Thank You mates for your lovely comments... :) Our summers are rather dry and hot (110 F) so we dont have a powdery mildew problem... though it occurs in the end of fall on my Dahlias only and i use fresh whole milk and water as spray (1:3 ratio) after three to four sprays daily it is all gone, but it reoccurs after a month or so... this is just my observation.. Izhar

I modified my 4 ft rototiller by adding two discs, one on either side, at the rear corners of the tiller. It partially creates furrows as I till, especially in sandy soil. Probably I need more weight to make it work better. Mainly, I create my beds using a rake after doing the tilling at four feet wide, by standing on opposite sides and raking the soil up, then leveling it off on top. I get a bed just wide enough to then run a troybilt horse 20" tiller on top to incorporate manures, compost, etc. The furrows down the sides of the bed are ideal for flood irrigation, which I find better than sprinkler, and I plant the paths with dutch white clover as a cover crop. I run the beds on 8 ft centers, and can then run a tractor, pickup, or trailer straddling over the beds to apply mulch, compost, etc. which makes those jobs easier. I once envisoned making the paths much wider(maybe 10-20 ft), as bdodd mentioned in his original post, and growing a cover crop in the space, then using a "crop chopper", which harvests cover crops, chops them, then shoots it out out through a ductwork directly onto the beds, thus mechanizing the process. Here is the machine: http://www.newholland.com/na/Products/CropChop.html?Reg=NA&RL=ENNA I currently just don't have the space this would require, but when I farmed in the tropics, I grew a cover crop called "guinea grass"(tropical perennial-3ft), which I used this method on, but cut it with a commercial weed eater using a steel blade, then pitchforked the grass onto the beds. This is a version of intercropping/alley cropping and could be especially useful on sloping land, where the cover crop protects against erosion and even wind, concentrates nutrients for the producing beds, and creates a source of onsite mulch material.

Yes, the countertops are white Corian and they are in excellent shape. We have about 95 square feet of counters. Our realtor has strongly discouraged us from changing them based on comparisons to others in our neighborhood. He also said that in his experience whatever sellers have whether it is a solid surface material, stone or other, that 9 times out of 10 clients comment that it's not to their taste and they deduct the cost of changing it in their offers anyway. All of the houses in our neighborhood were built with laminate except for the 10% or so houses which were custom built and they all had Corian. Some of the homes have replaced their laminate with stone or other material. I forgot to answer another question earlier. The floors are site finished hardwood throughout all of the downstairs. We constantly get positive feedback on the floors. The only thing I can think of is that our kitchen is significantly larger than most in our neighborhood and it would be quite an undertaking to change it out any more than we already have. Maybe most buyers want to renovate to their taste and see ours as too big of a project. Unfortunately if I were to do the renovation for them, it still wouldn't be to their taste.

Just looking into various light colored kitchen island options and would love to see/hear from someone who has used this in their own home. Thanks.