Weeding, Wildlife and Pawpaws in Ben Nobleman Park

Sister and brother team weed around one of the newly planted pawpaw trees in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard on a recent stewardship day.

Wildlife is coming back to Toronto and people have noticed. With COVID-19 restrictions, traffic is lighter, the air is cleaner, and the city is quieter and so nature is moving back into the city. We saw that first hand in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard.

A family of skunks have made their home in the north west corner of the orchard, somewhere in the shrubbery behind our apple trees. During one of our stewardship days, one of our garden buddies teams saw them first hand. Four little skunk babies were playing around near a young sour cherry tree. We kept our distance, but as you can see in the video below, they were adorable.

An orchard volunteer watches on as a family of skunks sniffs around one of our baby cherry trees as they look for grubs and other tasty nibbles to eat. Film credit: www.orchardpeople.com.

We also ran into some other fun creatures from the animal kingdom recently. Charlie the tortoise made a reappearance. Charlie’s owner brings her to the park regularly so that she can explore. For a tortoise, Charlie is pretty fast as she crawls around on the grass. Here’s a photo that Dani, one of our volunteers, took of Charlie.

Charlie the tortoise made an appearance in the park. She comes for visits with her owner, who lets Charlie scurry around on the grass. Photo Credit: Dani.

Of course, dogs often come to our orchard park with their owners to play ball, sniff around and to do their business. And we thank their owners for meticulously cleaning up after them as they do. One of our new canine visitors is a puppy called Honey.

Honey is a canine visitor to the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard but she looks a bit more like a teddy bear on a leash.

In the last few weeks, the volunteers in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard have been working hard, trying to get our fruit trees’ mulch circles weeded so that we can then add compost and wood mulch to feed and protect them for the rest of the growing season.

Dani weeds around one of our oldest trees, a plum tree that was planted in 2009.

Our Tuesday group of garden buddies includes Susan, Giselle, Dani, and our sister and brother dynamic tree mulching duo and if I may say so myself, we are a hardworking bunch. Our sister-brother team worked hard expanding the mulch circles around our new pawpaw trees, donated to us by Toronto’s wonderful Pawpaw-gandist Paul DeCampo.

Two of our newly planted and now newly mulched young pawpaw trees. These native, shade trees thrive in a slightly shady environment.

The rest of the Tuesday garden buddies team has been working on our other trees including plums, apples, apricots, and shagbark hickory trees. Susan used some of our budget to buy some new weeding tools to help the team do the job.

In other news, Susan spent part of the orchard’s annual budget to buy some weeding forks to help the volunteers get the tough weeding work done around the trees.

While the Tuesday team keeps working, the Saturday garden buddies team is now swinging into action. The team this week was made up of Lynn, Marilyn, and Ruth with Luna the Dog keeping everyone company. And all were very careful to respect COVID 19 social distancing rules. In this photo, Marilyn and Ruth demonstrate how far apart they stay in order to stay safe!

Marilyn and Ruth are part of the Saturday garden buddies group. They are demonstrating their “social distancing”. Due to COVID 19 only 5 volunteers will work in the park at any given time and we always stay two metres apart in order to stay safe.

We’re hoping in the next couple of weeks to finish cleaning up so that we can mulch the trees with compost and woodchips. More about that coming up in an upcoming blog!

Susan Poizner is the coordinator of The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto and the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards. Susan teaches fruit tree care skills online at he fruit tree care training website OrchardPeople.com. Susan is also the host of The Urban Forestry Radio Show and Podcast, a show that explores topics relating to fruit trees, food forests, permaculture and arboriculture. She is also an ISA Certified arborist.