Covenant Monitoring at Welland Legacy Park and Community Orchard

Volunteers Nathan, Jonah and Kristen.
Photo Credit Torrey Archer.

TLC staff and volunteers joined together for a work party at the Welland Legacy Park and Community Orchard last week. Confronted with a 5 foot high pile of woodchips, they took it down with gusto and used it to lay as mulch around the orchard’s fruit trees. This prevents excess water loss through evaporation – especially important during our dry summers.

After getting a good sweat going, the crew relaxed with some gentle weeding and fruit thinning. Fruit thinning is important for fruit bearing trees as it helps reduce the load of strain the branches would be under if all fruit came to full term. Fruit trees will actually set more fruit than they can handle, assuming some will be lost to pests and pathogens. However, in an orchard where they are better protected from the normal pests, the gardeners must thin the fruit or risk losing entire branches when the fruit ripens! Where clusters of apples rest against one another is a particularly happy spot for pests to burrow – by removing the smaller of the fruits you reduce the chance for loss of fruit from pest invasion.

So what do you do with all those picked, unripe apples? You boil them down and make pectin to use for canning in the autumn! One volunteer took a large bucket of apples home and TLC eagerly awaits to hear how this works out.

Welland Orchard has been managed by LifeCycles Project Society for the past 3-4 years, and have made considerable positive changes to the land. LifeCycles has established a mason bee hotel on site, complete with a pollinator garden that lines the main path – a mason bee feast! There are over 200 fruit trees and over 100 apple varieties at the Orchard, as well as numerous other species. LifeCycles has also constructed a composting toilet and nursery area where grafted fruit trees presently reside.

Thanks to Julia from LifeCycles for making our work party more of a “party” than “work”! You can learn more about LifeCycles and how to help on their website lifecyclesproject.ca.

You can help TLC continue to protect important ecosystems across BC by supporting the monitoring and enforcement of our covenants. Please complete our online donation form to show your support today!