Dear List:
I am newbie to this Forum, but I have something I wanted to share.
It was my great good fortune to visit our venerable moderator and his fabulous nursery two weeks ago.
My partner & I lived in San Diego for 20+ years and moved to NW Arkansas 10 years ago and we were back in SoCal to visit friends. I had intended to track down Encanto Farms so imagine my surprise when I opened a San Diego free weekly newspaper upon my arrival and saw this:
http://www.sdreader.com/php/cityshow.php?id=1756
!!!
As Jon said, the (gen y ?) journalist had to dig up a controversy to make *year-round figs* a story (imagine that!)
After my fumbling efforts lo' these many years, I would settle for a couple of months of figs!
Jon showed us around and gave us a taste of many things we will probably never encounter again! And despite the my efforts to get him to recommend certain fig varieties for our zone 6b, nothing doing! (Teach a man to fish, remember?) We had unforgettable fig taste sensations as well. Jon pointed out his pruning strategy on one of his hillside figs (helped by the winter cold!) which was inspiring to my efforts as well.
I am not a newbie to fig-growing, but I have been *making it up as I go along*. I have had very good success with air-layering even though I was using soil & rubber bands (please, don't ask for details). Ironically, the huge fig we had in coastal San Diego (fruit from August to Christmas!) is the *same* variety I was able to secure here @ our local Farmer's Market (white Genoa, methinks). But here 90% of the crop ends up in suspended animation in October...Hence my thirst for new varieties.
Cuttings are a new challenge & I am gearing up to get my first batch going this weekend--which I couldn't do without all the great info. from you all.
If I could get to the point of having a marketable surplus for a couple of local chefs, I would be a much happier human.
As they say in these parts:
Appreciate you,
Stephen V.