet cherry tree.
We planted this cherry tree in 2009 and each year since then we have cared for it by pruning annually and mulching it with high quality compost. Each year we weed around it and expand the mulch circle and we use organic tools to protect the tree and the fruit from pest and disease problems. This lovely cherry tree has offered us so much over the years with its fantastic blossoms and its delicious harvest. And this year it gave us a bumper crop.
This year our Lapins cherry tree provided a bumper crop of fruit. So far we have had 2 harvest nights and there is still more fruit on the tree.
In 2008, when I wondered what it might be like to have a community orchard in our local park, I imagined a park where volunteers and the community could meet and work together to enjoy nature, our pollinator garden, and our fruit trees. At that time the park was a neglected green space but I thought that planting fruit trees and a pollinator garden would help transform that space into something inspiring and interactive. It’s so lovely to see that dream coming true.
During tonight’s cherry harvest, local children came by and asked if they could help us. They loved the fruit and they loved learning how to use our harvesting tools. We taught them to harvest the tree gently without breaking the branches. We taught them the fruit is there for all of us to share and that it’s good to help yourself to some of the ripe fruit, while leaving some for others to enjoy. We all had lots of fun and everyone went home with bowls or bags of cherries to eat and share.
Education is an important part of having a community orchard especially in teaching the public to be gentle when they harvest so as not to break the tree’s branches.
Tonight the volunteers included myself (Susan) Lynn, Gail, Ruth, and Rafaela and our mascot was Luna the dog (who is ambivalent about cherries and would have preferred if this was a chicken tree instead…sorry Luna). Thanks everyone for a magical harvest evening!
Susan Poizner is the coordinator of The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard and the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards. She is the creator of the fruit tree care training site orchardpeople.com and the host of the Urban Forestry Radio Show and Podcast.