I just ate one of mine- it was almost soft when picked and is luscious now 3 days of room temps later. No graininess, just a really pleasant tasting Bartlett type pear with good sugar and juice. It is part of a pear fence surrounding my vegetable garden and is extremely productive. I can't remember how precocious they are but I'm sure not unusually slow to come in bearing here. I waited to harvest this year until fruit was falling on the ground which would be too late for some pears, but not HD. Even fruit on the ground was still good and not excessively soft unless you want a crisp pear. I stopped growing them in my nursery years ago just because I'm not excited about eating pears in Aug. and my customers are usually content to be harvesting only peaches and plums then, but the one I just ate is so good I may reconsider. Location, location. This tree is pruned very open as a semi-espalier. It was summer pruned over a month ago. One I manage at another site pruned more conventionally (less aggressively and as a well branched central leader) gets bigger fruit but of almost equal quality and huge crops most every year. Most of the fruit goes to waste because the owners are concentrating on plums, peaches and nectarines at the time it bears.

I grew Sweetness when it was a J&P test rose a couple of years ago. At first I was very impressed with it's vigorous growth, but then it bloomed and I fell out of love very quickly. Almost as fast as the blooms blew!! My Sweetness blooms only lasted a maximum of six days and then were shot. The color was nice and the fragrance was okay, but not as nice as other lavenders. Then, the most frustrating thing was it's lack of rebloom. The first flush produced about 8 good flowers and the entire rest of the year I only got about 5 more flowers. Ditto the second year as well. Good first Spring flush and then almost nothing the rest of the year. And, the blooms still didn't last more than six days or so. When I cut them for vases in the house they didn't fare any better either. Then, it's third year I transplanted it from it's container to a spot in the garden and the darned thing just up and dried up and died on me. So, no more Sweetness and no great loss as far as I am concerned. As for Neptune, I have tried growing two of them and both were duds. They had no growth vigor, bloomed rarely, and the blooms were not very pretty to look at. I gave each bush three years to improve and they didn't so they both got the shovel. I think that Fragrant Plum, Melody Parfumee, Lagerfeld, and Royal Amethyst are much better lavenders than either Sweetness or Neptune. Another lavender to watch for is the J&P lavender test rose in this years J&P Test Panel roses. This one is a darker lavender, has very thick petal substance so the flowers last a good long time, and they are wonderfully fragrant. The bush has lots of blooms and looks like it is going to be quick to repeat bloom. It is a grandiflora rather than a hybrid tea, but the blooms are still nice and large compared to most grandiflora's that I have grown. Of course J&P hasn't named it or even decided for sure to market it commercially yet, but I am very confident that they will as it looks to be a very high quality rose so far. It was very quick to break dormancy after I planted the bareroot plant. And, it has grown and bloomed very vigorously and so far has not shown any sign of disease at all and it hasn't been sprayed at all. I don't spray the test roses so that I can really assess their disease resistance. Anyway, watch for this one if/when J&P decides to name it and start selling it commercially on their website. I would really recommend it highly. John

Gayle, We have 10 acres of woods filled with poison ivy and virginia creeper too. We cleared the poison ivy away from the 'edges' where the woodland meets the open pastures and we cleared the poison ivy away from the yard area around the house, but left the rest for the bees, butterflies, birds, etc. We manage to more or less cut pathways through the woods every year so we can walk through them and that involves removing a little poison ivy too, but otherwise we leave it alone. We leave all the wildflowers we can too. Sometimes it drives Tim crazy that he has to drive around patches of wildflowers while mowing, but he does it. After moving here, it didn't take me long to learn that every native plant we have here feeds something, so we have left most all of them in place. And, when landscaping the yard, often we just dig up a native tree sapling or ground cover or collect wildflower seed and add the native plants to our landscape. To me, it wouldn't make any sense to take out the native plants, and replace them with imported non-natives that don't feed the wild things. We don't have a bee hive like you do but we have tons of native bees around year round. When food is sparse in the winter, they seem to feed at the deer corn. I remember you mentioned a while back that you were taking a bee-keeping course. We need a bee update! Dawn

Are the Corno di Toro better than the typical yellow bells you get in the grocery store? I don't know why anybody eats those. They often have a bitter undertaste and no particular flavor otherwise. Have you tried the "regular" red Corno di Toro? I wonder how the red and yellow varieties compare to each other. I prefer red bells. The green bells are ok. All the other colors I've ever had are just not very good, either with off flavors or no flavor to speak of at all. This year I will try Marconi and Ace for sure. I'd like to try Red Knight but nobody I usually buy seeds from actually carries it. I might try Flavorburst and Big Red. Possibly Corno di Toro now as well. "This year" being, of course NEXT year, as in Spring 2015. In the hotter peppers, Cayenne for sure, as well as a serrano. Maybe Fresno. Possibly an Ancho. That's enough for me. I cook a lot of Thai and Indian food, but I eat WAY more sweet peppers. I'm hoping Marconi will make a good stir fry ingredient. This post was edited by zensojourner on Sun, Sep 28, 14 at 1:38