tcstoehr: I wouldn't try to thin Fuyu at this stage of the season. If the fruits are only marble size, a lot more natural drop will still occur. You may end up having to do little or no hand thinning. Mine are still dropping occasionally, and the fruitlets are much larger than marble size. You won't really know how many persimmons your tree will hold until August/September. But at that point, they will still be a long way from ripe. Those that do hold will continue to grow, even when they begin to color orange. They will hang on the trees right through October and into November. Where you live, maybe even into December. Leave them on the trees until they start to soften, which seems to take forever. I wonder what kind of rootstock you have there, since I was unaware that persimmons can be grafted to any other than persimmon stock. I am quite sure mine are grafted to American persimmon stock, which is more vigorous than the scions above, and will provide excellent anchorage and hardiness. On my trees, the rootstock stem is clearly thicker than the grafted Asian varieties above. With persimmons, I think you can leave fruitlets that are right next to each other, as frequently happens, and they will both grow to full size. Last season I had 3 Eurekas grow in a cluster, left them all, and all three grew to over 3 1/2 inches in diameter. This year, there will be a lot more, both on Eureka and the other two varieties. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Finding tomatoes that do well in the fall is a HUGE challenge and is so dependent on the summer and early autumn heat. Here are the criteria I use when trying to select tomatoes for fall: 1) Days to Maturity 2) Flavor 3) Ability to set flowers in heat In a way, you could say Days to Maturity is the MOST IMPORTANT factor and, technically, you would be right BUT it seems more important to me that the tomato be able to flower AND set fruit while the weather is still quite warm. Some tomatoes that have the "right" DTM still won't produce a good fall crop because many of their August flowers don't set fruit until the temperatures are more to their liking in mid to late September. And, there is no way to know in advance which tomatoes will or won't set fruit in heat, except perhaps based on the experience of other tomato growers in the hot regions of the country. Based on my experience in growing tomatoes in Oklahoma and Texas, I would say the best fall crops come from plants that: a) produce smaller rather than larger tomatoes b) produce on determinate plants set out earlier than what is usually advised for fall tomatoes c) are often advertised as "plants that produce all summer long", like Arkansas Traveler, Porter or Homestead 24 I generally choose for flavor, and tend to avoid all those tomatoes bred specifically to produce in the heat like Heat Wave or Sunmaster because they lack flavor. For fall cherry tomatoes I favor Sun Gold, Rosalita, and Black Cherry. For smaller slicing or salad tomatoes I usually go with Porter, Black Plum, Martino's Roma or Heidi. For larger tomatoes, I usually go with Purple Cherokee, Earl's Faux, Black Krim, Persimmon and Better Boy. Although Better Boy lacks the outstanding flavor of the heirlooms, it sometimes produces like gangbusters in spite of our extreme heat. Two of my best producing years with Better Boy, I had spring-planted plants produce tomatoes until the first frost in October, and had to pick dozens and dozens of green fruit the day before the freeze. Last year, Persimmon, Black Krim and Cherokee Purple set fruit in August and September despite our high temps that kept hitting 110 to 114 degrees. I thought that was amazing. This year I am going to try a lot of heirlooms for fall tomatoes, especially the heirloom winter storage types. I also am especially interested in seeing how Neves Azorean Red, Cherokee Chocolate, Champion and Little Brandywine do as a fall crop. In the past, Bucks County produced well all summer and into the fall but it appears to be "gone" this year, and there has been speculation in the tomato world that Little Brandywine is, in fact, Bucks County simply re-named. To get a fall tomato harvest, I do ALL of the following: In early- to mid-July, I cut back a few of the healthiest tomato plants to 12" to 18" tall and feed them a good balanced fertilizer. I keep them well-watered and they are usually flowering sometime in August and producing fruit in September In early to mid-June, I set out fall tomatoes that I have raised (in 4" pots) from seed outdoors in the heat. Raising them outside in the hot weather is hard, but it ensures they can handle the heat. I like to get these in the ground as early as possible in June. Setting them out later in June makes it more likely we'll get fruit before a freeze. I always set out a couple of fresh plants in VERY LARGE containers that can be pulled or pushed into the garage to avoid the first freeze and then brought back outside as soon as weather allows. If an early frost is threatening, I will cover two to four of my most productive fall plants with a blanket or heavy 6mm plastic. If you can protect them and get them through that first really cold weather spell of autumn, we often have 4 to 6 weeks of "Indian Summer" and will get a lot more ripe fruit during that time frame. Finally, if really cold weather is inevitable, I pull up the tomato plants that have a lot of fruit and hang them upside down in my tornado shelter or garage. A lot of those fruit will continue to ripen, sometimes for weeks! This is especially true for cherry tomatoes. Many years I pick a lot of green ones in the fall, but would rather have ripe ones than green ones (!) so anything that can be done to stretch the harvest is worth the time involved, I think. And, once in a blue moon the first fall freeze will be VERY, VERY LATE here....sometimes after Thanksgiving, and in a year like that, I have a huge fall harvest and am pretty much the happiest woman in Oklahoma!

