As part of their Seattle reLeaf program, the City of Seattle is giving away more trees this year — including one variety of fruit tree, the Italian Plum (which is my favorite). The hope is to get 1,000 trees to residents to plant in their yards which will help the city achieve it’s 30% tree canopy goal.

If you live in one of the neighborhoods listed below, you need to get an application in by September 13.  The city is specifically targetting South Seattle neighborhoods this year and the following are eligable to apply:

• Beacon Hill
• Columbia City
• Georgetown
• Highland Park
• North Beacon Hill/Jefferson Park
• Rainier Beach
• Roxhill/Westwood
• South Beacon Hill/New Holly
• South Park
• Steward Park

There is no need to apply as a group, so individual houses can apply. Trees may be planted along the street or in your yard — keep in mind the fruit tree can’t be planted along the street and needs to go in your yard. There is a limit of 4 per household. The program participants will recieve:

• Free trees, of course – Available species
• Watering bags
• Training on proper tree planting & care
• One free bag of GroCo compost, made with King County biosolids
• Helpful tree care tips & reminders

If you don’t happen to live in one of the neighborhoods listed above, you can still get free trees from the city — but time is running out. The Department of Neighborhoods Tree Fund provides free street trees to groups of 5 or more neighbors working together anywhere in Seattle. Groups can request 10 to 40 trees. But the applications are due Monday, August 16 — so get your application in now!

I’ve seen a few different things going around the web recently about how you can get your hands on a free fruit tree so I thought I’d help share them here with some additional info about caring for trees. Keep in mind that there are strings attached to getting one of these free fruit trees — but in both cases below, it’s that the trees are used for the good of the community. Can hardly argue with that.

The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation

One of my favorite organizations out there is The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. I’ve written about them previously but as a reminder they are, in their own words:

“… a nonprofit charity dedicated to planting edible, fruitful trees and plants to benefit the environment and all its inhabitants. Our primary mission is to plant and help others plant a collective total of 18 billion fruit trees across the world (approximately 3 for every person alive) and encourage their growth under organic standards.”

In order to help them achieve their 3 fruit trees per person, they’re giving away a ton of fruit trees. They have a couple different ways in which you can get them:

• Fill out this application (Word Doc) for creating an orchard in your community.
• Submit a project idea to their Communities Take Root contest(in partnership with Dreyer’s Fruit Bars). Then the community gets to vote on which projects receive free fruit trees.

Seattle Department of Neighborhoods

Sorry non-Seattle folks, this one is strictly for the Seattle residents — but it’s worth checking to see if your city offers a similar program.

The Tree Fund provides trees to neighborhoods to “enhance Seattle’s urban forest”. If you & your neighbors get together you can receive 10-40 trees for your community, as well as one fruit tree for yourself (one per household). Your project must be able to demonstrate the capacity to build a stronger, healthier community.

It’s a great way to get to know your neighbors better and improve your community at the same time. Plus think of all the great fruit you’ll get! Check out all the places that received free trees last year. Seattle is serious about improving our city’s urban tree canopy.

When, Where, and How to Plant?

Seattle’s Tree Fund doesn’t do the planting of trees until the fall, which is the perfect time to plant new trees — the temperature is cooler, they’ll get plenty of water. I’m not sure when you’d get the trees from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, but I’d recommend waiting until the summer has passed.

It’s not always easy to know where a fruit tree will do well in a yard — that’s why we’ve put some very useful info up on our website. And don’t forget caring for the fruit tree. It’s not hard, but it does require some know-how and effort. But City Fruit is here to help.

And because I’m a visual learner, I really get the most out of watching someone do something rather than reading about it. For those of you like that out there, here’s a handy video on how to plant a fruit tree.

Now go get yourself & your community some fruit trees and start helping build your city’s urban orchard with a great local food source.

It’s getting to be that time of year when the fruit is starting to ripen. We’ve already got our first harvest scheduled for next week to pick a bunch of cherries. Can’t wait!

If you have a fruit tree or grape vine that will produce more fruit than you can possibly eat this summer, there are several organizations out there that will harvest that fruit and ensure that it’s put to productive use – including City Fruit. Check out the below information for the right organization to contact for your neighborhood.

Phinney/Greenwood: phinney@cityfruit.org 

Crownhill: crownhill@cityfruit.org

South Seattle: gail@cityfruit.org

West Seattle: info@gleanit.org

Throughout Seattle: help@gardenhotline.org

Don’t know which variety will work best in your yard? Unsure what that thing is eating the leaves on your pear tree? Or maybe you are wondering what a grafted tree is?

I’ve got just the guys to answer those questions. And any other ones you can think of.  Meet Don & John.

Don Ricks has been leading the charge on applying foot socks to apples & pears throughout the city. While Don shies away from the term “expert”, he’s very knowledgeable about fruit trees and pest prevention. He’s very involved with the Friends of Piper’s Orchard and sits on the City Fruit Advisory Committee.

John Reardon is a long-time member of the Seattle Tree Fruit Society and has spent many years helping educate and inform people on the proper methods for caring for fruit trees. He also sits on the City Fruit Advisory Committee.

These two guys know a lot about fruit, fruit trees, pest prevention, etc. And they’ve graciously agreed to (try to) answer any question you have.

So if you’ve got a couple burning questions, please send them to fruitqa@cityfruit.org. We’ll pick a couple and share the answers here each month or so.

