You're out of my comfort zone in z4-5, but there are folks who do grow them there. John Gordon passed away sometime in the last couple of years, but his website is still up (linked below) - not all that easy to navigate, but may give you some ideas about what species and varieties were proven producers for him there in Amherst. There's a link on the Gordon website to a digital copy of 'Nut Growing Ontario Style', which may be worth reading. Additionally, Carl Weschke's 'Growing Nuts in the North' is available in digital format from Project Gutenberg; I'll link it in a follow-up post. St. Lawrence Nurseries, in Potsdam, offers some nut trees for northern climates - but to my knowledge, all those will be seedlings - which may translate into a fairly long wait for nuts. (Seedling pecans here have required 15+ years to begin bearing first crops; seedling BWs - maybe 8-10; have grafted hickories that have been in the ground for nearly 20 years - no nuts yet.). Grimo Nut Tree Nursery is another reputable northern nursery specializing in nut trees. Pure butternuts are probably approaching extant species status, but hybrids of butternut with heartnut/Japanese walnut exhibit varying degrees of resistance to the butternut canker disease. I'm unaware of any particular disease problem that's been reported as a threat for the hickories. Scab can be a problem, but I don't know that i've ever noticed it adversely affecting nut production on anything other than pecans. Here is a link that might be useful: John 'Nuttrees' Gordon

Hi, I have two small Sweetbay Magnolias - and might get rid of one, depending... Is Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana var. virginiana) self-fertile? Does anyone have just one specimen growing in a region where there are none nearby and yet still get fruit? Thanks, Steven

awm03, I have a few pics at http://community.webshots.com/user/coltlake, however, that site may be down. I haven't been able to get to it from work the last few days. If you can't get to that site, I will post a few pics here in the next day or so. I used a 1:4 ratio of Minwax oil based stain to Waterlox Original Sealer (the max they recommend) for the first coat of Waterlox. The stain was a mix of two colors: 1 part Minwax Dark Walnut and 6 parts Minxwax Red Chestnut. We wanted a dark brown/red color. The Red Chestnut was too red and the Dark Walnut had no red at all. The mix was very close to what we wanted. We tried other colors like the Red Mahogony, but it had a purplish tint to it. After figuring out how many cans of each color we would need we opened the cans, mixed the stain in a bucket at the 1:6 ratio and then poured the mixed stain back into the original cans for storage until use. I would recommend getting several pieces of scrap flooring and trying the stain/Waterlox mix out to see what the colors look like. Remember, just apply it to the samples with a lambs wool applicator in one stroke (do not scrub it on) and let it cure - do not wipe it off. If you put enough on it will be wet looking with oil sitting on the surface of the wood. That is how you apply it to the actual floor. As it cures it will self-level and soak into the wood. Do not wipe off the excess oil - what doesn't soak in will harden. You can experiment with adding some of the other Minwax colors to your taste. When applying the stain/sealer mix to the floor be sure to take your time (too fast causes bubbles to form), get good coverage, overlap each adjacent strip, and keep the edges wet (don't stop working until the whole floor is finished). If you absolutely need to find a stopping point because the room is too large to completey cover in one day, you can cut in along the edge of the boards with a brush to finish a section and then cut in with a brush along the adjacent boards to start the next area. This works real well for later coats with plain Waterlox, but you still have to be careful with the first coat with stain that the brush strokes are uniform. If possible, save the larger areas for days when you have time to apply the first coat completely across the room. Because our flooring extends from one room into the next with no threshold, we had no natural stopping points between rooms, so we had to use the brush technique to stop along edges of boards near the doorway. After the first coat, inspect the floor for edges or spots that the stain missed. Wipe on a little stain/sealer mix, let it set for a minute, and then wipe it off and buff it. If you have gaps between the boards that the stain did not get down into, dip a brush into the the stain/sealer mix and work it into the gap and then wipe off the excess from the surface of the boards. You won't have to do this for the subsequent coats. After the second coat of sealer, the Waterlox should start to build up a layer and start to have little more uniform sheen. However, there may be spots, especially around knots in soft wood such as pine, where the Waterlox is still soaking in and does not have as much sheen as surrounding areas. I took some Waterlox and spot treated these areas and buffed it out with a rag so it could "catch up" with the rest of the floor. The subsequent 3rd and 4th coats resulted in an even sheen, even on the soft pine. Waterlox does not build up like polyurethane, though, so don't expect that knots will be have a perfectly even sheen. You will still be able to see them when you look across the floor towards a window, but it will look normal. Mixing the stain with the Waterlox, even at the maximum ratio recommended, resulted in a satisfactorily uniform staining of the white pine floors and saved a lot of effort compared to staining the floors in a separate step. Color uniformity was not perfect, but very satisfactory. It is hard to tell what color variations are due to the method of stain application or due to natural color variations in the wood itself. With lighter stains/ratios or harder woods the results should be even better.

tncraft, There is lots to like about Alder. It is native and it is the opposite of endangered. It is a softer wood - as is Douglas fir, which is used in some beautiful kitchens shown on this forum (farmgirlinky's for example). Being softer means it is more likely to show dings if banged. I think it is beautiful. A while back Fine Homebuilding magazine had some examples of Alder being used. This is a link to pictures of Alder and examples with different finishes: http://www.google.com/search?q=alder&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=vY&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rh_JTsK9L7OK2QWLx6j-Dw&ved=0CEsQsAQ&biw=1216&bih=643 It may be easier just to use the search term Alder in google - This was one of the first sites to come up. OG