These are almost as long, square-ish still when ripe, and twice as fat. The dam# squirrels ruined all but about 5. They tasted a bit acidic, med sweet, creamy vanilla like. Not like Ice Cream, but mmmmmmmm good! I've got 2 or 3 dwarf Cav's ready to cut down. How do they taste? I was MOST IMPRESSED with the Williams Hybrid. A huge bunch, maybe 150#. I could barely carry it. My double mohi, shot out 2 sm bunches in the 1st year. Not ripe yet though. What did your Blue Java's taste like? Dwarf Cav's? I know, taste is hard to explain. --Rick

Geez, a 7.1 MB download! That'll take a while on dialup. Pam

Fertilizing, and in particular, fertilizing with nitrogen cannot force activation of buds being suppressed by photoperiod and/or chilling. Once the duration of the dark period reaches a certain point, buds are pretty much dormant, and additional chilling seals the deal by ushering the plant into deep dormancy. Whether or not one fertilizes in fall, growth that hasn't hardened off is going to die back to the buds that began developing during the summer. When plants become fully dormant, it takes a varying amount of chill units to release a plant from its dormant state. From dormancy, plants normally pass into a period of quiescence, during which buds are fully capable of being activated, but are inhibited from doing so by ongoing chill. Usually, the onset of spring growth occurs after dormancy has been 'broken' and temperatures have remained at levels greater than about 42*. I fertilized this past Wednesday, 10/5, and I think that will likely be the last time unless we get at least 2 weeks of additional temps above freezing at night and into the 60s during the day. If you're using organic forms of nitrogen like hoof/ horn/ feather/ blood/ fish/ cottonseed/ ..... meal, you should stop fertilizing before mean temps drop below 55* to guard against ammonium toxicity. I had a heuchera of mine die a few weeks ago. The manager at a garden nursery told me that after planting I should be applying Transplanter fertilizer (5-15-5) every two weeks for two months---even if that means going until the end of October! I assumed you did it one time. Would this be good to do for all perennials? Another horticultural myth. First, plants use about 6X more nitrogen than phosphorous, so if the plant is in a container, it would be virtually impossible to justify supplying 5-15-5 fertilizer. If the plant is being planted out in the landscape, the only way that much phosphorous could be a benefit is if there was an existing phosphorous deficiency. which would be a rarity anywhere other than heavily farmed fields. The idea that nitrogen is for above ground parts, phosphorous is for roots, and potassium is for the general well being of the plant is well wide of the mark. You might have heard the ditty "up, down, all around" to "help you remember" what N, P, and K are supposed to do, but the truth is, all nutrients (absorbed by the root pathway) are equally essential to all plant parts. Fertilizing should be a more holistic effort with an eye toward balancing NPK % ratio to the ratio at which the plant actually uses the nutrients. This will allow you to fertilize at the lowest concentrations possible w/o deficiencies. Using 5-15-5 means you would be supplying about 7.8X more P than the plant can/will use, based on the % of N it supplies. Al

I am sorry for being a broken record, but this does look like a toner coat, although it may be a rubbed out "flooded" coat, it really doesn't look like highlights so if it is some type of hand rubbed coating, they certainly let it dry a lot before rubbing it out. Toner is just paint, it isn't super special and it isn't super hard to do... it is just paint. Anyone who can evenly spray paint, can spray toner. Paint has a lot of pigment in order to achieve opacity and toner has little pigment in order to limit opacity... that is it. Without knowing what product they are using it is impossible to know whether or not it needs a top coat, but most modern industrial coatings don't require an additional top coat over a tinted top coat. What do people think white top coat is? It is literally just top coat with color added (usually titanium dioxide). Most modern coatings will crosslink fine with a rather significant amount of color added to them and so it is going to be just as durable as any painted top coat is. On some items, such as exterior doors and table tops, many let the tinted top coat partially cure and add another top coat to it that doesn't "melt in" to the tinted coating. This gives you a scratch coating that is designed to take scratches without scratching through the color coating, but the effectiveness of that is debatable and really only needed for things like scratches from moving plates and glasses around a table. Most things that will scratch a top coat are going to scratch through all coatings. And again with the broken record... the main problem for the OP is not the quality of the coating but what will happen with the warranty. I would be amazed if the cabinet company will stand behind their factory coating after someone sprays a tinted top coat over it. Coating problems are not so rare that the factory warranty doesn't add value so even if the coating is 100% as durable and 100% as good there is still the loss of value that comes from the assurance of the coating warranty. I understand saving time but unless someone out there is willing to match the entire cabinet company warranty then there needs to be a cash kicker in this deal.