Diane, It is a challenge to figure it out, isn't it! It is safe to say that I could grow zero brussels sprouts and my family would be delighted...so that one is easy to figure out. (I like 'em fresh but no one else cares for them. LOL) Today we were looking at fresh produce at Central Market in Fort Worth (yes, I was in hog heaven, thank you very much) and Tim sampled a tiny cup of black-eyed peas. Now, several thoughts ran through my mind. First of all, do they "have to" give away samples of black-eyed peas to get people to try them? Secondly, doesn't everyone know what blackeyed peas taste like? LOL Finally, when my dear husband looked at the bag of more-or-less freshly hulled black-eyed peas (maybe a pint of fresh peas in that bag) and saw they were $5.99, I practically purred like a kitten, thinking of all the pint bags of freshly-shelled (then frozen) black-eyed peas in our freezer.....all of which grew right here in our good old Oklahoma soil with no chemicals, etc. I felt smug and content (in a good way, NOT in a conceited 'holier-than-thou-because-we-grow-our-own" way) but more than that I felt grateful that we are able to grow our own and process/preserve them to be eaten later on. It is the most wonderful feeling in the world to be feeding your family from your own garden and to know where your food came from and how it was raised. I have a pressure canner but have only done BWB stuff this year along with tons of dehydrating and freezing. I go on canning binges....can a lot some years, less in others. With this year's recurring rains, I've put up more food for the 'off-season' than in many prior drought years, and I am really happy about that. So far, one thing I've learned is that no matter how many beans and peas I plant, we eat them all long before the next gardening season rolls around. So, I am planning on lots more next year. Yesterday I picked Roma beans from the garden...and I don't even remember which variety I have except that they are the bush form and that it was from Franchi Simenti seed, and they are so good that I know I must plant many more of them next year. I can only remember one year in recent memory....and it might have been 2004....where I put up enough beans to get us from one gardening year to the next without running out. Growing the soil is why new beds take me so long to build too. In the long run, it is worth it of course, but turning clay into great garden loam certainly involves a long commitment! And, yet, I don't know how we could have done it any differently. I have found very few (almost no) spots in Love County that have a nice, rich, humusy sandy loam that is naturally occurring. For most people here, there are three choices: very sandy soil that drains too quickly in dry years and is prone to nematodes, heavy, thick red (but highly fertile) clay like we have here, and caliche clay full of rocks. So, with those three to choose from, I'm glad we have the clay, but I also appreciate our one small band of sand that cuts across the yard. I greow pecan and fruit trees in that band of sandy soil and they love it. Got your eye on a specific brand of canner? As for jars, I collect them. hee hee I can't walk past jars or lids without wanting more......"just in case". Even if I have plenty of empty jars sitting in storage waiting to be used, I almost have a panic attack when the stores start putting the jars and lids on clearance in the fall. What if I need jars a month or two from now and can't find any? (This has never happened--I always have jars tucked away in the pantry or in a closet, but "what if?" LOL). I always thought I'd have a smaller garden as time went on and we got older, but now I'm growing enough for 2 families instead of 1, so I'm growing more. (Although, DS and his wife and their daughter don't eat as many veggies as we do, except for french fries and green beans...and salsa.) My all-time favorite dedicated kitchen garden spot was an 8' x 8' raised bed in which I planted a "Salsa Garden". It was just outside the back door and in it I had tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic and cilantro. If you had a sudden urge to make salsa, everything was right there. I later planted a few rose bushes in that raised bed and enjoyed that, but I liked it better as a salsa garden. Dawn

Regarding the "how well can you paint the cabinets if they are laminate" question. A very good question that I can perhaps answer. I had what appears to be the same cabinets in my kitchen. I hated them and wanted to paint them for what I thought was going to be a year. Turned out to be about 4 1/2-5 years before they were demo'd, and they definitely could have gone much longer. I got up one Saturday morning and started slapping on water-based Kilz with a little foam roller. After I'd done most of them I realized I'd forgotten to wash and de-grease them as I'd intended. Too late. So they had the 1 coat of Kilz, 2 coats of blue-green Benjamin Moore latex eggshell. Not cabinet coat, not anything fancy, no gloss coat, no tricks. In fact, a friend who had never painted before helped on a few cabinets. Actual painting time was short -- the only thing that made it take awhile was drying time between coats. I painted the insides as well, including the horizontal contact surfaces. I stored heavy crockery on those shelves, which I scraped across the painted surfaces, and I saw only tiny scratches on those particular surfaces by the time I demo'd. The cabinet fronts were perfect. I don't have dogs who scratch at cabinets for their treats, or kids who play "carpenter" and hammer on them, but they definitely held up well, particularly for the extremely casual way I painted them. If you take a little care, there's every reason to believe your results should be at least as good, if not better. Their slab surfaces made them extremely easy to paint by roller and brush. On mine, the oak strip was a component of the cabinet and could not be removed without leaving a big gap. But I believe several companies made cabinets like this, so yours may be different.