In the spring of 2012, I attempted to graft a Pear scion onto my apple tree using Winter Banana Apple as an inter stem. (All of he grafting i do is "Whip and Tongue" grafts wrapped in grafting tape. I then coat the wrapped union with grafting wax) The parent branch was a Winesap Apple branch with a grafted Winter Banana Apple scion from a few years before. (I actually have two of these paired branches.) I then attempted to graft two "Kieffer" Pear scions onto my two Winter Banana Apple inter stems. The "Kieffer" Pear scions started to grow, but died a few weeks later. This spring (2014) I attempted to graft this Apple / Pear union again using the same Winter Banana Apple inter stems. I had just enough branch on my Winter Banana branches to try this experiment one more time. This time around, I used "Sunrise Pear" scionwood. The grafting was a screaming success! (I had enough "Sunrise Pear" scionwood to graft two branches onto my apple tree, and two more onto an ornamental pear. All four pear grafts were a success!) I have no idea why this experiment failed in 2012 and was a success in 2014. I do not know if it had to do with the pear variety used, or if it had to do with environmental circumstances. I will re-post in 2015 with an update. There are a few different treads on this subject so I will be re-posting on those threats also. Below are pictures taken on 07/27/2014.

Last I knew, which WAS a few years ago, the man who had been buying Paulownia logs for timber in this area had stopped buying them - the market in the Far East had disappeared, or prices had dropped too far. My info is second-hand, so I may be wrong. I don't think there is a market for it, specifically, as a fine timber tree in the US. As a pulp tree, or as a wood-chip tree, then probably you could sell them. While paulownia is a valued wood in antique Chinese furniture, and is quite lovely in the examples I saw while living in San Francisco, my understanding is that the wood was from "old growth' forests, not from rapidly-grown, modern wood - we ARE talking about antiques here. I have a feeling that the caveats expressed above are valid - this particular tree would be sterile IF there were no other Paulownia trees near-by. After all, when the dreaded Bradford pear was first grown, it was though to be sterile. It turned out to be self-sterile, but quite compatible with other ornamental pear cultivars - hence the forests of Bradford pears springing up!

Randy, I would be happy to be the first to respond, mi amigo. First let me say thank you for this post. I think it may be up to the few and proud of us to revitalize this forum, and get some great conversations started. It's been a little... slow in the past. Let me get the question I cannot speak to out of the way first: I have never grown P. edulis indoors, or protected in any way for that matter. I have P. edulis 'Fredrick' out in the open with no protection in a large pot, and it overwinters with just a little damage. It comes back fine, and is growing like a beast right now. I hope to soon be growing P. edulis 'Nancy Garrison' as well, (thanks to you), as I have read that it is even better at frost tolerance. Next, anything I have ever taken indoors has suffered from the dryness associated with central heat, a wood burning stove, and watering difficulty indoors. This year I plan to make a space in my garage dedicated to Passifloras with a timed "grow-light" like the pot-growers use. I have too many that will need some sort of protection to let them wither in the winter. Now, on that same note, even though I plan on protecting some this year, we also always test our limits. We are in zone denial. Dozens, maybe hundreds of plants that should not live here, we "force" to live here. Sometimes that means we have to get creative sometime we have to get Very creative. For instance, (though no one seems to have ever heard of this spectacular plant), we grow Mackaya bella outdoors and it has no issues whatsoever. Our Aphelandra squarrosa lost all his leaves in the same pot, (though heÂs fine now). There are countless others On to the Passifloras, the subject you actually posted about. First, let me tell you our climatic conditions, (I almost typed climactic that would have been a bit Freudian). In the last 10 years, our lowest temp was 19 degrees. Usually, in winter we get about 12 -16 days of sub-32 degrees, with our lowest night normally about 23/24. We almost never get snow, maybe once per decade for a couple of hours. Our only rain comes in the winter months, most heavily in Dec and Jan. If you plan a spring, summer or fall BBQ, you can count on it. No chance of the game being called here. We almost donÂt have a spring, and barely a fall. Tuesday the trees have leaves and Wednesday they donÂt. Our summers can be brutal. We just had 5 days in a row triple digits two of them were 107 and 108. ItÂs also very dry think desert. Thankfully, we have misters, drippers, sprinklers, et cetera, or the only thing we would grow would be California natives... yuck! So, let me think We have no trouble growing P. citrina in the ground, though it is supposed to like 45 degrees minimum. Oh man, this is going to be hard we have too many. How about this: In Ulmer and MacdougalÂs book, (if you donÂt have it, you either know too much to be reading this or if you are reading this, you seriously need to buy it. Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Passiflora-Passionflowers-World-Torsten-Ulmer/dp/0881926485/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246590216&sr=8-1), if they state the minimum temperatures for a species or hybrid to live to 5 or lower degrees Celcius, I can grow it outdoors. If it states 7 to 9 degrees C, I need to protect it somehow, be it mulch, overhead cover, 3-wall patio cover, et cetera. If it states 10 or even higher, (for the most part, though there are exceptions), I will most likely have trouble, and at the very least I need to bring it indoors or into the garage space I am making this year. Actually, I am planning on putting my "7+ degree" plants in there this winter also, so they have much less stress, and flourish faster. I am tired of having plants take till May to start growing again. Randy, and anyone else who happens to read this, I am sorry that I cannot give you a full list. This is the best I can do at the moment. IÂm a bad plant journal guy P. mooreana is one that should definitely not have survived with the slight overhead protection we gave it. It has been blooming one flower per day for a week or so right now, and smells fantastic! Another that surprised us was P. herbertiana, which should not make it out in the cold. We had a tiny cutting, (which is supposed to be very hard to do Crystal is the "rooting queen"), out in the open, no protection whatsoever last year, and it made it fine. It is growing great right now. P. ÂCoral Sea grows rampant in our cold and heat, though it rarely blooms. ItÂs a massive vine. It is supposed to only like it up to 86 or so, and doesnÂt like it below freezing. No problems here. I am planning on making this a grafting root-stock for less heat-hardy Passies. But, one other fairly non-relatable, (due to rarity) Passiflora that I can speak on is the P. umbilicata x P. tucumanensis. This is weird. It is the same cross, (and probably a seedling from the same fruit from Henk), as P. ÂJuttaÂ. Mine is slightly different as it has two full rows of coronal filaments. Both parents are supposed to be extremely cold tolerant, but not heat tolerant at all. Mine grows and blooms in the spring and fall, with only some bud-drop and a few month bloom hiatus in the hottest summer months. It still does quite well, with very little if any damage. Granted, cuttings of it have died in the summer, but that may have been my fault. ;-) IÂm sure there are more, but my mind fails me I will have to consult Crystal later and post again. Eric

