cat mom- while this is true of the borgs in general - Kohler doesn't really participate in the value engineering that pervades say HD's door hardware and lock offerings. A Kohler K-16230-4 Margaux faucet is the same whether you get it from Ferguson, the local plumbing supply or Home Depot. Now, if you see an item that looks similar or exactly the same yet has a different product # then you can bet the farm the quality has been driven out of it by the suits at the borg. The really crappy thing is that the depot's price on these items isn't really that much less than the quality item elsewhere. Do a value analysis and you'll usually discover that the depot is raping you in the long run. Sometimes they have the name changed slightly. Baldwin has a setup like this for the borgs: first is the "special" site for the borgs, looks great till you open up one of these offshore beauties and find pot metal crap. second site is the real deal Baldwin that's made quality kit for 60 years. http://www.baldwinhardware.com/ Very hard for the casual observer to tell the difference. Here is a link that might be useful: baldwins fake site

Thank you speedster for the info. My grandparents had a small orchard about 1 acre. It wasn't anything fancy but I loved that place as a kid. After they were too old to tend the trees and farm the hillside just went wild with peach trees everywhere. lol The trees do produce peaches but are only golf ball size and not very good. The trees range in size from large trees to seedlings. My intention is to dig some of them up and move them to a different location. Use them as rootstock for red haven, contender and other good verities. I just didn't want to wast my time if they would not be as productive and vigorous. In my area I have read that lovell rootstock is good for peach trees. would their be much if any benefit to grafting my trees onto lovell verses using the rootstock I already have? I hope to eventually have about a 5 acre orchard.

Peach rootstocks are not about dwarf or standard. It is more about how well it could tolerate your soil type It is not difficult to train peach low for peach should be pruned to an open center shape. Your need to buy a bare root peach so you can cut a tree trunk to be as low as two feet above ground. Once a tree has branches, train those branches to go out, not up. Your can prune your tree to be 10' tall that way. This is quite late to order bare root fruit trees. Rootstocks such as Lovell, Guardian, Halfotd are good for many soil types.

Well, it's been a while since I contributed to this thread. I tried planting the Tiny Tower Monshel Italian Cypress trees and they were doing fine until the temperatures reached 115 degrees. The problem in my case is that there is so much concrete and the heat reflected from the water from the pool literally baked them in just one day. It was like they were freeze dried but more like "oven bake-dried" when the summer came. God, I was do upset over that. I planted them in the Fall and they did so well throughout the Fall, winter and Spring. After that failure I got a hold of some Skyrocket Junipers and was hoping I could trim them and keep them skinny and columnar-like in their narrow space. I was assured by the nursery owner that they would do well and that they grow just fine out in the desert. But the same thing happened. I planted them in the Fall and they did great but come the following summer, all but four of them fried in the heat. It's because of all the concrete and reflection of heat off the water from the pool that did them in. No one was able to teach me this. What a burning hard lesson to learn about how hot it is here and "reflected heat" from concrete surfaces. The four that did not die were the ones that received afternoon shade next to a fenced wall that is eight feet tall. I was even more upset and in tears the second time around. Actually I cried both times. I love planting tries and have done so in other parts of the country. I have never had one die on me. So to lose seventeen Monshel Tiny tower trees all at once and about eleven Skyrocket Junipers in a similar way was a lot to lose. Not to mention, since the Junipers were spaced differently due to their growth habits I redid the entire irrigation system a second time before planting them. So, I tried to really think about what could handle the extreme heat and reflected heat around all the concrete and also handle the reflection of sun and heat off the water from the pool. Then I thought of some of the boulevard type streets here in the desert that have plants and trees that are surrounded by asphalt and get direct hot summer sun all day long. Most of the plants these areas have are different types of agaves which I didn't want because the space is too narrow and I wanted something with some height and something that I could shape and trim. Not to mention, agaves tend to have spiky points which can pose as a hazard along a narrow sidewalk. Getting back to the planted boulevard streets, I noticed how well pencil cactus plants were popping up and being planted in these areas on highway streets exposed to rock, gravel and asphalt and all day long with no shade or relief from the sun. And they all looked great. Then I remembered I also had two pencil cactus in large pots that I bought from the nursery that I was neglecting for two summers that were doing well and growing and thriving in full sun all day long with the pot sitting directly on concrete. I bought them at a nursery but wasn't sure what to do with them yet. So I thought to give them a try around the pool. I had to redo the irrigation yet AGAIN due to their spacing being different but I was fine with that. So far, all but one survived over a year's time. I think the one that died might have struggled due to the metal pool shed reflecting way too much heat back at the furthest pencil cactus planted to the right. I plan to drape some shade fabric over that area come summer to eliminate the reflected heat from metal; which is more intense than reflected heat from concrete/stone. I'm pretty sure that's why that one died. And now you see a new smaller pencil cactus I just replaced this past winter to take it's place in the photo below. Today is April 1st in fact which is when this photo was taken. What I like about these pencil cactus is that they turn a bright orange pink salmon color in the Fall, winter and Spring. Come summer they will turn a bright chartreuse green from top to bottom. I have to admit I wish they'd stay orange-pink all year long. But it's cool to watch the colors change throughout the year. Here are some photos: With the exception of the one I replaced they have grown nearly twice in size. I read somewhere that they can grow two feet a year in the beginning but their growth will start to slow down as they mature over the years. The more water I give them the faster they grow. During the summer I give them a good drink twice a week and in the winter I give them water once a week; all through underground drip irrigation on an irrigation timer. I just recently trimmed up the bottoms of all of them because they were so bushy and branches were falling over the flagstone edge. I had tons of trimmings which filled a large compost garbage bin completely. I tried to give them away for free as cuttings on craigslist but no one wanted them. :-( I'm going to trim them regularly so that they take on a somewhat columnar shape. I don't want them to completely cover up/block the wall. I look forward to them reaching 6'-8' tall by about 2'-3' wide which is easily doable. I see them around Palm Springs quite a bit and they all seem to thrive anywhere they're growing. I think they're really attractive. I have two growing in my front yard that I am letting grow naturally. They are nearly 5' wide and tall in just three years! I just wanted to share my experience with planting around lots of concrete. "Reflected heat" in the desert is a real thing and the temps around all concrete can actually be hotter than the ambient temperature. I can feel it when I stick my hands close to or stand right next to concrete walls. Not to mention, the concrete can still hold a lot of heat even as the sun starts to go down. This is something not even the most knowledgeable nursery grower could have taught me to save me a ton of grief and heartache. And getting back to my comment earlier about seeing Italian Cypress trees doing well out here throughout the area, as I inspect them more closely I see that they are planted far away from concrete walls and/or are surrounded by grass which obviously helps tremendously to keep the trees cooler and protected. I hope my long-winded rant here helps other people in the desert who are eager to plant something but not waste time, sweat, blood tears and a lot of money like I did. And to be thorough, yes I know that the sap can be an extreme irritant to eyes and skin. Just wear gloves and a long sleeved shirt when trimming pencil cactus up. Don't touch your face ever and change and wash your clothes immediately after you're done. In fact, take a complete shower afterwards. Like I already mentioned, I did a serious pruning on the bottoms of my pencil cacti and had no issues. The sap touched my skin and didn't cause me problems. I think it's more of an issue if you have scraped/injured skin or open cuts. You don't want the sap to get into open wounds