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Here's why San Antonians planted trees in the cold weather

The first trees in a Padre Park food forest take root.

SAN ANTONIO — Volunteers showed up Saturday to sow the seeds of a new food forest on San Antonio’s south side despite the official event being pushed to next week.

In Padre Park, something new is taking root. On Saturday, volunteers planted 18 of the 60 fruit and nut trees for a free community food forest, along with a lot of mushrooms.

“The mushrooms eat stuff, decay, and from that decay, feed nutrients to the tree,” Brandon Vondera said, breaking up a clump of mushroom spores to mix into the soil around one tree.

Most of the planting was pushed to next week because of the weather, but several people still showed up in the cold, misty weather, to put these first roots down.

“I love this weather, not the rain part, but the temperature, works for me,” Cheryl Johnson said, standing next to a large pile of mulch she had been raking into other volunteers’ wheelbarrows.

Johnson recently move to San Antonio from New York. For her, it was a good way to help and to meet some new people.

“And I got to meet some, look – she’s been out here two weeks now.”

She says she was a bit surprised when she heard what the project was for.

“I was like, really? Can you just walk up to a tree and pluck what you want to pluck? So, I was a little skeptical so that’s more reason why I came out myself.”

Bexar County and the City of San Antonio are collaborating on the forest through the Food Policy Council. The land is on a flood plain, so rather than being developed, it’s going to provide free food to an under-served area.

“We want these to be high-yield producing fruit and nut trees, so that’s the goal,” Vondera said.

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