Community Post

Healthy Trees for Healthy Harvests Walk

We could not have asked for better weather for the Colman Neighborhood’s Healthy Trees for Healthy Harvests walk on Saturday, May 9. Strolling between many houses, we visited a brand new orchard going in behind Parnell’s on Dearborn and several old fruit trees from when our neighborhood was known as Garlic Gulch. We got a great hands-on demonstration for caring for our fruit trees from Chris Hogan at WeDesign.

While a little knowledge can be dangerous, and I’m looking forward to calling Chris in the future for winter garden consulting, I feel like we learned enough to help others with the difference between mid-summer shaping and winter pruning, how to train the trees to be open, and the need for clean, sharp tools and we’d be happy to share what we learned.

In Colman (23rd to MLK/Jackson to the Lid), we’re gearing up for our first Community Harvest later this summer and working to get unused fruit into the hands of the emergency food system (St. Mary’s on 20th) and our own neighbors through community jam making and fruit swapping. If you are in Colman and have trees you want to get on the harvest list or want to pick fruit, you can drop Knox Gardner email at knoxg98111@gmail.

If you are interested in forming your own Community Harvest for your part of the CD, we’d be glad to pass on what we are learning. A great person to contact is Gail Savina at City Fruit at [email protected].

Pests, such as apple maggot and coddling moth, don’t travel far, but do seriously infect neighboring trees. As we work to increase our harvests, fighting these pest on your own trees as well as helping fight them on community trees, trees on empty lots, and with your neighbhors is important.

The next pest walk will be occuring further south in Rainier Valley, but CD residents are welcome. It’s next Wednesday, May 20th, FREE, and being taught by John Reardon, Seattle Tree Fruit Society, and Lacia Bailey, Serendipity Gardens. Contact Gail at [email protected] for info and to RSVP.

0 thoughts on “Healthy Trees for Healthy Harvests Walk

  1. Thanks for posting this story, Knox. I was sad not to be able to make the walk, but this gives some great leads for follow-up.