Hi All,

I got home this morning at 2:30.  I've been away since 06.06.2013.  I got my first look at my trees this morning.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought and not nearly as good as I had hoped.  I won't bore you guys with the details.  Grasshoppers and container mixes becoming hydrophobic weren't my friend.  Here's the damage to my containerized plants:

20 trees (including NdC and Pakistani Dark) are dead dead
7 trees (including GM155) not looking good at all, but hopeful
1 tree with (possibly) viable fruit still on it, and it turns out it was mislabeled.

Most of the remainder are defoliated and dried up a bit, but should make a full recovery.  Still, I was able to pull 20 extra trees aside to carry with me to the fig meeting in Texas tomorrow.  They don't look great, but they should be okay.

The trees in the field are all fine.  Surprisingly all of them are late putting figs on.  The closest thing to ripe I have is at least a month away.

~james

Gosh James and i worry when im away for a short weekend.

Wow James, that sounds horrid.  Vacationing, traveling or just plan relying on anyone else to care for a garden is always a nightmare.  You must have quite a collection of figs to have that much damage and still enough to bring with you. 

Sorry you had so much loss.

Sorry you had such big losses James. 

I'm still learning from mistakes, and this wasn't as bad as the summer of 2010 when I lost all 132 of my fig / pomegranate trees plus all cuttings except for a single 'Celeste'. 

I had mentioned to my nieces how to check for and overcome a hydrophobic before I traveled earlier in the year, but neglected to remind them before I left.  We had four days of heavy rains mid-July and I think they got out of the habit of watering the trees.  By the time the trees were watered again, they were pretty well crispy and the growing mix became hydrophobic.  I don't think my nieces ever watered the containers heavily to begin with.  The containers were bone dry when I checked them this morning despite my nieces saying they were watered Tuesday evening.  This along with the annual grasshopper invasion did them in.

I had a lot to lose this year, because I started with a lot.  LOL.  Due to an unexpected package from UCD, I had double the number of cuttings as I had anticipated for this year.  To be fair, a handful of what I am bringing will be pomegranates trees.

Sorry about your losses but glad you still had some you can bring to the meeting.  I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Ouch - sorry to hear that.  I got back a couple days ago from being away for a week.  All ~ 25 trees were looking good when I got back.  It helped that we got rain a couple times while I was away plus the neighbor boy seemed to do a good job watering (or his Dad did as a back-up). As you can imagine I paid him well.  If I keep this up I will probably need to get an automated drip watering system.

Welcome back James:)

welcome back. hope some of them comes back. 

Dang
Hate to hear

Thanks everyone.

I did manage to give away about half the trees I tookl to the Big Fig Gig yesterday. I was a bit embarrassed at their condition, but it was what I had.

James it was great to meet you yesterday!  I'm still looking up all the varieties that you brought. 

Hey welcome back, so sorry to hear about your trees, if you need replacements send me a PM, I will do my best to help you but most likely I will be able to supply fall cuttings. Smile. Fig meeting is so close

Jenny