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!

It’s been a long and dry spring and early summer and our pollinator garden and fruit trees desperately needed a drink. Usually our park’s irrigation system is turned on earlier in the year but due to COVID-19 restrictions, the irrigation systems stayed off…until now!

So the Saturday team of garden buddies in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard including Marilyn, Lynn, Sherry, Annie, Ruth and Gail were the first to leap into action and water our pollinator garden. The garden was, in Lynn’s words, “dry as a bone”!

We did it! In previous years we would have 10 or more volunteers to come on mulching day to help wheel huge amounts of compost around the park to put around the roots of our fruit trees. But due to COVID-19, we are now doing that work in small groups.

This past Tuesday at 7.30 am, Cliff, Allan and Susan met in the park. We just had 2 cubic yards of compost delivered and it had to be distributed around the park to the fruit and shade trees that we care for.