Portland Nursery has a helpful brochure that is a pruning calendar for the NW region. (If the link doesn’t load, try refreshing it once or twice…) Judging by their expertise, I should set in pruning my fruit trees and grape vines in February. I have done some pruning before but I tend to get carried away. This should be the first year my fruit trees and shrubs produce a healthy amount of fruit, so there is more at stake this year if I do a bad job. I don’t want to miss out on baskets of fruit because I can’t contain how neurotic I get hacking things back.
I was thinking I would take my chances and rely on my armchair research from various gardening books, including my Western Sunset book, to guide me. However, I just discovered this this pruning workshop the Portland Parks & Rec are hosting this weekend which is free and sounds very informative. How perfect is that? The only downside is that it’s at 9:30 am on a Saturday… Being the dead of winter, and the fact that I need lots of coffee to be around people, I have talked my sister into going with me, so we can be groggy together. A strong coffee run will have to be our pit stop on the way to the workshop.
If I learn something valuable I will be sure to share! Should be some good motivation to soak up a couple hours of the cold sunshine in the weather forecast for Portland.