I'm a KD so I guess that makes me a distributor. In my area there are at over 3 dozen fabricators within range (up to an hour away), and even more full yards (in the Northeast). A few also stock slabs but are not yards. Most of fabricators will give me a small trade discount. While it is not really reasonable to "make margin" on counters as a kitchen dealer, some places try to get close. That makes the counters a bit more expensive than going directly to the fabricator. In some cases you get something for that, in others you don't. Many dealers will price your counter with several vendors and then offer you the least expensive. Having worked with many of the fabricators, either somewhere I was employed or where a client got the counters on their own, I don't find that a good way to select a fabricator. Simply put there are a very few fabricators I know of who are relatively problem free and have superior service if needed. ALL of them are NOT the cheapest. For us, instead of trying to make margin, we simply sell the tops at the same price as the fabricator. We make very little on them, yet we do include the added services of helping to source slabs at yards by phone and email, working things out with the fabricator, being present for template and install. Why? First- I want my clients ENTIRE job to come out well. I'm already using pricier sources, if I were to try and make a decent dollar on them more customers would go out price shopping. Some of those will end up with a problem, which is heartbreaking. To encourage them to use the people we use we keep the prices reasonable. It is not largesse, simply customer satisfaction. Second is self protection-, if I supply a top and the fabricator messes up it ends up costing me more in time and money than I can make on it. Finally those services are included because I think we should be doing something for our money. OTOH- We only sell counters if we are supplying cabinets, never by themselves. Will gladly supply the contact info for who we use, just won't have anything to do with it. Similarly if a kitchen client decides to use their own fabricator we have absolutely nothing to do with it other than supplying a drawing for quote, with the notation "only suitable for quote, responsibility for details of template and installation are assumed by the client". The point of all of this is that even for our business making a profit we do not shop price. We only shop service. So if you go into a "dealer" and they offer to price your top at 3 places ask why and what makes each different. Then ask what how they handle selection, template, and install. Note: I do now use 3 places only because of logistics (I cover a large area) they price within a few dollars of each other as a rule. Sure the bargain places do many jobs that come out just fine. That means that someone somewhere will recommend them, but someone else wants to kill them. The fabricators I use all have superior service so every job come out fine. Looking for good referrals- find out who the pros and dealers that care are using, they can't afford problems. There is no guarantee that paying more will get you what you pay for, due diligence is still needed. You may not get what you expect if you don't pay for it.