Philadelphia Orchard Project

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Philadelphia Orchard Project

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Mission. The Philadelphia Orchard Project plants and supports community orchards in the city of Philadelphia.

POP partners with a wide variety of community groups, providing them with an orchard design, plant sourcing, planting supervision, and training in orchard care. Our community partners own, maintain, harvest, and distribute the orchard produce within their neighborhoods, thus expanding community control over their food resources. POP currently supports 67 community orchards and has planted 1,578 fruit trees over the last 15 years!

10/27/2026

We are celebrating persimmons, one of our favorite fall fruits! A beautiful and delicious harvest throughout October and into November that really extends our season of tree fruit production. And of all the fruit trees we grow, it is the easiest and most consistent! Few if any pest and disease impacts and resilient to weather impacts through their late emergence from dormancy.

Hachiya is among our favorite varieties and we find astringent types are more resistant to squirrels. Wait until fully soft to eat, but we find they ripen well off the tree!

The Matsumoto Wase culitivar was especially productive at the POP Learning Orchard at the Woodlands this year!

The Woodlands

On top are the smaller Nikita’s Gift persimmons, a hybrid between American and Asian species with some of the best qualities of both.

Our latest harvest distro to Get Fresh Daily for the Black Farmers Market.

Get Fresh Daily

Still a few fall raspberries out there!

And maypops (native passion fruit) also extend into late October!

10/15/2026

We had a great workday at the Hort Center food forest this week! We love to watch the season change between all the layers of this space.

Pop staff and volunteers after weeding

Bee on the asters

Fading pawpaw leaves

Beauty berry

Lemon balm

Daniel and the fig

Paths between spice bush and Nanking cherry bushes

Phil under the peach

Milkweed leaf losing its color

10/14/2026

It’s orchard planting season!

Fall is actually the best time of year to plant most perennial plants, including trees, shrubs, vines, and perennial flowers and herbs. Planting in fall allows for two seasons of cooler weather for plants to get established before the heat of summer. Our preferred planting time is early October through mid November. Fall plantings should be watered twice a week until they go fully dormant.

The only orchard plants we generally prefer spring for planting are tender ones that don’t like the cold (like figs, pomegranates, rosemary, etc) and evergreen ones (stone pines, grape hollies, etc), which can dry out in winter conditions.

October is also time for garlic planting! Garlic is a great intercrop for orchards, as it gets started after leaves have dropped in fall and in the spring before trees have leafed out. We get good production in conditions too shady for other annuals. Forr this reason it’s the only annual crop we’re still planting in our maturing food forest at the POP Learning Orchard at the Woodlands.

Volunteers planting garlic this week as an alley crop in the POP Learning Orchard!

10/08/2026

We are delighted to share our newly updated Community Orchard Design Guide! 🔗 "Resources" link in bio.

Our goal for the 2026 update was to break down the design process into practical and digestible steps. We are so pleased with where we landed and what we learned in the process. The full guide includes a lot more than this preview, including our complete orchard plant list. Please check it out and share!

1. Community Input: What are the vision, history, and practicalities to consider?
2. Base Map: A birds-eye-view map drawn to scale.
3. Site Analysis: Note environmental conditions, including sun, terrain, and soil.
4. Bubble Plan: Sketch zones. Decide how things fit together.
5. Draft Design: Select and place plants.
6. Feedback, Final Design, and Action Plan

09/17/2026

Yum! September is always our favorite harvest month and makes us want to dance. Pictured here are Asian pears, figs, maypops, and even a few early persimmons!

All we grow at the POP Learning Orchard at the Woodlands gets donated via partner groups like Get Fresh Daily, Food Not Bombs, People’s Kitchen and Punks with Lunch.

The Woodlands Get Fresh Daily Food Not Bombs West Philly South Philly Punks with Lunch The People’s Kitchen of Philadelphia

This 3 pound pawpaw could feed a family!

Phil with pawpaw baby.

We hope you’ve all had a chance to try a pawpaw this season! Last chance is Pawpaw Palooza in East Fairmount Park this Saturday (check our website).

Grapes are a September fruit too! These are Catawba.

Asian pears start ripening in August and continue through September depending on the variety.

September is peak fig season! Our favorite is the Larchwood variety we propagated from a tree in West Philly.

Trifoliate oranges!

Che fruit!

We are eternally grateful to all our volunteers that help make these harvests possible!

09/14/2026

Please join us for another round of POPCORE: Community Orchard Resilience Education! Our final public workshop this year is about Orchard Design. The workshop will introduce participants to food forest principles, base maps, and considerations for plant selection and placement.

We will be using real examples from POP orchards to walk folks through our design process, and you'll get a chance to practice parts of the process yourself. Come learn with us, share your experiences, and build connections with orchardists across the city.

Sat, Oct 10, 1:00 - 3:30 pm
at the POP Learning Orchard
4000 Woodland Ave

🔗 Visit the EVENTS link in our bio to sign up.

09/08/2026

One of the significant insect pests still active in orchards into the fall is the greater peach tree borer (Synanthedon exitosa). It can cause major damage and even kill trees in the stone fruit family!

Greater peach tree borer is a moth. The adults have orange bands and transparent wings, but are rarely seen. The larvae are pinkish-white caterpillars that bore into the trunks where they feed just under the bark in the cambium. The larvae primarily attack tree trunks at or below the soil line, but may enter trunks up to 12 inches above the ground. Extensive larval feeding can girdle and kill trees.

Visual symptoms include dead bark peeling off of damaged areas and masses of gummy sap mixed with sawdust and frass exuding from entry and exit holes. Leaves of affected limbs will turn yellow and wilt and the tree canopy will eventually die back. Active season starts in July and may run through the fall.

There are a number of strategies to deal organically with the peach tree borer:

1. Find the entry holes near base of trunk and stab individual larvae with a length of wire inserted into their burrows.
2. Rub off loose bark and saturate trunk with neem oil spray. Or add diotomaceous earth or plaster of paris to a trunk whitewash.
3. You can purchase specific nematodes to apply directly to the soil via water around the trunk or injected directly into borer holes with large syringes. It’s best to apply these microscopic parasites in the evening or on a cloudy day to avoid drying out. Research has shown that the carpocapsae nematodes may be the most effective.

You can read more about peach tree borer and other challenges in POP’s updated Pest and Disease Guide. See the Resources page linked in our bio.

Gummosis and frass at the base of stone fruit trees is the most common sign of peach tree borer damage.

The adult moths are distinctive but rarely seen.

The larvae burrow in and eat the cambium layer at the base of stone fruit trees. They can kill a tree rapidly if untreated!

09/03/2026

Open Orchard hours this month are Sat 9/26 from 5-7pm at The Woodlands.

Come out and explore the POP Learning Orchard at the beautiful and historic Woodlands Cemetery in West Philly. A guided tour of the orchard, nursery, and high tunnels will be offered.

This is a free event but donations to support POP’s ongoing programs are appreciated.

🔗 Check the EVENTS link in bio for details.

08/24/2026

Some of the most common questions around harvests are:

1. How do I know if it’s ready to pick?
2. Do I need to put it in the fridge?

In our Harvest Guide pamphlet we try to share just that and a touch more. Check out our most recent blog for more harvest resources on upcoming fall fruits!

What harvest questions do you have?

🔗 Blog and Resources links in bio.

08/24/2026

Address

4000 Woodland Avenue
Philadelphia, PA
19104

Telephone

+12157241247

Website

https://linktr.ee/PhillyOrchards

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