NW Fruit (Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation)

WWFRF volunteers and board members are busily preparing for this year’s Summer Fruit Festival, to be held on August 18, 2012. This year we’ll have:

• Learn to start your espalier orchard or take it to the next level with workshops in the Display Garden, which features a large, mature espalier collection
• Learn to encourage harvest quality and quantity and discover different forms and methods for training
• Attend presentations on disease and pest control methods
• Join us as we demonstrate fruit preparation. A sampling of aronia-flavored sorbet will be available
• Guest speakers include Chef Graham Kerr, Raintree Nursery owner Sam Benowitz and Northwoods Nursery founder Jim Gilbert

We hope you will join us! Purchase entrance or read more about the event here.

Hi Everyone,

Tomorrow we will finish pruning the blueberries and then return to pruning the fruit trees. It should be a great day and maybe the warmest day of the year. We’ll start at 9am and end at noon.

Thank you to all those who helped out on the field day.

See you tomorrow.

Tom

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who attended our Winter Field Day on Saturday! It was a great success and the weather even held for us. Looking forward to seeing you at our next event – the Cherry Fruit Day in July!

Hello WWFRF friends! Last week Gary Moulton gave a 1 hour pruning course in the WSU auditorium. It was free and open to the public. Many of us garden veterans attended. We were already familiar with many thoughts about pruning but some concepts were nicely refreshed.

At the end Tom invited all attendees a chance to practice on our trees. And, we did get a couple new volunteers for Thursday morning.

The last 2 weeks we have been busy into pruning. Some concepts of pruning apply to all trees such as allowing light to penetrate or removing dead wood. In our fruit garden we only have a few identical trees. We enjoy a wonderful variety of fruit and cultivars. (It would be interesting to count just how many varieties of apples we have.) Since each tree is a little different each one requires its own plan of attack. Fortunately we have pruners willing to help any novices.

This tree pruning will continue for several more weeks. Soon we will begin blueberry pruning. Then we start thinning the tree fruit. Busy, busy, busy.

Please contact Ira if you can help out.

The Winter Field Day and Open House “All About Pruning” 2012 schedule is now available.  We’ll have specialized pruning workshops and lectures, fruit garden tours, rootstock and scion wood sales and much more!  See the full schedule here.  We hope to see you there!

Wednesday, February 8^th from 12pm to 1pm.
Main Auditorium, NWREC,  16650 State Route 536, Mount Vernon, WA

Gary Moulton will discuss Dormant Pruning for Fruit Trees.

This presentation will include the basics of pruning with an emphasis on the techniques and goals of dormant pruning. Participants will learn what issues can be addressed or exacerbated, the physiology of a tree’s response to pruning, along with what to look for when deciding to prune, or not to prune.

Hi Everyone,

I hope you enjoyed the snow. Now we will have to check if it and the recent winds damaged our trees. We will also continue to check for disease and start to fight same.

Remember that the Country Living Expo is this Saturday in Stanwood. For more information and a schedule of classes go to https://skagit.wsu.edu/countrylivingexpo.

Brad and Gary Moulton will be among the instructors.

See you tomorrow.