Pacific Northwest Fruit & Nut Growers

I went through their facebook posts one time to look for varieties and that’s the list I had plus an unknown PF (they didn’t say which). the cool thing about their variety spread is it’s heavy on early and mid season stuff and their last thing is veteran, so it seems like they’re deliberately skipping the last month or so. that would make a lot of sense for a part time business where you want to open for a couple months, sell out, and not work all summer. also avoids needing to do brown rot treatments because they should close up before the rain starts most years

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I just crunched the numbers:

Station KPDX – Portland Intl Airport
Lowest annual temperatures for 2021 > 1992 (30 years) averaged 20.9 degrees = USDA zone 9a
(the most recent USDA map published is dated 2012)

Most outlying areas near Portland are likely several degrees colder, still in zone 8b.

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do you think that’s because of an urban heat island or the effect of the columbia river being right there or what? where I live in eugene the city can be a couple degrees warmer than outlying areas, I think because of both of those things, so the freezes I see are usually not as bad as the forecasts (which commonly use the eugene airport station, which is rural and away from the river)

I was curious about that too so I have been looking at WUnderground data but I have not been able to find annual history for any of the local stations yet. They all refer to PDX for annual history.

The Portland Airport is in a complex location for temperature measurements. It is somewhat removed from industry and housing, but there is plenty of pavement around. Offsetting this is the cold Columbia River just to the north. Complicating this is the gorge wind. Where most people live in Portland, those factors are not as prevalent.

You should be able to find years of data for most of the NOAA/NWS stations here:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/search?datasetid=GHCND

Get them in CSV format to import into Excel or Google sheets.

I did that same USDA zone calculation in this thread a little while back for the official Seattle station:

I am wanting to compare my location to the NOAA/NWS location (PDX airport). WU has way more stations. There are a couple in my neighborhood.

NOAA usually has at least two or three in each city besides the official main one.

Edit: here’s the map of available stations around Portland, or at least the ones with “Portland” in their name (and the ones with numbers on them represent multiple stations close together):

Notice that for many of them they have only a few years of records, but there are a few that go way back.

Great weather data above.
Hope OK to change topic to tomatoes!
Growing tomatoes outdoors is a race against time in my upper reaches of the maritime PNW .
But growing certain tomatoes in ghouse (45low- 94high) has proved very successful. I start seedlings indoors (70F) on Jan 1, transplant to 60F greenhouse on March 1, and have tomatoes June 1 - Nov 30. Blossom-end rot solved by having soaker on a timer. Aphids controlled by release of ladybugs and/or green lacewings. Otherwise no disease pressure.

Have tried many heirlooms over the years but the variety I am now sold on is Big Dena (from Johnny’s Selected Seeds). Great classic sweet/tart flavor on blemish-free, perfectly round orbs. Friends are now asking for starts to grow their own.

Raised in RI where eating fantastic tomatoes was normal, I have finally have approached that memory with indoor Big Dena.

If you have other great ghouse varieties, I’m interested!
IMG_0834

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How much space (in sq ft) do you dedicate to the greenhouse tomatoes, and how many plants? With such a long season it seems like the plants could get a little unwieldy unless you’re pinching/pruning regularly. I have had reasonable success outside but usually the indeterminates seem like they are just hitting their stride when the rains return in Sept and put an end to that. My greenhouse is starting to get crowded but you have me tempted to find room for a couple tomatoes.

Bid Dena is indeterminant. I prune to a central leader and can stay on top of things till August/Sept when I prune off all new growth and concentrate on following through on the fruitlets.
A really good tasting determinate would be a better choice but I have not found one.
Big Dena is marketed as a ghouse variety. I don’t know the limiting criteria but it certainly does well in ghouse. Great taste.

I grow 6 tomatoes indoors in a 4x12 space. Yes it’s a jungle! But 1 plant would do fine!

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The “Portland” NOAA search results shown above are mostly non-Oregon.
The only lengthy datasets in the area besides KPDX (airport) are Troutdale and KGW_TV downtown. Even Hillsboro does not go back 30 years.

Their search is unfortunately very clunky, and if you search by station name (like I did), it only shows stations on the map that include that term in their name, while the result list also shows results from elsewhere as you noted. You can also by zip code in the search options, and that will compile all the stations in your zip code. For mine, that’s only records since 2008, but Boeing Field is relatively nearby with records going back to the 1940s. In general, finding your nearest small air strip or airport will be your best bet for older records, but most cities have at least a few stations with 30+ years of records.

If you know an exact station code or name, you can search by that instead.

@LarryGene Here some data comparing the monthly the low temperature PDX airport to a couple of Weather Underground Stations around Portland. What I see is that 1) The temperature at PDX has less variation 2) It is generally 1-2 degrees warmer

PDX Bull Mtn. Woodstock
-ref- Tigard, OR Portland, OR
--------- NOAA ---- WU ----- ----- WU -----
Month temp temp delta temp delta
Jan-20 30 - - 26.1 -3.9
Feb-20 28 - - 25.5 -2.5
Nov-20 30 - - 28 -2
Dec-20 27 - - 27.9 0.9
Jan-21 27 29.8 2.8 26.8 -0.2
Feb-21 24 23.5 -0.5 22.8 -1.2
Nov-21 33 30.4 -2.6 34.3 1.3
Dec-21 26 23.5 -2.5 24.6 -1.4
Jan-22 25 21.6 -3.4 22.3 -2.7
Feb-22 24 23.2 -0.8 23.4 -0.6

You could order a rootstock from Fowler nursery in Ca, referred to by locals as “Puente”, it’s a Lovell peach rootstock with an Adara grafted top. Onto each Adara limb you can graft any plum or peach variety and they will all be compatible grafts. I have three that I ordered and planted last year. This year I will add my last peach varieties to two of them and my last plum varieties to the third. If your space is limited, this is a great way to get variety if you graft.
Dennis
Kent, wa

This sounds very interesting, but I don’t see it listed on their website:

I wonder if they no longer carry it?

It’s possible they discontinued, if you want to know for certain call and ask for Margherit, their residential sales rep. She helped me, she will know their products available to individuals. You could of course make your own by growing a peach seedling and grafting the Adara plum interstem and just let it produce graftable limbs. I am rooting some Adara and some cherry plum cuttings now so if you want to go that route, I can provide them. I am using both Adara and cherry plum interstems to top work my sweet cherry trees into other stonefruit.
Dennis
Kent, wa

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Mark, your column 2 data for individual day monthly lows matches up nicely.

@LarryGene are you doing this with an xls or google sheet?
Could we collaborate? I you share I could load the data or point you to it?
I was looking for the delta rather than trying to calculate the value.
Also note that Weather Underground is just people that put weather stations on their roof. Sometimes there is missing data. They are definitely not NOAA.

Mark, I edited my text above during your read. I was curious about the 3-significant values for your column 3 and 5 temperatures. Apparently WU temp dailies are in tenths.

The table I posted above is from a software tool coded by myself using HTML+css+Javascript, and NOAA daily summary data. I will post the input data format later. Daily WU data would have to be rounded to the nearest integer.