Fellenberg, I believe, is considered similar to Italian, but as I said, I never have grown it. It tends to be rated a moderate cropper. I consider Italian here less than a moderate bearer so I'm guessing Fellenberg would likely be same. There's a lot of tricks I use to accelerate bearing so I'm not sure if Fellenberg actually can't be speeded up significantly. I consider Castleton a very flavorful prune plum but what makes it stand out is its reliability- it tends to set fruit in clusters almost like grapes. Some years other plums set little or no fruit but Castleton always seems to have a crop at all sites. It is also a natural semi-dwarf with a wonderful spreading branch habit. My favorite prune plum is Valor because it is very big and has that rich super-sweet quality and it can ripen from the last week of August here until the first hard frost. That is an extremely long picking time even for a prune plum. The reason I recommend Castleton over Valor is because of its consistency at many sites I manage. The funny thing is that at some sites plums are generally much more reliable than other sites for reasons I've never been able to decipher. That means that to really know what is best at your site you'd have to try several varieties and find out yourself but if you're just going to try one I think Castleton is your best bet. ACN carries it but you'd better order ASAP because the commercial growers are sucking it up.

Newer version of Annie's Salsa - BWB only Annie's Salsa 8 cups tomatoes, peeled, chopped and drained 2 1/2 cups chopped onion 1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper 3 to 5 chopped jalapenos (for milder leave out seeds and ribs) 6 cloves minced garlic 2 tsp cumin (optional) 2 tsp pepper 1/8 cup canning salt 1/4 c fresh cilantro (optional) 1/3 c sugar (optional) 1 cup cider vinegar (see note on subbing lemon or lime juice option) 16 oz canned tomato sauce (to adjust density) 8-16 oz canned tomato paste (to adjust density) Mix all ingredients, bring to a boil, boil 10 minutes. Pour into hot jars, process pints for 15 minutes in BWB. Makes 6 pints. _________ A lot of changes have been made to this recipe over the years. Some people like lemon or lime juice in place of some or all of the vinegar, that's fine. (Note from Sheila - I like half lemon half lime.) Some people leave out the cilantro, that's fine too. Do not increase! Some people add more hot peppers or fewer onions, fine as long as you keep the same total measurements. (Note this is what NCHFP does in their new Choice Salsa recipe.) Some people leave out the sugar, that's fine. You can scoop out the goo in the middle of the tomatoes with your thumbs when I'm peeling and chopping for a less seedy version, so it's 8 cups of chopped tomatoes without the seeds and goo. Most who make it regularly as well as Annie recommend using a variety of different slicing tomatoes, not paste types, for best flavor and consistency. (Note: use the tomato sauce and paste to adjust the consistency of the final product to a "sloshy" consistency.) According to Annie "My salsa is not as thick as Heinz catsup but it's thicker than taco sauce. If you don't like it quite as thick or sweet, cut down the amount of paste. I would add some, then taste. Reducing that ingredient shouldn't affect the safety of the recipe. I use equal amounts of sauce and paste. You can pull it off the heat at any point and adjust for flavor. Before I cook it I check for salt, sugar, check the consistency. Add more pepper or cumin if I want. When I first started making this salsa, tomato sauce and paste came in 8 and 16 ounce cans. Like everything else, they've now been downsized, so now I have to use partial cans." Does anybody have good versions of the other recipes that have weird symbols in them for measurements?

Barnmom, I made two batches of Santa Rosa Plum jam in the past 10 days. The first batch, I used about 4 lbs very ripe Santa Rosa plums, 2 lbs sugar (Trader Joes organic evaporated cane juice), fresh juice from 2 lemons and 1 pkg. sure-jell. I first cut the plums in half, simmered them until the pits fell out, removed the pits, added the sugar and lemon and pectin, and cooked on high heat, stirring for about 20 minutes. It jelled beautifully. The taste is wonderful, but everyone in the family thinks it's more tart than eating the fruit by itself. The second batch, I used the method from "Mes Confitures". I again used about 6 lbs very ripe Santa Rosa plums, but more sugar, about 4 lbs (also Trader Joes organic evaporated cane juice), fresh juice from 2 lemons and no pectin. This time I added 3 vanilla beans, split open. I first cut the plums in half but combined them with the sugar, vanlla and lemon right away. I let the mixture sit for an hour, then simmered for about 10 minutes. Then I put the mixture into the fridge overnight. The next day, I removed the large pieces of plums that didn't contain the pits, and cooked the rest on high heat, stirring for about 30 minutes (until it started to set... much longer than the recipe stated). I removed the pits after they all separated out, and also the vanilla beans. I then added back the plum pieces, brought back to a high boil for a few minutes. Again, the mixture jelled beautifully. The taste is wonderful, but everyone in the family thinks the tartness is about the same! I do however notice that I very much prefer the taste of the second jam. The first seems much closer to commercial jams. Definitely a wonderful "plum-ness" with such fresh ripe fruit, but a blended sweet/tart. The second method seems "brighter" to me somehow. Each of the flavors, tart, sweet, plum-ness, vanilla, lemon seem separated and concentrated. Hard to describe. But it's now my favorite method by far. Good luck with your jam experiments. It's great to see so many jam threads. I'm very inspired this year.

Dawn redwoods were a favorite of mine as a kid, and the fascination still holds. Not so much for the weird cultivars of them, but the standard, well-grown trees. Remarkably well-shaped (and consistent too!), and the older ones get a lovely look like being covered in weeping tinsel when from the male cones. Pretty much everything in the old Taxodiaceae is a personal favorite. Chinkapin oak. Got a few as seedlings as a kid, and they all grew fast with clean foliage and lovely habit. Other favorite oaks: overcup (a tree on the UGA campus has one of the most amazing structures of any tree I've seen), Georgia oak (lovely small tree), southern live oak (who can resist), loquat-leaf oak (unique look). I've recently undergone a renewed love affair with Kentucky coffeetree. Unique bark and appearance even at a young age. Coarse (especially in winter), but still somehow not ungainly. Honorable mentions: black tupelo, shellbark hickory, southern and bigleaf magnolia, hophornbeam, sparkleberry/farkleberry, african podocarps, sugar maple...