Marching Into Spring With The Gleaners
To all of our amazing volunteers and tree donors, thank you for your time and generosity during the 2018 gleaning season!With your help, we brought more than 5,000 pounds of tree fruit to the food bank and partner organizations including WIN, the Senior Center, and the Veteran’s Center. Some of the late ripening varieties have lasted in storage through the winter, and we were able to offer local apples in the food bank through early March.Last summer and fall were incredibly busy for our small team of gleaners, and we weren’t able to pick all of the trees that were offered to Good Cheer, but even if we weren’t able to make it to you, we very much appreciate your generosity!
With the snow starting to melt away and a few sunny days, we’re getting excited for the upcoming spring and summer, and all of the fresh, delicious fruits and veggies the island has to offer. One branch of the gleaning program you might not know about is the Saturday glean at the Bayview Farmer’s Market. Every week during market season (April to October), the gleaners head over at the close of the market and collect produce from our generous farm partners. We’ll be looking for volunteers to help with market gleaning when the season kicks off in April, so if you’re interested in helping to collect and transport produce from the market to Good Cheer Food Bank on Saturdays, we’d love to hear from you!Editor’s note: This doesn’t have to a commitment to volunteer every Saturday - even once a month would be a great help!Email the Gleaning coordinator at gleefulgleaners@goodcheer.org for more details.
But for now, it’s still winter, at least for a few more weeks (days? months? what’s with all the snow anyway?), and that means it’s time to prune those trees! Pruning is an integral part of caring for your trees, and it can seem like an intimidating task if you’ve never done it before. Fear not though - it’s not as hard as it sounds! The goal is to have a stronger tree with healthy growth and a good harvest. The main tasks are:
- Removing dead, diseased, or damaged wood
- Thinning to avoid overlapping branches that will compete for light and space
- Trimming back a portion of last year’s growth to keep your tree at a manageable size
If you’re looking for hands-on practice, Tilth is offering a class March 16th. You can sign up at www.southwhidbeytilth.org
There are also online resources, books, and videos you can turn to for help and encouragement, including:
- The Fruit Tree Handbook, by Ben Pike (this is what our Garden Manager keeps handy as a reference)
- The Modern Farmer blog has a simple guide to winter pruning with some good illustrations (http://modernfarmer.com/2015/02/right-cut/)
- City Fruit, a non-profit that works to make the most of Seattle’s urban orchard, has a great page of resources on all aspects of fruit tree care, including pruning (https://www.cityfruit.org/fruit-tree-care/resources), along with a collection of videos (https://www.cityfruit.org/learn/videos )
As always, you can sign up to join the gleaners, donate a tree, or check out our newly revised page on the Good Cheer website Stay tuned for next month - we’ll share some information about mason bees and how you can attract them to your garden. These little gals do an incredible amount of pollinating, and as bee populations around the world are declining, every little bit helps to keep bees from disappearing.