Druid Hill Orchard Maintenance and Planting

Since an orchard does not magically get planted and then yield fruit, the Baltimore Orchard Project team gathered on October 24th in Druid Hill to spruce up the orchard that BOP and Tree Baltimore planted at the beginning of the Pandemic, not then suspecting that we would still be in masks and social distancing six months later.

Even though, we had removed sod, planted native companion plants, and mulched, the weeds showed us who has the strongest power. A few of the trees were looking threatened by the weeds and vines that had grown around them and many of them at least looked like they were uncomfortable with such a crowd hemming them in.

The BOP volunteers came ready to work. We first attacked the trees that looked like the weeds were suffocating them and with intense work, those trees looked happy and were breathing deeply almost before we knew it. One of the trees looked like it might not make it, so we repotted it and put in back in the Tree Baltimore nursery. We replaced it with a Gold Rush apple, one of my favorites. It is a resilient golden apple that can resist most apple problems except apple cedar rust (a fungus that goes after service berries with a vengeance).

We also added a new companion plant next to each of the trees. Edible Earth provided us with Common Selfheal, an amazing native that grows in shade and sun, flowers and has lovely leaves that are edible!

Even though we could not really socialize outside of the bubble we brought to the planting, we talked long distance and the shared purpose of the gathering created its own collegiality. Thank you to the volunteers who came out to make sure that BOP’s and Tree Baltimore’s gift to the city we love was nurtured as it should be!