Black Madeira gets a lot of discussion about it's sickly, lack of vigor, when it comes to its growth habit. I received cuttings of BM from Jason (7deuce, hope you are well, Jason!) in January. He said that they were from Encanto originally. I rooted them indoors, and transplanted to one gallon. Once frost danger passed, I moved it outside, and once it was fully rooted in the gallon, I planted one directly into a half wine barrel. I figure, bigger pot, bigger plant. Here are pics, the first was taken July 18, and the other 2 today. It has figs which won't ripen, but I am really happy with the size it has put on and expect a good crop next year. It is about 4' tall and well branched. So don't give up on Black Madeira as a fussy, sickly fig.   

I grows well, but has always been a slow starter. Even air-layers take longer than other varieties, in my experience.

Wow,great job on that cutting.

All I see is an excellent grower. But then, all figs of Gary are growing vigorously...for some, yet unknown to me, reason. LOL  (wink!!) 
Great job there Gary.

Very nice, Gary!
Do you get the barrels at a good price somewhere or just buy them at a HD?
I was thinking to get a few but the ones I found were not cheap.

Check CL for barrels, not sure if you have wineries down there but plenty for sale here in Nor Cal. Negotiate the price (I got them 25$ each, purple stained on the inside from winery :)

Nice looking tree, Gary.  I hope you get lots of ripe fig from it next year.

Thank you for the nice comments guys. Igor, I had a few wine barrels here on the property (I live on a vineyard property) which I cut in half. Also, found some on CL for a good price. I like them because they look good and go with the look of the place, and they are a nice size. 30 gallon plastic pots cost more. I have about 10 figs planted in barrels, as well as 10 in ground, and I don't know how many in various sized plastic pots. The keepers will mostly end up in ground, since I have the room.

Greetings and good info on the Black Madeira. Gary, really nice looking trees and the barrels look great too. As far as the growth characteristics of the BM, I've experienced very slow growth with the one (1) BM cutting that I started this Spring, courtesy of UC Davis. Luckily, I did get it to root, and got it from cutting to small tree with a few puny leaves. Today, its still alive and green with a few more leaves, nothing to brag about that's for sure. Im hoping that next year, since it is rooted, that it will take off and do well. Probably give it a closer eye and fertilize a bit more regularly. I'll get a picture and post it up. (Pix added Post No. 17) Good to hear that it is a " slow starter " - hope it's faster next year!

Nice job. Good looking tree

Very nice job! I started 3 BM's last winter. One died and the other two grew at the same rate. I heard (read) BM was a slow grower and was told that up-potting into a larger pot too quickly is detrimental to BM. So around mid summer I up-potted from 1 to 2 gal. They're both healthy but only around a foot or so tall. Wish I had went to the bigger pot. :(

Thanks Rich and Mark.
Danny, I think the concern would be too much soil staying too wet. I use a good draining mix, 2/3 Happy Frog potting soil and about 1/3 home made compost, and a couple of handfulls of oyster shell lime and rock phosphate. Of course, in California, too much rain is never a problem, so controlling how wet the pots stay isn't tough. Harder to keep them wet enough.

From my limited experience of 2 cuttings that rooted and grew of each. The Black Madeira with origins from Encanto grows better and cleaner than the Black Madeira from UCD. I'm guessing over the years the UCD BM has aquired a nasty cocktail of FMV which greatly reduces growth, at least at a young age.

Calvin, I have had just the opposite experience. My UCD BM are doing much better than Jon's BM. But I am sure they are related in one way or another. The difference in my opinion, the UCD were much larger in length, diameter and # of nodes.

Interesting, thanks Wayne.

Mine originates from a source here in Maryland who obtained it from UC-Davis about 10 years ago.  The mother tree has been growing unprotected in-ground in southern Maryland.  There was a theory being discussed on the forum a year or two ago that experiencing cold temperatures could help alleviate fmv symptoms.  At any rate mine has always been a good, steady grower with little or no sign of fmv.

Greetings again

Here's a quick picture of my lone BM (UC Davis origin) started in root riot cubes back in the Spring 2014. I'm glad that it is still alive here in November, and hope it picks up next year. For comparison, I'm uploading a few other pix of cuttings started at the same time, same soil, same everything.

So, pix No. 1 is the BM, the others are various other cuttings.

Mark, my B. Madeira and Figo Preto really took off once I moved them to a 5 gallon SIP.  Just yesterday I had another nice fig from FP and will probably get more from the BM this week as well.  I'm sure the cold weather that comes in later this week will put all my figs to sleep though.

Hey Steve, growing figs in SIPs is amazing! Come Spring, add it some liquid fertilizer every week and watch what happens.

Amazing! 

It looks like a good one to me.  It looks healthy, and it's grown pretty well over the past year.
Regarding the wine barrels, I used to buy them for $22 out in Napa.  I'd imagine that they could be bought anywhere there are wineries or distilleries.  Sometimes Home Depot has them.

If you can get the cutting to root, it will grow OK.  Not fast like BT, of course, but decent.  Question is whether it will produce figs early enough in the season that they will get a chance to ripen.   Mine produced a whole bunch of figs this year, but only ripened one.  In retrospect, I should have plucked some of them off to allow the others to ripen, given the tree is only in its third season of growth.  The one ripe fig I got wasn't that great, probably because it was cold weather by the time it ripened.  Probably a tradeoff between vegetative growth and figs for this variety.  Once it put on those figs, it really stopped putting on any further growth.