It’s been a rough year for fruit trees here in Toronto. We had a long, cold spring and that makes pollination difficult. The fruit tree blossoms opened up but the weather was too cold for bees and other pollinators to be active. So sadly, many of our fruit trees in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard don’t have much fruit growing on them.

But our cherry trees did not disappoint! Somehow both of our decade old sweet cherry trees (Sandra Rose and Lapins) produced a beautiful harvest and by Canada Day we had a lot of ripe cherries to share in the community. The volunteers harvested some cherries to take home. Sherry brought neighbourhood children to the park to harvest cherries as well. But there was lots of fruit left!

So we reached out to our friend Jill Andrew, MPP of Toronto-St Paul’s to come and help us harvest the fruit. And Jill’s goal was to bring the fruit to two local agencies Humewood House and Na-Me-Res that can use quality organic produce.

Jill came with her partner Aisha and they were joined by Orchard volunteers Janina, Reenie, and new volunteer Whitney to help harvest the fruit high up in the tree.

The rest of the fruit was harvested either by hand or using an extendable harvesting tool.

Now, not all the news was good on Canada Day. Susan, Cliff and Giselle had a sad job to do. A few of our apple trees had a quickly spreading disease called fire blight and we needed to remove diseased branches carefully. We also needed to remove one young tree that had been badly affected by fire blight.

So it was a busy and hot day in the park. Keeping hydrated was important. And during the week that followed the city was able to turn on the water in the park so in the weeks to come we will spend quality time watering our fruit trees. The weather has been so hot and dry. I’m sure our trees will appreciate some good hydration.

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.