Harvesting extra urban fruit

How homeowners can get involved
Not all fruit is gathered from city-owned trees and bushes, another important source of urban fruit are homeowners who either don’t want, don’t know what to do with or simply can’t consume all that their own trees’ produce. Most fruit foraging groups maintain a registry—add your name and tree if you have some fruit to share or a maple to tap. And, if you’d like to organize a fruit gathering group in your area, here’s a link to a PDF offering step by step, how-to advice.

Urban fruit harvesting is just one more aspect of the very important issue of food solidarity and security. More folks are turning their back and (in some cases) front yards into tiny, urban farms, complete with fruit trees and berry bushes. At the same time, there is also more pressure being put on municipalities to plant fruit bearing trees instead of ornamentals. All of this will add up to even more fruit for the taking. So put on your fruit goggles and get picking!

Fruit gleaning groups across the country:

• St-John’s Fruit Tree Project, St John’s, Newfoundland
• Mississauga Fruit Tree, Mississauga, Ontario
• The Hamilton Fruit Tree Project, Hamilton, Ontario
• Appleseed Collective, Guelph, Ontario
• Fruit Share Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• The Calgary Urban Harvest Project, Calgary, Alberta
• Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton, Edmonton, Alberta
• Earth Matters Fruit Tree Project, Nelson, BC
• The Richmond Fruit Tree Project, Richmond, BC
• The Vancouver Fruit Tree Project, Vancouver, BC
• Lifecycles Fruit Tree Project, Victoria, BC

Read more in Food & Entertaining and In Season