Pacific Northwest Fruit & Nut Growers

I forget who suggested blackberries in a greenhouse but thank you. my columbia [giant,sunrise,star] are crazy happy in my greenhouse and they should be a few weeks earlier than the outdoors planted ones. I think they’ll be my earliest fruit this year. it seems like a good use of space because I can train them to catch any otherwise-wasted sunlight and they start leafing out earlier than I can get tomatoes/peppers going

Some oddities to report for the first year in my brand new backyard orchard in Vancouver WA:

Last fall I bought a Hardired nectarine online from Nature Hills, sold as a very mature specimen with nice trunk but it was covered in peach leaf curl, all leaves were disfigured, poor thing. Well, this year it’s leafed out and it’s spotless, not a single leaf has peach leaf curl, it’s growing vigorously, probably just dumb luck because of our unusually dry and short spring. But I hope the nectarine does have the vigor to outgrow PLC since I bought it before I had done the research to find a more PLC resistant nectarine like Pacific Pride/Kreibich. It blossomed beautifully and its the centerpiece in my backyard!

Similarly, I bought a Seckel pear that was covered is pear-cedar rust from the Portland nursery and planted it in the fall. I diligently removed any fallen foliage in the fall. This spring it leafed out much healthier, just a dozen or so leaves with any rust, I plucked those leaves to stop the lifecycle and no more foliage has been affected, the new leaves are spotless and more than a dozen fruit have formed!

I wonder if the lack of disease issues are a matter of pure luck with the weather, or a matter of the fact I’ve planted them on a site with very sandy soil (it’s practically a river bed of rocks), full sun exposure (like 12 hours), spaced them a full 8-10’ apart for circulation, and completely killed by grass by sheet mulching and applying a thick layer of wood chip mulch (which supposedly helps prevent bacterial issues from splashing soil, but may also help regulate fungal pathogen overgrowth?)

This year I began an experiment with growing White Madeira in ground (it’s a sunny, southern spot), I hope it will thrive! I’m also picking up an I-258 fig today to plant in ground.

Also want to throw in a good word for “Online Orchards”, I picked up an all-in-one almond and OR curl free peach from them and they are healthy specimens with thick trunks. They are located in Forest Grove.

I placed a large Burnt Ridge nursery and large Raintree order for apples and pears this spring. I am satisfied with both orders, considering I was able to buy a lot more things at the lower price point that BR offers, but there is considerable variation in the maturity of the specimens you buy from them. The harglow apricot I got from Burnt Ridge was very mature, with large root system, whereas a couple of the apples I bought were effectively whips. Everything I got from Raintree came with large, mature trunks – I bought two pears (warren, buerre superfin), opal plum, emerald beaut plum, and a few apples (queen cox, rubinette, karmijn de sonnaville, and egremont russet).

Final observation is that I bought a golden nectar japanese plum from Portland Nursery and planted it near the bareroot Emerald Beaut I bought from Raintree. The Raintree plum is growing beautifully, leafing out nicely, despite me hacking off one of its roots during a transplant from one spot to another. The Golden Nectar has completely failed to leaf out, though it appears alive, it’s under stress and I’m guessing it’s because it was a rootbound, potted, mature specimen. I wonder if spring is a really bad time to plant potted trees, at least in the fall there’s more rain, less stress, so the potted trees I bought then seem to be doing better. My conclusion is bareroot >>> rootbound potted.

murky, its funny you would ask that question as I was recently debating whether to roll the dice on redhaven or plant an OR curl free…I eventually went with the OR curl free which Online Orchards reported was similar in fresh eating quality to Redhaven. I also read the report from UC that Redhaven has some resistant but other websites said it’s not so resistant in the PNW…Have you grown OR curl free and would you say the quality is comparable or is Redhaven better?

Pakistan mulberry is looking promising

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The salmon berries in southern bainbridge island are ripe and looking really cool

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Loquat putting out flower buds super late.


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Wow!- about 1/4 of my Betty peach set are doubles - that’s more than usual.
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Finding plenty of doubles and nubbins on my other peaches, too.

I think our PNW heat stress last July, August, September may be the cause. Good explanation below.

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NO. I can try but I seem to be having problems with my camera right now.
John S
PDX OR

Mine is loaded for the first time too.

BTW, I grafted Silk Hope to it. I meant to graft to root suckers, but 2 of the three were from low starting branches of Pakistan, and only one was on the rootstock. The one on the rootstock looks like it may have failed, and the other two doing great, and fruiting.

Lucky mistake.

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First berries of the season.


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Great looking berries. Snails (escargots) have discovered my garriguettes!

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What cultivars? My strawberries have been flowering barely more than a week now, and my honeyberries seem at least 2-3 weeks behind those. Everything is so late this year!

Strawberries are Earliglow, they are the earliest strawberries we’ve ever grown, by far. Very good taste as well. Would be happy to share this variety with you, if interested.
Honeyberry variety in the photo is Aurora, small plant still. My others are Boreal Blizzard and Tana. Also getting close to ripe. What honeyberry varieties are you growing?

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Mine are Blue Forest and Blue Moon, but they both flowered a lot less this year than last year (their first spring in the ground), and seem to be focusing on vegetative growth this year. I’m fine with that, they are still pretty small bushes.

Blue Forest flowered about a week or two before Blue Moon, and Blue Forest is near full-size but no sign of color changing yet. Here’s the most plump one on the bush:

Blue Moon hasn’t really started swelling yet:

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thanks… I’m always looking for something earlier. I put in albion two years ago for something earlier than hood, but those are still two weeks away right now. I got them very late in the season from gurney’s on clearance and they were still in great shape. I see stark has earliglow on sale right now… probably also in good shape. but I have no space

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This year I’ve been very lucky to have kept fireblight and black knot off of every fruit tree, (so far). Unfortunately, our almost summer like weather that continued right until the end of October last year seems to have contributed to extra heavy pressure from other pests.

The tent caterpillars this year are getting completely out of hand. My fruit trees are all clean of caterpillar nests, but my next door neighbors trees on 2 sides are just crawling with them. Their trees are covered in nests and a lot of these trees hang right above my fence. 75% of my fruit trees are planted as espalliers along my fence lines. It is like an airborn invasion as these caterpillars drop down onto my fence and trees.

I sprayed all my tees with BT, but I don’t think that will possibly put a dent in this army of thousands of catterpillers. I think no matter what I do many of my trees are going to be completely defoliated, (one has already). I’ve been picking them off my trees and stomping them as fast as I can, but I fear this is a going to be an unending losing battle.

How saddening to have gotten the diseases under control with a good winter spraying program, only to have a massive onslaught of destructive critters this year.

Top of fence post beneath neighbors trees:

One Apple branch:

Is their anything that can save my trees? BT ain’t going to cut into their numbers.

Ram, you and I had a conversation about Pakistan mulberry fruiting better in a container. This has proven to be true for me as well. Both my Pakistan white and black have set fruit a year after a graft. While my 5 year old Pakistan black in ground still has no fruit. My 2 Pakistan blacks are from different sources so it’s possible they are from a different strain.

The only down down side to growing in pots is that mulberries dry up the pot very quickly. Need constant watering.

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Root restriction works on all tree varieties I believe. I have potted persimmons absolutely loaded with flower buds. Ones in ground of the same age keep growing but no buds.

Mulberries in particular need to be brought down in vigor and then they start producing heavily.

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I got pink panda flowering with pineberries all over. I must have a hundred.

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columbia giant blackberry (thornless trailing. newish osu release). a little early because it’s in my greenhouse. I’m curious how well they develop because I don’t think they were visited much by pollinators

columbia giant

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