A New Grant

City Fruit has just been awarded a grant from the Department of Natural Resources to develop a community stewardship program to care for fruit trees on community-owned properties, such as parks, community gardens, schools, and other community areas.

Fruit Trees on Public Land

There are a ton of fruit trees on public property – more than 30 Seattle parks have fruit trees. Parks like Carkeek, Othello, and Martha Washington have extensive orchards with some good specimens. And there are other parks that have planted several fruit trees (mini-orchards) as part of other edible landscaping projects – such as the Linden Orchard P-Patch and Bradner Gardens.

While these trees are of value to the community, their maintenance and care are often times more labor-intensive than non-edible trees. And typically the civic landscaping budgets cannot cover the costs of the pruning, managing pests, harvesting fruit, etc. So we’ve been talking with the Seattle Parks Department to figure out how to better care and nurture these trees, harvest and use the fruit, and not negatively impact the bottom line. This project is our attempt to create a model by which we can make that a reality.

About the Project

The project has three main objectives:

• Create and pilot test a curriculum and training program on fruit tree care for lay gardeners
• Develop a sustainable, volunteer-based model for the care of fruit trees on public properties
• Recruit and train 12 – 15 volunteers interested in fruit tree management, using them to evaluate the training curriculum and the stewardship model

We’re really using Seattle’s successful Forest Steward program (a project of the Green Seattle Partnership) as a blueprint – that project builds on volunteers’ desires to work with others to improve the urban landscape. Fruit tree stewards will be responsible for winter and summer pruning, thinning of fruit, recruiting community volunteers to harvest fruit, picking up dropped fruit, summer watering, and basic pest management. The goal is to place at least two stewards per park, with each making a two-year commitment to their orchard. (In the future, stewards can be rotated so that experienced orchard stewards are paired with new ones.)

By the end of this project, volunteers will ‘adopt’ the fruit trees in 4 – 5 public parks. Through collaboration between public agencies, private nonprofit organizations, and the volunteers themselves, the project will create a mechanism through which a fruit tree stewardship program can be sustained over the long-term. Such a model could easily be adapted by other communities interested in preserving this resource but lacking public monies to do so.

To Participate & More Info

If you’re interested in becoming one of the fruit tree stweards or have questions about our new project, e-mail info@cityfruit.org.

City Fruit has grown tremendously since we started working in late 2008. We conducted a fruit harvest in Phinney and donated 5,000 pounds of fruit, experimented with selling fruit as a way to raise money, implemented a membership program, held many classes on subjects ranging from canning to espalier, launched a Web site, and many other activities.

So far, the work behind those accomplishments has been done by volunteers. As we at City Fruit plan to take on even more work in the coming year, we are beginning to grow beyond a volunteer-only organization. To that end, we’re very happy to announce that Gail Savina, who hatched the idea behind City Fruit, will be transitioning in to an Executive Director role. This means, of course, that she’s stepping down from the board of directors, but it means that we can ideally begin to pay her for all the work she does, and will continue to do, for City Fruit.

Gail plans to be as involved as ever! We believe that having a paid director will only help City Fruit continue its mission of helping tree owners grow healthy fruit, harvest and use what they can, and share what they don’t need long into the future.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve officially launched an online store where you can buy all kinds of t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, & stickers to show your support for City Fruit. 

All proceeds go towards helping fund our work to help residential tree owners grow healthy fruit, to harvest and use what they can, and to share what they don’t need.

 Thanks much to Cafe Press for providing the platform by which we can do such a thing. It’s a great website & store.

Be the first on your block to strut around in a City Fruit t-shirt!

As you know, we at City Fruit are passionate about pest management. We’ve blogged about it, sell City Fruit Shields to fruit tree owners, and are working to apply the footies on healthy trees in the city.

To help us with this, we’re working with Don Ricks to determine the status of apple maggot and coddling moth in the city, when to start applying pest prevention measures, and which to use.

We’re looking for volunteers to help him apply footies to fruit trees in two different orchard in the city:

• May 15: Good Shepherd Center
• June 5: Piper’s Orchard

If you’re interested, you can find more details on the Piper Orchard website or e-mail Don directly.

Don is continually monitoring the situation in Seattle and has sent us this dispatch:

As of today (5/10/10) I am still not seeing codling moth in the trapsbut what I did see over the weekend is that some of the apples at the Good Shepherd Center are now big enough to apply footies to. Everywhere else, the apples are still too small or we haven’t even had complete petal fall yet.

One month ago it looked like we would have an exceptionally early season this year,  but we have had some cooler than usual weather the past few weeks and this has changed the picture. Neither the bugs nor the fruit is developing as fast as we once thought, but we expect the weather ahead to be warming up shortly. Warmer climes, like the Rainier Valley, will need earlier attention. Cooler climes by the Puget Sound, or at higher elevations, might be a little later.

Consequently, the indications are now that the best time to apply foot sox will be the week before and after Memorial Day.

If you are spraying the organics Neem Oil, kaolin clay, or Spinosad products as your first cover spray for the codling moth, then probably mid- to late-May would be a good time to make the first application. This will have to be followed by sprays every 10 days or so until either harvest time or until you have covered them with foot sox. 

The apple maggot fly will probably be flying in early- to mid-June, but stay tuned for further updates on when the fly is flying and (later in the season) when the fruit will be ripening.     

Kind of a random thing, but I just realized we reached 100 posts on our blog. A small milestone.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to the next 100!