THANK YOU! I was hoping it wasn't incorrect, and I started thinking maybe it was 'Mme Zoetmans', which would be a happy mystery-solved. But I'd rather it be 'Charles de Mills'. And yes, these tiny buds are only just barely uncovered, and what little shows beneath the green is white. So maybe they'll color up in the next few days. I greatly appreciate your guidance here and with my earlier questions, mad_gallica! After my post about how far own-root Gallicas spread, I took a measuring tape to the two beds where I want to plant them. I'll be fine doing 4'-5' between them, as you suggested, especially with one less ('Belle de Crecy' didn't get shipped) and if I put the two or three "less rampant spreaders" ('Nouveau Monde', 'Duchesse d'Angouleme' and/or 'Duchesse de Montebello') elsewhere. :-) ~Christopher

Well hello everyone! I too have had many family members that served for our country! I have a niece that I raised that is a colonel in the Marines right now! She has spent a couple tours in Iraq and several other places. Many hrs. of worry there, but thank God for our many veterans! Mellen and April-so glad your husbands are doing ok! My thoughts and prayers are with the many people here who need them! Melissa, I loved the pic! So cute! I know what you mean about little ones growing up so fast! I had all 3 boys here last night and I just go with the flow! No work, just play! I know someday they will have many memories of old grandma taking them fishing, going for walks, coloring, crawling around and just having fun! Hope to get ahold of you soon about the plants! Just hate to see you mail them after you already mailed a box! I will get that way soon! Well, most everyone here knows me, but a few don't I suppose. I joined in 2003. I started doing alot of gardening in 2000 after my husband passed away in 1999. It was something for me to do and keep me occupied. My mother was a member of GW and loved it so I did have her do some trades for me and we shared things for a couple of years! She taught me to wintersow and how to do seed trades, etc.So I was very familiar with some of it when I joined. She finally convinced me to join and I've been here ever since. I did seed trades for a year or so then did a couple plant trades and then some round robins. Don't see much of that anymore! Things have definitely changed since I started here. I see many familiar faces, but so many new ones! I too often wonder what has happened to some of the people that were here all the time and then just disappeared! It became quite the thing for many years as my mother and I shared and wintersowed together, planned our gardens together and just in general loved the same things and had so many wonderful memories doing them! I have a yard full of plants from wonderful GW members and also full of many of the plants my mother and I wintersowed together that last year! I know she is up in Heaven looking down and seeing how beautiful they became! Well, enough of that! LOl! No more tears right now! Anway, I tried several names and couldn't find the right one or one that wasn't taken, so I just chose the things I love! I love flowers and rocks and children so that's how I chose ilovefarac! Margaret, I haven't been in a swap that you have done before, but I congratulate you on being great at it!! And everyone who posts! I just love reading all of them! Waiting patiently on more games! Have a beautiful weekend everyone! Melinda

Holly, Sorry about your Cherokee Green. Brown stain in the stalk! Yikes, but that probably nails it down. As for products purporting to be for sealing tree wounds, they are superfluous and probably cause more damage than good. At least the generally accepted standard among tree people is that they should not be used. Of course, manufacturers still make them and sell them and they can say anything on the label that they wish to. I'm just trying to keep in mind that plant physiology is very different from the physiology of human beings. But now, back to VW. My question and possibly yours now, is what to do about it. I've done a lot of searching and find a couple of possibilities. Two of them are solarization and biofumigation, neither of which is likely to be easy. Considering that the VW stays in the soil for many years it seems unacceptable to just go ahead and plant again next year. If I suppose that my "recovering" tomato plants make a few blossoms in the next week or so then I can hope to have my first "real" tomatoes of the year sometime in the back half of September and then expect frost a few weeks later. That's really sad after all the work involved. So, I'm looking for an answer. Most of the solarization and biofumigation I've seen is done on a very large scale and I'm not sure how well it can be adapted to a smaller garden. If anyone is interested, I can post some of the urls I've found. Also, if anyone else has information or experience in these techniques, I'd like to see it. Possibly in a new thread. What do you all think?

Here's how I see it. There were volunteers that you believe to be from some red hybrids although you don't know for sure. I can't see reversion of any red hybrids reverting to what the others were that you mentioned. However, if he were growing any other varieties, perhaps some OP ones, then some of those volunteers could be the result of a cross pollination or indeed even aspecific variety. I'm not sure it looks like a typical gold/red bicolor, at least the ones that I've grown, which is quite a few. So I think the first thing you should do is to save some seeds and sow them again next year to see if all seeds give rise to the same plants and fruits that you've shown us or if it was ther result of a natural cross then it's the saved F2 seeds that you save, then be sure to put put enough plants from those F2 seeds so you can see any genetic segregation which should occur if the fruits you show are actually hybrid. Long paragraph, there, so if you have any questions, please just ask. Finally, no one can ID it for you as has been mentioned above and the reasons given for that were also given above and just now by me. That is, you have no starting point b'c you don't know exactly which varieties were planted by the landlord, so if you could ask, that might also help. Carolyn