The FB that I had 2 years ago effected all three of these varieties and I had to do some severe pruining on all 3, but no fb this year. I also moved DRD, so it spent this year acclimating itself to it's new location. I expect the first fruit from it next year. This year was the first year that Cauley and Summer Banana produced fruit. I'm a firm believer that you can't tell a whole lot from the first years' fruit. I don't let my apples carry fruit, until they are at least 5 years old. I learned that from David Vernon, who sold me the trees. All of that aside, both varieties produced a fair amount of fruit. Cauley is very hard, which I like, has a slightly yellow meat and a pleasant spritely taste, which I think will get better over time. It's prococious and I had to support many of the branches. I understand that it can produce fruit that can weigh up to a pound. Summer Banana is a totally diferent apple. It's mainly a tip bearer. The skin is yellow with white flesh that is somewhat bland to my taste. I didn't smell or taste any hint of banana, so i think the name is somewhat deceiving. I wonder, if Winter banana is the same. As I said before, I don't place a whole of value on first year fruits. I chose this tree because of the name and the fact it came from Marion County, here is SC, plus both of these apples have a historical significance. it's interesting to know what people ate here 200+ years ago. If you'll allow me to reminisce, I bought Bevan's Favorite because my grandfather used to have this tree in his backyard. I can remember climbing the tree, when I was a little boy, fighting my cousin for the apples. THEY SURE WERE GOOD.

I'm broke and out of space but I will be making room for the following: 1. BOULE DE NEIGE -- I've been lusting after this pure snowy white Bourbon for years and now is my last chance. His sister Coquette des Blanches is an excellent rose so I have high hopes for this beauty. 2. CASINO -- among my dwindling list of favorite vendors (Antique Rose Emporium, Chamblees & Heirloom) Vintage is the only one who is offering this fragrant Large Flowered yellow climber. He is replacing one of my Pilgrim's that got choked out by Belladonna last year. 3. ORFEO -- only Vintage and Rogue Valley Roses carry this dark red Large Flowered Climber that does particularly well in the Mid-Atlantic region. 4. SPARTAN -- nobody has this reddish orange VID Floribunda but Vintage. I figured I'd better snatch him up before it is too late. All these roses have strong fragrances. Others that I missed out on are Apricot Nectar VID, Lullaby, Osiria, Rosemary Rose, and Yolande d'Aragon. All these are hard to find but I'm particularly distraught over Osiria. Nobody has it but Vintage. Here is a link that might be useful: Osiria at HelpMeFind Roses This post was edited by molineux on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 15:00

Gifts of homegrown oranges and Black Plums received so I made 50 half-pint jars of Plum Orange Jam from http://www.thatsmyhome.com/general/plum-orange-jam.htm - doubled and then more. I did not use the peel from the plums since they were not grown organically. The color of the jam is golden, the taste is very orange-y tart. Sorta marmalade, but refined. Gift of Chiogga beets for pickling 8 quarts - not very pretty canned because they are not rich red - kinda sickly pink and the design is OK for fresh but lost in translation. Taste is much more sweet than regular Detroit Dark Red. So -- I have to wait 3 weeks for melding to be sure. My homegrown figs are abundant now - 60 more half-pint jars of jam yesterday. Tried the low sugar/macerate version for 40 jars and love that version more than the pectin high sugar version. Gives a much more intense fig flavor. Coyote Juice - Tiny grape-sized golden heirloom Coyote tomatoes that grow in clusters -- prolifically to the max. 30 half-pints - and at least another zillion jars to fill from the rest of the harvest season to come. Anyone want seeds for next year? Nancy

