Category — Fruit

Commonwealth Orchards Project- Glasgow. Photo by Local Action on Food

Urban orchards plan starting to bear fruit

By MARK McLAUGHLIN and MICHAEL BLACKLEY
Edinburgh News
01 March 2010

It has planted the seed of an idea which has the potential to blossom across Edinburgh.

The unlikely creation of a fruit orchard in one of the most deprived areas of the city is set to be followed by projects city-wide.

The city council-backed initiative could see school grounds, parks, allotments and even back greens used for growing fruit

The Evening News told last year how a community initiative had led to an orchard with apple, pear, plum and cherry trees being created in Wester Hailes.

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2nd Annual Fruit Tree Adoption- February 6th and 7th

Using fruit as our lens, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of & in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.

Over time our interests have expanded from mapping public fruit to include Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours;

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Neighborhood Fruit helps people find and share fruit locally, both backyard bounty and abundance on public lands – 10,000 trees nationwide and counting!

Neighborhood Fruit was created to make use of the abundant fruit growing in our urban environments. Currently, the bulk of fruit grown in backyards and in our cities goes to waste, while the fruit we consume is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes. We envision a different future, where the bulk of backyard fruit is utilized and shared between neighbors and our diets replete with home-made goodies. Join us in creating a future where the food we eat is truly fresh, seasonal and local!

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Illustration by Monika Mitkute

The Abundance Handbook – A guide to Urban Fruit Harvesting (Learning from our experiences of harvesting in Sheffield, England)

The Abundance Handbook
Published by Grow Sheffield, 2009
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England

Abundance harvests trees across the city on industrial waste sites, roadsides, the grounds of mansions and back yards. We harvest a range of soft fruit, top fruit and nuts. Over fifty volunteers of all ages and from many different backgrounds harvest and process the fruit. Fruit is distributed to Surestarts, community groups, community cafes and individuals across Sheffield.

We receive tip-offs by word of mouth, text and email as to where to find ripe fruit trees. The greatest journey any fruit travels from tree to mouth is five miles often by bike and trailer. We have found at least fifty varieties of apples and more than twenty varieties of pears. We give away hundreds of fruits and lots of freshly pressed juice. Tree owners are offered the first share of fresh fruit.

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Click through on the YouTube icon to go to higher quality video.

Strawberry, Raspberry, Blackcurrant, Gooseberry, Tayberry, Saskatoon berry

Maria takes us on a tasting tour at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. It’s the end of June and we love sampling what we grow.

Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Food Banks Finding Aid in Bounty of Backyard

By Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times
September 13, 2008

Thus was born North Berkeley Harvest, part of a small but expanding movement of backyard urban gleaners — they might be called fruit philanthropists — who voluntarily harvest surplus fruit and then donate it to food banks, centers for the elderly and other nonprofit organizations.

The concept of gleaning, or collecting a portion of crops on farmers’ fields for the needy, before or after harvesting, goes back to ancient cultures. But it has more recently been taken up by people like Joni Diserens, a 43-year-old program manager for Hewlett-Packard and founder of Village Harvest in Silicon Valley.

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Once a year we get to taste the exotic Saskatoon Berry, which is mainly grown in the Prairies. The Saskatoon Berries have a wilder flavour than Blueberries and we have to be quick to harvest them before the birds. Julia shows us the right way to pick them – have a bowl of ice cream with you at the bush.