For cool wet West Virginia I was looking for both hardy and disease resistant trees when I got started. In most cases it seemed to be either/or. I have a Reliance and a Contender and a Harrow Beauty and a few others including some seedlings. One of those seedlings is the best of any of them so far, and I'd really like to have it grafted. Anyway, Reliance here has ripened about July 15 to 23 for six consecutive years. Contender only set fruit one year before being set back severely by borers. Its ripening date (for tree ripened fruit) was July 28 to August 5 - definitely later than Reliance, and right along with Harrow Beauty. For me, Reliance has been as disease resistant as Harrow Beauty or more so. Its fruit was of excellent quality the first few years, but this last year its flavor was lacking and it had less color. Still not bad though. The tree is still vigorously growing. The 'Contender' tree was purchased from Cummins Nursery in NY, grafted on to Halford. The 'Harrow Beauty' was purchased from Adams County Nursery and was grafted onto Baily. The 'Reliance' was from Stark Bros and they said it was grafted onto "seedling" rootstock. Peaches have done surprisingly well for me here in the mountains, but I put a lot of work into preparing the planting location. I really believe nutrition is the most important key to healthy productive trees. I may have more to say about 'Madison' and 'Intrepid' in the future. Here is a link that might be useful: Last year's report

Hi Papou, I would also like to be included. Somehow I neglected to respond the last time. I'm Mark in Buffalo Grove, IL 60089. Thanks for taking on the task. Special thanks for your pictures, your website and your willingness to share your experience with particular hostas.

Terri: Heat strips are electric coils that can be installed into SOME mini split heat pumps, most any standard split house hold system will accept them. Its just a little box with bare electric coils that in an emergency or when the temp is so cold the heat pump wont work the electric coils kick in and the blower blows the hot air off of them. The biggest problem is there more expensive to operate than the heat pump. Depending in where you live you can get them usually in 5kw banks. In south Alabama 5kw was enough in the north 10kw to 20kw would be a better choice. The more expensive mini splits usually can be fitted with them and I have seen them advertised as included. I am an electronic engineer and handy man, plumbing, electric framing roofing anything I think I can handle I do I was the designer and contractor on my last house. 1/2 the time I haven't a clue what I'm about to do but I research for weeks before I try. By no means do I know it all, however when I needed a heat/cooling system for my new business office as in the above post I did my research and bought a mini split system off the internet. I did the complete install in 1/2 day. I would not recommend just any one to do it though. I had the gages and vacuum pump to pump the system down which I would recommend you have a pro do, should cost about $100. I think most handy men could do the rest of the install in 1/2 day. You need a 220v 20 amp circuit if you have NO heat strips. The most important thing is to make sure you don't get anything into the copper tubes including moisture. I paid $900 shipped for the unit. It is NOT an inverter compressor which the one you are looking at is. The inverter technology varies the speed of the compressor to save electricity when you don't need full cooling or heat. However almost every other one I have seen the blower varies the speed depending on how much air flow you need and the compressor runs full tilt as in most house hold systems. I found out the inverter compressors can have a higher failure rate and cost more to repair and over 5 years don't save that much. Others may disagree. Its a personal decision. If you purchase a good name brand 12,000BTU heat pump over the internet about $1500 - $2500 is the norm. Non name brand $600 - $1100, inverter compressor add $500. 1/2 day labor to install it and 1 hour from an air condition tech, although many will not connect the system unless they also install it, a racket in my opinion. You can find a local guy to do it, if you look. I would think that a 9000 BTU unit would be big enough unless you have a lot of equipment heating the room a lot of bodies inside, or lot of windows. If you look on the net you can find calculators to calculate your heat load. If your afraid of the do it your self route than a pro is the best choice, although expect to pay 2x to 3x more. Right now I'm researching surface electric heat wire to warm a cold floor. Good luck.

It surprisingly went down near us the past day or two. But we all know how the "supply/demand" affects prices. If we "demand" less, the price will go down... Though I'm NOT by any means trying to down play the crisis it puts many of us in when these prices get so out of control, it IS all good for the environent... It's my hope that this is a condition/habit that we all try to maintain in good times, as well as bad. We should NEVER, for the good of us all, ever be this dependent on foreign supplies (oil).