Jay, It puzzled me too and still does. Your freeze damage occurred in a manner that contradicts almost everything we've been told about freeze damage....like the fact that yours occurred on higher ground and not lower ground. Mine is always the opposite. The year the bed of black tomatoes survived freeze damage that severely injured or killed everything else, they were in the highest bed at the top of my sloping garden. I had thought that maybe you had some wind and it kept the damage from settling in uniformly, so your damage seems even more odd in the absence of wind. I also have had times where I thought the foliage from nearby trees protected some plants, but that didn't happen in your garden either. I guess it is one more oddball thing to add to the whole oddball year. Ilene, I've been thinking about those of you in northeastern OK and wondering what the 2009-2010 El Nino with all its excess rainfall will do to y'all and to your plants this coming spring. It seems like y'all have enough issues with excess moisture most years, and now to have the looming specter of El Nino on top of that.... The only issue with starting seed in the ground is that your whole crop will be very late, and you might not get any ripe fruit until fall. It's that whole pollination thing where the plants need to pollinate while temps are in the right range, and it is doubtful that direct-sown plants would be large enough to bloom while temps are in the right range. Still, you never know....if you have recurring cold fronts next year like we had this year, you might very well get fruit set all summer during the recurring cold spells. I love your description of the friends that remind you of the Baldwin Sisters! I always thought they were so funny. I didn't save any seed from anything because I am always so overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the harvest (more about the latest harvest in a minute) at the same time I ought to be saving seeds, but I can still save some from Tess's later this week because it still has several hundred tomatoes on it. In fact, if it ever stops raining, I need to pick those tomatoes today and dehydrate a bunch of them. First, I'll look at my seed envelope, because I'm thinking it was packed with oodles of seed, so I might not have to save any since there might be plenty from the original seed packet to share. Here's where Tess's Land Race Currant gets interesting: are you ready for a simple lesson in tomato biology? Tess's Land Race Currant, like all currant tomatoes, is not Lycopersicon lycopersicum like most tomatoes. Instead, it is Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium. It has extruded styles on its flowers, so it is very, very prone to cross pollinate. Because of the extruded styles, all currant tomatoes cross very easily with other currant tomatoes--that is one thing I know for sure. What I am not sure about is how readily they cross with tomatoes that are Lycopersicon lycopersicum. Most modern hybrid tomatoes have retracted styles, so likely wouldn't cross with Tess', but some heirloom tomatoes, especially those that have potato-leaved foliage, also have extruded styles so they might cross. And, even with beefsteak types of Lycopersicon lycopersicum, any fruit formed from double blossoms (also referred to by some as megablooms) may be crossed. So, saved unbagged seed of Tess's might or might not give you Tess's---which is why I'm hoping my seed packet of Tess's has a lot of seeds in it that are more likely to be pure. Another interesting thing about Tess's is that it mostly produces red fruit, but is not stable (perhaps because it crosses so easily?) and sometimes you get gold or pink or a sort of rosy-gold fruit. On this year's plants, I've had all red ones though. Either way....whether from the packet or from some seed I can save and ferment this week, I'll send you some Tess's seed this winter when we start exchanging seeds. I have tried to grow Tess's in ever enlarging (diameter-wise) cages and in ever-taller cages. Because it simply won't stop growing, and I hate to prune/top a healthy plant, I am thinking that an arched panel may be the best solution for it. I guess we'll know by this time next year if I'm right. Isn't Jay's plants' damage the oddest thing? I guess we should be grateful, though, that it was hit and miss because at least he didn't lose them all. When green tomato time arrives, I have a recipe for a green tomato cake that tastes like a spice cake, and for fried green tomato parmigiana. We're not mincemeat eaters either, so I don't make tomato mincemeat and I don't care for pickled tomatoes either. Earlier, I said I don't even try to save seed because I always get so overwhelmed by the harvest, which is exactly the case here this summer. The harvest was late but abundant and I have about 150 jars of food put up in the cellar, and an equal amount in the freezers. Looking at it all, I am kind of amazed to think it all came from our garden. Except for a steady flow of smallish numbers of tomatoes...with no more than a dozen or two large ones on any given day....and recurring rounds of peppers, the harvest has really slowed down......until yesterday. I went out to the garden to pick ears from the earlier of the two fall sweet corns, and this is what I ended up bringing inside just before dinner time: Hundreds of Tepin peppers to dry Dozens each of jalapenos and habaneros A good-sized mess of black-eyed peas (the last ones, because I then pulled the vines), A good sized mess of Royalty purple pod beans and a similar amount of Contender bush green beans A modest amount of okra About a dozen tomatoes (large ones only, still need to pick bite-sized ones from the six remaining bite-sized tom plants) and still need to pick big ones today from the containers in the back yard A few dozen ears of corn About a dozen pickling cukes So, today I'll be in the kitchen processing all of these one way or another, although I'm about out of ideas for hot peppers, having already canned pepper rings and pepper strips, frozen plain green jalapenos and roasted red and green chipotles, dehydrated jalapenos and habaneros down into either dried, ground power seasoning or chopped dehydrated pepper flakes, and dehydrated tepins. I've also made several batches of Jalapeno Jelly, Jalapeno Gold Jelly, and Habanero Gold Confetti Jelly. I am really getting sick of peppers. I guess I could make more salsa--I think we have plenty, but DS thinks we need much more. I could make pepper ristras, but in this humidity, they'd likely dry on the outside and mold inside. So, I guess I'll just make more of the same stuff I've already made....and I haven't made any vinegar/pepper sauce yet, so that's a possibility. The second fall corn should be ready to harvest in 10-14 days so I guess we'll know in a couple of weeks if it has beaten the frost and matured, or if the frost gets it first. I'm hoping for another frost-free month so I can harvest a lot more beans and cukes, but the rain/clouds aren't helping because they stall without sunlight and some heat. In a way, it is nice to have bowls and bags of produce stacked everywhere to process again, because the harvest really has dwindled down. Harvesting the last of the purplehull pinkeye peas was bittersweet--I hate to see the harvest end, but they produced copious amounts of peas from July through October, so that's a pretty good run, and we ate them almost daily 'in season' and still have plenty put up in the freezer for winter. I really need more cukes in order to make a batch of pickles, but the others aren't enlarging very much in the absence of sunlight. I guess I could make a half-batch of something. So far, the only pickled cukes I've done have been whole Dill pickles, bread and butter slices, and sweet pickle relish, so I am hoping to get enough cukes to make dill spears, dill relish, kosher dills and bread-and-butter stackers before the cucumber harvest ends. I tried to help myself in terms of NOT having an overwhelming harvest to process by saving pickling cukes and bush green beans for fall, and it helped a lot. I don't think I could have handled the harvest I had in July-August if I'd had to deal with cukes and bush beans at the same time. Still, because the tomatoes produced great, if late, and the peppers were overachievers (and still are, which makes it tempting to just pull the plants now and put an end to my pepper misery) month after month, I still had weeks where every flat surface in the house had piles of produce waiting to be processed, or in some stage of being processed. I wish there were a way to spread out the harvest more evenly but you really can't.....the veggies produce when they produce and that's just how it is. In a year like this, I really think I could produce almost an entire year's supply of veggies here....but, then, most years are not like this...most have half the rainfall we've had so far this year, so I should be grateful for the non-drought years because they are fairly rare. Still, I'm at the point where I never want to look at another pepper again....and my jalapeno plants are still heavily loaded. The rain, by the way, continues to fall, and we've had thunder and lightning since the early morning hours, but nothing violent. Dawn