As a kitchen dealer myself, it's usually feast or famine. When I'm in my famine mode, you can get a quote really fast. When it's feast mode, it could be anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. If you want a ballpark, I can usually give you an idea of that prior to quoting. We just went through a feast year. Our business was up 50% over the previous year. It was a little stressful and at times, I felt like my service slipped some, but we worked hard (overtime too!) and took care of our clients the best we could manage. And our quotes were slow many times. I am very good about emailing clients to just say, "haven't forgotten about you"...but my business partner does about 50% more business than I do...and he's not as email-friendly as I am. But he's an awesome designer and a great guy to work with. His track record is proof of that. I don't think that a slow quote is a sure fire way to guess how a company will be to work with in the future. A slow quote could also mean they are in high demand.

It depends on the seeds, the temperature and the moisture level. Generally, if seeds aren't up in 10-14 days, I replant. At this time of the year, germination is strongly driven by soil temperatures and moisture, and generally the soils are warm enough to impede germination but you can overcome that by keeping the soil consistently moist and by shading the ground temporarily. One of my favorite temporary shades is just to put 4 lawn chairs over the row or bed of seeds and tie an old bedsheet to each chair. Seeds can surprise you, though. A friend of mine sowed brussels sprouts seeds in the spring of 2015. He probably sowed them too late and the ground was too warm at that time for them to germinate. Those seeds survived heavy rainfall and flooding (twice our annual rainfall) for months in heavy red clay soil, sprouted in the fall of 2015 and provided a nice harvest of brussels sprouts beginning around December 2015 and continuing well into spring of 2016. You cannot count on something like that happening, but it is fun when it does occur.

Hopefully the book you are using is Wagner's Eastern North America book. The first index is the hostplant index. Using that can help figure out some species. But, like most sources, the pics are of the last instar pillars. I just ripped a nest of those caterpillars out of my neighbor's buttonbush. Just assumed eastern tent caterpillar but now am kicking myself because I know they don't look like that. Did not get all of them so I'll have to investigate further. Not all nests like that are "undesirable" moths. Baltimore checkerspot butterfly caterpillars put a nest together like that.

I ordered grafted cultivars of shagbark hickory from Grimo two years ago - planted the spring of 2017. They are all grafted to pecan rootstock, which should handle clay and poorly draining soil better than shagbark hickory. Shagbark tends to be an upland hickory and prefers drier well drained soil - there are a bunch growing wild down the road from me on thin soil over limestone bedrock. Shellbark and pecan are bottomland hickories and are more tolerant of wetter soils. My property is a heavy clay loam that can pool water in spring and the soil stays "mushy" for a few days after a heavy rain. My grafted shagbarks grew only a couple inches the first summer after planting and then grew about 8-10" this past summer (their second summer after planting). If your original tree is a seedling shagbark, my guess is the soil is too poorly drained/moist. If grafted onto pecan, my guess is something else is wrong. As a side note, I have a seedling shellbark hickory that I planted ~10 years ago near where my two grafted shagbark hickories are. It was about 12" tall when planted and the taproot was pruned back by 1/3 by the seller prior to my receiving it (!). The seedling shellbark grew only a few inches per year for the first 3-4 years and then took off. I am now seeing a minimum of 18" growth per season with a good season seeing almost 2 feet of growth.