Che Fruit at POP Learning Orchard in September 2024

2024 marked the fifth growing season at the POP Learning Orchard, a milestone that reflects the orchard’s growing strength and capacity to nurture both plants and community connections. The fifth year is often seen as a symbolic marker of establishment and this has been evident in the orchard’s journey. With its deepening roots and expanding canopies, the learning orchard continues to thrive as a vibrant space for growing food, learning and sharing knowledge.

As we look back on this half-decade of growth, 2024 stands out as a year of abundant new harvests, creative experiments, and opportunities to gather and learn together. While challenges tested our adaptability, they also fortified our commitment to the orchard as a space for engagement, education, and growth.

New Plantings

As always, POP experimented with more new plantings in 2024!  Part of the goal of the Learning Orchard is to serve as a living laboratory for new plants and approaches. POP’s newly constructed high tunnel greenhouses allowed us to experiment with many zone 8 plants and this drew tremendous interest and media coverage.  We successfully overwintered loquat, olive, feijoa (pineapple guava), korean tea, turmeric, and hardy citrus including kumquat and yuzu. This spring we added a fig, pomegranate, and most excitingly, a ‘Dwarf Orinoco’ banana!  We also planted a ‘Rajapuri’ banana in the Learning Orchard and in late November, installed wire fencing and fall leaves to insulate them and hopefully enable fruiting in 2025.  Other new plantings in the Learning Orchard this year included an edible flower garden, purple raspberries, cranberries, gotu kola, purple prairie clover, and the addition of a native medicinal herb row.

With the young orchard now expanding its tree canopy, we took a deep dive to discover what plants we think might fill the once lush rows of annual crops. The main consideration for this would be plants that are shade tolerant- meaning growing with as little as 4 hours of sunlight a day and at the same time could make good companions to the trees. Another important aspect was of course making sure they had some culinary or medicinal value they could demonstrate to our partner orchards.  While we know this will be a gradual process, we took some small steps in researching plants that would be viable in our space and moved to plant a couple of new things in both the spring and fall. In the spring we made the decision to start planning and transforming a 90ft row into a medicinal native herb row. The first plating included Angelica, Goldenrod, Echinacea, and two types of bee balm, Scarlet Monarda and Wild Bergamot varieties.  Through the summer we watched the plants settle in, adapting quickly into a bigger growing space and attracting all types of beneficial pollinators to the row. We noticed which herbs were eaten by the groundhog and other bugs, and which seemed more resistant to them.  In the fall we added the addition of shrubby St. John’s Wort and Black Cohosh. We look forward to how these additions will expand and settle into the herb row. Many of these herbs will take years to reach their full shape and we look forward to finding ways to connect them with local herbal medicine distribution.

Another exciting development was our first flush of ramps. We planted the ramps the previous fall 2023, spreading their bulbs within the shade garden and mushroom logs of the orchard. We were all excited to see their pink bulbs emerge in early spring. Since it was their first year, we did not harvest any but hope that in years to come we will have access to more!

Orchard Challenges

The orchard faced several familiar and ongoing challenges this year, chief among these was the plum curculio, a notorious pest that devastated the orchard’s stone fruit early in the season. This tiny beetle proved to be a continued formidable adversary, significantly reducing yields before many of the fruits had a chance to mature.

Even where plum curculio damage was limited, the orchard’s resident squirrels, inhabiting the towering oak trees posed an ever increasing problem. Squirrels targeted many crops, with Asian pears suffering particularly severe losses. Despite attempts at fruit bagging to deter their predation, the yield dropped from 42 pounds in 2023 to 16 pounds in 2024; a reminder of how challenging mammalian pests can be to control in an orchard environment.

Apples in the orchard weren’t spared either, falling victim to a series of fire blight outbreaks, which swept through the state during the critical bloom period. As noted by Penn State Extension’s 2024 Disease Update, several waves of infections created ideal conditions for the disease to take hold between mid-April through early May. 

Groundhogs also continued to be a persistent challenge, particularly for annual crops. Despite careful planning to select crops that might evade their attention, these determined pests managed to feast on tender starts of okra, peppers, tomatoes, and squash. We did find that fencing in the young plants and consistent applications of deer spray were enough to reduce groundhog predation until the starts were more established. 

