Edible Plant Sale

Pre-order: now through March 31 Click here for order forms and catalog
Plant pick-up: Saturday, April 18th, 10 am to 4 pm (New American, 2103 N. Killingsworth Ave.)

Create an abundant food forest in your yard or just add a few fun fruit and berry bushes to your landscape. Resilience Design Landscaping is holding a pre-order plant sale with pick-up at the Sustainable Overlook Spring Gardening Fair. Order from a selection of hardy fruit trees, berry bushes and fruiting vines, plus veggie and herb starts and seeds. Offerings will include apples, persimmons, blueberries, rhubarb, kiwi and much more. All the plants are locally grown (many right here in Overlook) and are organic and/or Salmon Safe Certified. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Sustainable Overlook’s neighborhood outreach projects and pesticide-free Arbor Lodge Park.

Order forms are available at www.resiliencedesign.com. Pick up your plant order on Saturday, April 18th and check out our spring info fair in front of New American with natural gardening resources from Metro, co-sponsor North Portland Food Not Lawns and more.

The Fruit Tree Pruning Workshop has been rescheduled for Saturday, February 28th from 9 am to noon at Daybreak Cohousing. There is still time to learn proper pruning technique and get your trees in good shape for the year. Click here to register.

PLEASE NOTE: This workshop has been rescheduled for Saturday, February 28th. Click here to register.

Winter Pruning – Fruit Trees

Daybreak Cohousing Community Room – 2525 N. Killingsworth Ave.
January 17th, 2015 – 9 am to noon

Apples. Photo: Monica Maggio

Good, timely pruning can improve the shape, strength, and fruit set of your trees while simultaneously helping to reduce pest and disease pressure. Certain fruit trees benefit from winter pruning (Jan-Feb), while others benefit greatly from summer pruning (June-Aug). In this class we will cover the fruit trees that are best pruned in the winter, general pruning theory, as well as specific techniques to help you learn how to make the best cuts on your fruit trees with confidence and skill! Methods taught are organic and incorporate permaculture principles.

Taught by local fruit tree expert Monica Maggio of Core Fruit Institute.

$10 suggested donation. Donate by cash or check at the class or use the donate button on our about page to contribute by credit/debit.

Please register by emailing sustainable@overlookneighborhood.org with your name and contact info.

Cosponsored by Daybreak Cohousing and Sustainable Overlook

Summer pruning fruit trees.

Overlook to host its first Sustainability Summit

by Josh Cabot

The Overlook Neighborhood has a built-in fabric of amazing individuals that always seem busy with activities aimed at bettering our community’s health, livability and resilience.  The folks that volunteer for Sustainable Overlook have met some of these amazing individuals over the past few years and would like to “circle the wagons” with these inspiring individuals and the neighborhood at large to learn more about the efforts of each group and how we can all coordinate our efforts to continue improving this place we call home.

With this idea in mind, we would like to announce the first Overlook Sustainability Summit to be held on Saturday February 21st, of the quickly approaching 2015.  The event will be organized into three chapters of presentations and whole-room discussions that focus on the three primary dimensions of sustainability:  ecology, economy and equity.  Topics such as going pesticide free, building even greater support for our local small businesses and supporting social justice at this micro level will all be woven into the conversation. Taken as a whole, we hope that this event will help us to better understand the landscape of community activism happening in our neighborhood and help to grow an even stronger community network.

The total running time will be about 4 hours and will include lunch by New American.  This event is open to anyone: whether you’re a local neighbor interested in bettering our little piece of Portland or perhaps a farther flung citizen that would like to learn more and/or provide insights about your own neighborhood’s quest for more sustainable living.

Sustainable Overlook will sponsor the event, however a donation of $10 is suggested for anyone who might want to attend so that we can defray some of the event costs.  If you would like to participate, either as an attendee, event assistant or panel presenter, please e-mail Josh Cabot at sustainable@overlookneighborhood.org.  Hope to see you there!

Are you interested in learning about how to prepare for and be of service in the event of a disaster? Two NET/CERT classes are coming up in Portland that provide training.

Portland’s class is 9/20, 9/27, 10/6 This course has pre-requisites that can be found here: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/58587

University of Portland’s course begins on Sept 10th and runs 9 weeks from 1600 – 1900 hrs each Wednesday evening, with a final exercise on Nov 8th.

Overlook’s NET team is meeting this Thursday, September 4th at the Lucky Lab Tap Room on N. Killingsworth from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Come join the lively discussion.

Want to know what you can do for bees? Here’s a talk presented by Overlook Neighbor Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation where he works to protect and promote pollinators and their habitat. Rich also helped develop and launch www.BumbleBeeWatch.org, a citizen science website aimed at tracking the status of all of North America’s bumble bees.

Where: Portland REI
1405 NW Johnson St, Portland, OR 97209

When: April 30, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Presented by: Rich Hatfield, the Xerces Society

This event is free and open to the public!

Bees and other pollinators are essential to our environment. They help more than 75% of the world’s plant species reproduce, and in turn are responsible for nearly one in three bites of the food we consume. While we continue to demand more of their services, the pressures on pollinators are mounting, and many trends are alarming. Come learn how well our pollinators are faring, and learn what you can do to help. Included in the talk will be practical advice on how to convert most any area of land into pollinator habitat, as well as the information needed to participate in our new citizen science project, Bumble Bee Watch, while exploring the Pacific Northwest and beyond!

Register for the event here.