Tag Archives: Orchard Stewardship

Perennial Bed Renovation Part 1

June the 13th will go down as a great day in the history of Ben Nobleman Park. About 12 volunteers plunged into the overgrown perennial bed there in an effort to transform it into a garden bed filled with life and colour and a place that will attract butterflies, bees and other beneficial pollinators. While we supplied the muscle, we had plenty of encouragement from our local community. Starbucks donated Shared Planet sustainably-sourced coffee to keep us going and Loving Hut, a terrific vegan restaurant up the the road supplied us with their delicious jumbo summer rolls and threw in some fantastic vegan carob chip cookies to go with them.

And the surprise? Well, we discovered that quackgrass, a highly invasive weed, had made it’s way well into the perennial bed. If not removed completely by the rhizomes, that stuff would have doomed our new planting – quickly spreading through the bed leaving no room for anything else. So we had to work harder and move some existing plants in order to get it all. This Saturday we’ll be back again, finishing the cleanup and getting ready to plant the new material this week.

Alice supervises the volunteers at work

Enjoying a snack at the harvest table

Thinning the Fruit

We’ve had so many people ask us what we’ll be harvesting in the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard this year. Well, the serviceberry trees planted last fall will soon give us some of those yummy berries. And the rest? We can pretty much guarantee that we’ll have no fruit at all since a bunch of us went to the orchard recently and carefully plucked off all the little pears, cherries, plums and apricots that we could find.

Why on earth would we do that? Because for the first two years after planting a fruit tree, you want the trees to pour all their energy into their roots. That way they’ll grow strong enough to hold the fruit that they’ll produce. And by the way, even when we allow them to fruit in a couple of years time, we’ll still thin the fruit so as to not overload the young branches.

While our little trees have been in the ground just about a year, we were surprised how much fruit they produced this year. Have a peek at the pictures below. An award goes to the plum trees for being the most fruitful. And another award to the pear, for having the cutest looking baby fruit. And the biggest award goes to Christine, Sherry and Lynn for looking like three monkeys while they did their fruit thinning. Have a peek at our flickr page to see that picture called The Three Monkeys.

Young pears on tree

Christine and baby cherry

Fruitful Plums

The Toddler Irrigation Team

Tonight’s irrigation bee was quite lively, even though many of our regular volunteers couldn’t make it. Instead, we had a new team help us nurture our newly planted fruit trees. Kallie and Jack (together with Kallie’s mom, Rochelle) joined in the action with Kallie helping to irrigate the trees and Jack supervising. They had so much fun that Rochelle said she’d tell other parents to bring their kids to the park on Thursdays at 4.30 during our irrigation bees so the kids can help out and learn at the same time. Now, don’t think that Kallie and Jack are our youngest volunteers. Nine-month old Alice, accompanying her dad during an irrigation bee a few weeks ago, still has that honour. But then again, you never know who’s going to show up next week.

Kallie and Jack help water the fruit trees