I didn't get too many apples this year but heres a report on a few. I over-crammed varieties, I have rows with about a foot per variety. Don't do dat! I'm growing too much wood and not enough apple. Akane - Its getting spot rot as usual, this guy I don't have time to deal with. It also is unproductive in my climate. Its an excellent tasting apple but time to go. Cherryville Black - This is an excellent early apple but squirrels got all the ripe ones this year. Pitmaston Pineapple - Excellent! Flesh is a bit on the dry side but not too bad. Flavor is great. Now I remember why I consider it the best yellow school apple, it beats out Roxbury, Orleans, Cloche, Clochard, etc. If it were bigger everyone would be growing it. Blenheim Orange - This is a great eating apple not just a great cooker. Quality varied in terms of amount of flavor but most were good. Tree has been extremely reliable and productive. Pomme Raisin - Decent but nothing special, an average tart cooking type apple. A member of the McIntosh school. Remove. Sierra Beauty - One fruit and it was heavily water cored and bland. seems not worth the space; remove. Burford also not positive on this one in VA. My Jewel - Very average. Another bust on California apple varieties in my climate. Tumanga - Early ones are very good, somewhat in the Newtown school. They should age well I expect. Ribston - excellent taste; had heavy watercore this year. Also rot damage. Probably time to remove this variety, it tastes great but is not up to the heat. Rubinette - This apple continues to rise in my eyes, it knocks your socks off with flavor. Any other apple is bland in comparison. Probably in my top three now, and may go higher. Bonne Hotture - They have an interesting, unusual, rich flavor. Reinette du Mans - Sort of similar to Blenheim, likely triploid large apple with that creamy taste. Quite sweet and not sour so potential as a sweet for cider. Goes mealy fast. Wickson - Hornets really took care of them. These guys are more like grapes in terms of sweet/sour: lots of both. Great for cider and probably good for other uses; not really for fresh eating, they split and look ugly. Hubbardston Nonesuch - similar to Abbondanza, even has similar pink color and striping. A very good apple with a mild aromatic flavor. Low on sugar though. Myers Royal Limbertwig - the usual stuff, a classic American apple type with a more interesting flavor than the other classic red American apples. Fair amount of stinkbugs. Super reliable every year with a large crop; sizes unevenly which limits commercial potential. GoldRush - Few apples this year due to overbearing last year. Excellent as usual.

shropshire_lad, the nasturtiums have reseeded themselves ever since we first landscaped this area in 2005. I just bought several packets of nasturtium seeds in different colors and scattered them around. Now they're wildly intermingled! Naturally, the two I like most - the dark red nasturtiums and the variegated Alaska series - are the least vigorous. The dark red, in fact, never returns for me although I've spread seeds at least three times....oh well, guess I'll have to stick with orange, yellow, and cream, LOL. BTW, I gave the wrong info above to plantmaven about our sideyard setbacks. I believe code calls for 10' setbacks for new construction, but that's total width - so 5' each for my house and the neighbor's house, side by side. The fence on the south side actually sits a little inside our property line by a few inches, so it's a tight space to have double plantings bordering the walkway! I have more room on the north side because my neighbor lets us use her concrete walkway, so I have one big bed that both of us can enjoy. In fact, when you face my house, part of that left-hand side front yard bed is actually my neighbor's property. I got her permission to landscape it together with my plantings, rather than putting up a fence that would divide her 3' side from my larger area. If you look at Photo #5, the 'Yellow Wave' phormium is smack on the borderline between her property and mine. So actually, those poppies and red salvia are trespassing. But she doesn't mind at all!

I agree 4 weeks is an awful long time. I've usually seen my first sprouts in 5-7 days. There are always some late bloomers that take much longer. Usually I get a handful to sprout in that first 5-7 and then a couple more a day then usually there's a point where number of sprouts increases dramatically then later slows to a crawl again. Ideal soil temperature is around 85 degrees. Do you use a heating mat to warm the soil? The seeds won't germinate till the soil temp reaches a sufficient range. Other places you can put them is on top of the refrigerator or I've even put them on the center of my gas stove where the pilot light keeps it warm. But that was a small container (a pair of plastic ground beef containers. Seeds also need moisture. You want the soil to be moist but not damp, don't flood them. Seed depth for most peppers is about a quarter inch deep. The seeds have enough nutrients within themselves to push up so far. If they fail to reach the surface before run out of nutrients they won't make it. Bad stock is always a possibility and some Varieties can be stubborn to germinate.

Thanks LoneJack, I'm in Rhode Island, zone 6. (Updating my profile to reflect that now). The few onions there were started from second year bulblets and most of them have sent seeds which were cut off. They are interspersed with red shallots where there was extra room. I'm a little confused about how to handle second year onions once they flower. Will they still bulb up a little more or are they supposed to whither and die off now? The patch of yellow leaves are another type of shallot. For some reason they are not as green as other alliums. I'm not sure why but it's been like that all year. The leaves are a bit yellow but not dry. I may just take your advice on all of them and wait until mid-July.