Tree Harvest
Share your fruit with the community.
Got Fruit?
Have a fruit tree that produces more than you can use? We can help pick and share it! When your fruit is ripe, we’ll send over a team of fruit pickers to harvest your tree and split the harvest three ways – ⅓ is offered to you, ⅓ is shared amongst the volunteers, and ⅓ is delivered by cargo bike to a social service agency in your community. See the fruit ripening timeline when when your tree is ready for harvesting.
Tree Registrant Membership
To grow and sustain Toronto’s fruit harvest, we ask Tree Registrants to become a member and contribute just $40/year to cover the costs of the harvest and support the expansion of our program. Your support of $40/year allows you to request unlimited picks, and you’ll also receive discounts at our local business partners. We’ll also clean your yard of fallen fruit. Membership expires on January 1st every year.
Where We Pick
We operate in the downtown core, south of Eglinton, east of Jane, west of Victoria Park, and north of the waterfront. We are operating in Etobicoke (Royal York, The Gardiner and Dundas) and Scarborough (Birchmount, St. Clair East, to the Bluffs).
Your Impact
By sharing your bounty with NFFTT, you make an impact directly in your community. Your yard becomes a hotbed for community connection, bringing people from all walks to life together to enjoy the bounty. ⅓ of the fruit from your tree is donated directly to a social service agency in your neighbourhood. Together these agencies feed over 4,000 people and incorporate your fruit into meals for their clients.
How it works
Step 1: Register Your Tree
First thing’s first – sign up on our online portal and provide us with some basic information about your fruit tree(s). You’ll pay a $40 membership fee for the season, and then you’re all set!
Step 2: Request a Pick
Once your fruit is ripe, request a pick using our online portal. You’ll provide us with a window when we can harvest your tree, and we’ll be in touch as soon as one of our Pick Leaders has scheduled your pick.
Frequently asked questions
Nope! Only if you must be home to give us access to your yard. We’ll take care of your property and leave everything as we found it.
Fruit picks last for a maximum of two hours. Sometimes there’s so much fruit our volunteers can’t get it all in two hours. If that’s the case, you can always request another pick, and we’ll do our best to return as soon as we can.
We have over 1,800 trees registered with our program and do our best to meet every pick request. All picks are run by our amazingly dedicated volunteers, and while we’ll try our best to find a group for your tree, sometimes we just can’t meet every request. To help us grow our capacity, please consider becoming a Pick Leader, or making a donation to support the expansion of our program.
We pick as much as we can in two hours but keep in mind our volunteers aren’t professional arborists. Sometimes we can’t quite get every single fruit – especially if your tree is a tall one.
Because our volunteer leaders arrive via cargo bike, unfortunately they can’t carry a ladder to the pick. If your tree is tall, please do your best to provide a ladder so volunteers can pick as much fruit as possible. If you don’t own one, we encourage you to borrow from a neighbour or the Toronto Tool Library.
If either you or the Pick Leader cancels the pick, it is your responsibility to indicate to us that you would like to reschedule. You must sign into your profile on the Portal to cancel or re-schedule your pick for a later date. Please do so at least 24 hours before your pick so we have time to notify the volunteer fruit pickers.
Unfortunately, this does happen from time to time. With some fruits (especially cherries and berries), there’s a very short time window between them being ripe and them falling off the branches. Birds, squirrels, or raccoons may have also beaten us to the fruit. Whatever the case, please cancel your pick on the Portal, and we’ll hope for better luck next season!
Fruit Ripening Timeline
