NW Fruit (Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation)

Since the 1st Saturday of July is during the 4th of July weekend we will be having our next webinar on July 10, 2021 at 10 am. Special guest Bob Gillespie, a newly retired faculty member and Program Director for the Agriculture and Natural Resources Programs at Wenatchee Valley College who taught courses in Integrated Pest Management, Field based IPM, Entomology, Plant Science, and Sustainable Agriculture in the Ag Program will be teaching about pollinators and other topics within his field of expertise.

Bob will be helping us at NW Fruit explore ways that we can create habitat in or near the Fruit Garden for pollinators and beneficial insects, spiders, and mites which can help reduce pest levels.

Check back about June 25th to see a video preview of Bob teaching about insects.

Our webinar on June 5th will have a video showing Bob Baines demonstrating his technique for thinning fruit and pruning branches at the same time. This technique is appropriate for apples and pears over the next month or so. After the video Bob will answer questions.

Here is a preview of Bob’s presentation video. The preview is only about a minute and a half, but there is about 30 minutes blank at the end so don’t be alarmed and think it is so long. Sorry about that. (Kim Siebert)

Register in advance for this free webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xepEFGbRT7a9YthUk0jEkg

We will start with Sam Benowitz talking about rootstocks followed by a presentation by Bob Baines called A Guided Virtual Tour of the Fruit Garden, followed by a Q & A session.

Register in advance for this webinar:
Click here

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

The webinar for June 5th will be on “Fruit Thinning and Pruning for Controlling Tree Size”, with Bob Baines,

We will still be having Richard Fairfield talking about the new support structures for the Kiwis and Blueberry netting, but instead of blueberry pruning we will have a video with Kiwibob teaching how to winter prune kiwis. Kiwis need to be pruned twice a year, in January and July. We already have a video with Kiwibob on how to do the summer pruning of kiwis at the bottom of this page. This video on winter pruning of kiwis has never been shown because although he did this class in 2017, I didn’t get around to editing it until now. (Kim Siebert)

If you are a current member we will be sending you an email with the link to view the webinar from last Saturday within a couple of days. Please make sure your email is accepting emails from nwfruit.membership@gmail.com, which is the email we use to send out newsletters and notifications.

We will be covering growing blueberries and our blueberry net structure we use at the Fruit Garden in Mount Vernon. More information to come.

Click here to find an updated version of our Best Varieties handout.

Our next Webinar will be Saturday March 6th at 10 am.

There has been a change to our schedule for the webinar tomorrow. The schedule will be as follows:
10:00 am Selection of Fruit Trees for the Home Garden
10:30 am Annual Membership Meeting followed by a break
10:40 am Short video on how to collect and store scion wood
10:45 am Presentation on Grafting
12:00 pm Selection of Rootstocks
Q & A With Bob & Sam

You can still register for this webinar by clicking here.

Below is the schedule. You may watch any or all of the presentations you are interested in watching.

10 am  We will start with a short video on how to cut and store scionwood. Then Bill Davis will give a presentation on grafting followed by a Question & Answer time.

11 am We will have our Annual Membership Meeting to elect Board members. Non-members may attend the meeting, but not vote.

11:20 am  Bob Baines – A Beginner’s Guide to Selection of Fruit Trees for the Home Garden.

11:40 am Sam Benowitz -  Rootstock Selection.

Finally we will have a question and answer session where you can ask your questions about growing fruit with Bob Baines and Sam Benowitz.

Please click here to register for the webinar, which is free to all but we have a limited number of slots available.

We have received news that Dr. Bob Norton, who was the the supervisor for Washington Sate University’s Research Station at Mount Vernon for 30 years starting in the early 60’s, passed away yesterday. Dr. Norton was a frequent speaker at out Winter Field Day. We will have an article about Dr. Norton in our June newsletter.