Last year I planted my SFG tomatoes in the 1 foot spacing, and the plants grew great. However, I was really disappointed with the yield of fruit. Oh I had tomatoes, but never enough to can, and I had to buy a few pounds of tomatoes from the farmstand just to make salsa- and I had 10 plants in the garden! My error? I didn't remove the suckers. I thought the more branches on the tomato plant, the better, and more fruit. I was so wrong on that, that this year I am armed with a nice new shiny pruning snips and I'm ready to go. I think that tomatoes can be very successful with the 1 foot spacing, but the key is pruning- don't be afraid to remove those suckers, or the plant will just send it's energy to them instead of to the actual fruit.

I plant mine down the middle of the fabric and cut holes for the plants. It really isn't too bad to do as long as your plants aren't too big. I just plant to whole row and then put the fabric down and cage them as I go. The cages do well holding the fabric down. I have had really good success doing them this way. It also gives your garden a tidy look when it is all mowed up. One word of caution, don't do this when the wind is blowing really hard and get cages on them ASAP. The fabric will tear a plant up in a hurry if the wind blows it around. Use the cheap 5 year fabric because it is pretty much toast after a season. I got a 150' roll at Menards for 7.99 this spring.

Not at all likely the plants would be exposed to below freezing temps for more than 5-6 hours, and maybe only once or twice during that period. Only takes once to kill them, though. Maybe so. But the "row-cover" thing will probably protect against most frosts or freezes that are not of sufficient duration to adversely impact the entire tom plant. BUT, this is no panacea for super-early production. Because, even with some protection from low temps, the things do not grow very rapidly under poor conditions. In other words, ya may get at most I reckon, an average of a week "leg up" on other comparable tom seedling planted later without protection. Yet I do this anyway (for pep seedlings) because I leave the damn W-o-W on until they physically interfere with growth habit. In that application, I get a needed temp boost long after danger of last frost has passed because I leave them in place. Toms are not so amenable to this treatment because of sprawling growth tendencies.

It's clear that I framed my question very poorly. I certainly don't expect to add $300k in value simply by using nice faucets. This would be part of a much broader high-end gut renovation. $200 PSF increase would be coming from doing an A renovation, rather than the type of B/B+ renovation that is more typical for this building. That being said, I guess my question is really twofold: 1) If I'm doing a high-end renovation, does that mean I have to use Waterworks/Lefroy/etc., or would using Kohler/Newport Brass/etc. faucets that cost 60-80% as much effectively check the box for 98% of potential buyers? 2) If I do need to really go all-out on fixtures, do particular brands tend to carry a great deal more luxury cache? I think the Lefroy Brooks stuff is beautiful, but I had never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Are there certain brands that, for whatever reason, tend to deliver far greater bang for the buck? chisue: You're probably right that these questions are better suited to a local realtor, but there seem to be a lot of folks here experienced in all areas of real estate, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.