While these challenges can be frustrating, they also provide an opportunity to build familiarity with recurring issues and identify patterns that guide more effective solutions. Over the past few seasons, the POP  team has gained valuable insights and knowledge that helps us approach problems with creativity and adaptability, ensuring the orchard remains resilient even as conditions continue to change.

Lead Orchard Volunteer Gatherings

In addition to our regular LOV team helping at the Learning Orchard on a weekly basis, this year we hosted our 2nd and 3rd Lead Orchard Volunteer (LOV) Gatherings in the space. 

Oftentimes our LOVs are spread across various sites throughout the city, and as many folks in urban ag know all too well, the work really pulls you in once the season gets going. So we realized that LOVs were building relationships at their sites but didn’t necessarily have the chance to do that with each other.  At the end of last year, we decided to have an End of Year Gathering to celebrate the hard work they put in all year, but also so they’d get to meet one another and maybe find that things happening in their corners of the city weren’t so different after all. 

After last year’s gathering, more LOVs expressed an interest and excitement in having a space to relax and connect, over delicious food – of course- outside of seasonal workdays, thus LOV gatherings were born! 

This year we welcomed in blossoming flowers and warmer weather with our Spring LOV Gathering. We invited folks under the shade of the Pine Grove where we had a delicious spread from Indian Char House and took part in a writing workshop on dandelions led by Bitter Kalli. We reflected on our relationship with the plant through different prompts and then collaged in mini zines that accompanied our writings. Afterward, folks took home nettle and dandelion salves made by Bitter. Staff and LOVs thought it was a great way to begin the season by reflecting and bearing witness to the plants around us. 

As the season began winding down, we held our End of the Year Gathering down in our high tunnels where we were spoiled by a ‘Grits Bar’ cooked by Philadelphia’s own Chef Dobson. The menu included but was not limited to southwest-grown mustard greens, braised efo shoko, stewed field peas, tomato confit, and fried catfish all to accompany a hearty filling of creamy grits! LOVs gathered around tables to enjoy this delicious spread while catching up with one another over the season and it’s safe to say bellies were full and naps were ready to be had! But this was just a precursor to the in-person Orchard Design Workshop that gave our LOVs a chance to attend a hands-on version of POPCORE 4. Before our LOVs left for the day, we invited folks to take home homemade cherry preserves and honey harvested from our orchards. 

These gatherings have taken a shape of their own,  whether a space for reflection, for catching up over food, or skill sharing between LOVs, we’re grateful that our Learning Orchard was a space to hold these special moments for us this year.

Learning Orchard Events

Guests at the POP Orchard Celebration received a tour of the entire learning orchard, including the nursery and newly built and planted high tunnels

The POP team welcomed a variety of visitors to the Learning Orchard this season to learn, explore, and celebrate with us. We held a range of events that included a plant sale, tours, volunteer gatherings, and workshops: overall there 21 events welcoming at least 1,091 visitors. In the spring, we were joined by elected officials, funders, and partners to celebrate the completion of our high tunnels, which have continued to generate a lot of interest from the press and public. We also held our annual fall Orchard Celebration, honoring our 2024 Lead Orchard Volunteers and partners from Urban Creators. 

Throughout the year, we participated in The Woodlands’ Nature Night series, with Open Orchard hours and tours taking place during these events and on select weekends. We hosted several groups of visitors from the USDA’s PA office of Natural Resources Conservation Service, which recently provided funding for POP programs through their People’s Garden program. The POP team also welcomed youth from several different groups to the Learning Orchard: the Environmental Justice Brigade, Norris Square Neighborhood Project, Village of the Arts, and Share Food.

Plans for the Future

The POP team is again looking forward to new opportunities and challenges in 2025.  With more of our trees approaching maturity in the Learning Orchard, we expect to see expanded fruit production and to continue a slow shift away from sun-loving annuals to more shade tolerant alley cropping and companion planting options.  We will add zone 8 companion plantings to our high tunnel food forest and eagerly await production of new fruits.  The team will explore new ways to engage community and maximize learning opportunities in the space.  And we will begin planning our next big infrastructure project, an ‘Operations Barn’ building to be shared with The Woodlands. We hope to see you in the orchard next year!  

This POP Blog was written by POP Staff: Carolina Torres, Deja Morgan, Kim Jordan, Phil Forsyth and Sharon Appiah

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