I am not by any means a spokesman for the STFS in Seattle, but I would like to explain a couple ways in which we intersect with Portland's HOS:
1. At today's yearly report of the STFS, the HOS was creditted with having a fantastic Fall Show. We were given advertising already for your Oct. 15th show planned next year, 2011 and we did not want to plan anything that conflicted with that date.
2. Shaun Shepherd has visitted us a number of times to ID apples and his name came up again as we considered having our Fall Show in October. (maybe Oct. 23rd, not sure....details TBA).
3. We are planning a trip to Nick Botner's place in Yoncalla Oregon and to the National Pear Clonal Geoplasm place (?) in Corvallis in mid-April. This may be of interest to Portland people as well if (and it is still an if) we go ahead with this plan. We are inviting other groups and are passing through Portland for this big trip.
4. Laure Jansen, our editor, is looking for articles for the monthly Seattle Tree Fruit Society newsletter. I suggested the HOS may be able to contribute an article or two. Why not? Our climates are similar and therefore so are our interests. Specifically, I would like to see an introductory article by LeeN (are you reading this?) or someone who would like to talk about the Bokashi composting method and, even more importantly, why we need to think about re-thinking how we do our backyard composting business. I sincerely believe if we "specialty interest" clubs take the initiative on this, eventually the media will follow.
Laure may want her email address made public.....I don't know....but I will offer my email address for anyone that thinks they have a relevant article to be published for our STFS newsletter. That only reaches 231 people but it is a start. these are all just brainstorming ideas at this point.
donricks@hotmail.com
Hello Don,
I wrote several articles for the HOS and offered them to David (apples and more) when he was president. I think he may have printed one, but I haven't seen him for awhile, or heard from him, so I stopped sending him articles.
We are having our own difficult situation as Ted Swensen is not sure if he can continue with the workload as editor of the HOS.
Who knows? This may turn into an opportunity for a joint newsletter. Stranger things have happened.
John S
PDX OR
John S., thanks for your reply. Dave Connor helped a lot with many things with STFS and was President of the society for a while and had the email address you referenced. That is the person you wrote to. He is now involved with other things (although he can ocassionally be coaxed into teaching about espalier pruning.)
The person now handling our Seattle newsletter is Laure Jansen. She gave me this address for anyone who has an article to be submitted:
seattletreefruitsociety@hotmail.com
Is the HOS newsletter monthly? Maybe that is too often and should be quarterly (or less?)
I definitely think some things can be shared with the various newsletters and some are just more appropriate only for the local press. For example in the last STFS newsletter I personally wrote an article about the Fowler Pear tree planted in 1863 and now still alive and kicking in the little city of Mukilteo north of Seattle. That is the kind of article that is mostly only appropriate for Seattle fruit enthusiasts.
Having said that, however, let me say that recently I was talking with a person who works with the original Ft. Nisqually area south of Tacoma, Washington and she told me the HOS had some people up here in this area that were "mapping" the old apple trees that were an outgrowth of some of the old apple trees planted by the Hudson Bay company up here in this Ft. Nisqually area.......gee whiz! I would like to find out who in the HOS was doing that.....at some time, that could be an article or research of mutual interest to both societies and I would like to share and get a composite of all the historic fruit trees we know of in both Oregon AND Washington.
Side note: There is also a "Beeline" newsletter that is provided for all of the organizations in Western Washington and this covers an even larger area. It is published quarterly and it had a recent article by Marilyn Tilbury on the spotted wing drosophilia that I am working to see if I can have printed here on this forum.....this is one more fruit newsletter worthy of interest.
Final note: This is a bit of an aside, but Lori Brakken is planning many events this spring and summer......this website link will surely be abridged as these plans start to firm up in the next month or so. Some of the upcoming events will intersect with those of Portland people when they get published.
http://www.seattletreefruitsoc.....m/calendar
Don:
Gee Don -- Thanks for volunteering me ! ! ! But yes I would attempt something if some parameters are established. Send that info or contact details in a direct email.
Be aware that I will be explaining my experience [the fly(s) and my compost pile last year], defining a need, and then making suggestions. Remember my system is still less than one month old.
As for an innoculant -- I have been thinking about trying one of those septic tank additives that contain inert encapsulated bacteria. Basically a proper functioning septic tank is an anaerobic system as is bokashi composting. I have an extra bucket but I don't know if I have enough compost to keep two (or more) buckets going.
Additionally, the Seattle group has a very good article entitled Spotted Wing Drosophila. Go to: [url:1nioghxh]http://seattletreefruitsociety.com[/url:1nioghxh] Look in the Resources Tab for an article by Joyce Harms.
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
1 Guest(s)