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Grafting onto smyrna type

About 5 years ago, as I was getting into figs, I found a tree that I called Center Street, because that is where it was. I got starts from it, and planted one at work, one at home and many in pots. Well, last year when I did some pollination experiments, I found conclusively that it is a smyrna type. It had always dropped its figs every year but I thought it was too dry or too hot or something. Then, when I pollinated one each on the ingrounds at work and at home, they ripened nicely. I have started some of the seeds since the pollen parent was a persistent caprifig.

But, late last summer after coming to this conclusion, I decided to keep the in-ground at work, and graft several other varieties to it. I tried four grafts then, and only one survived. It is from an unknown tree very similar to Hardy Chicago. Then this year I have put over 10 graft attempts onto it. Several have taken place. Pictured are the graft from last august , the first one from this year to take off and one that is just starting to grow.

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Nice! Good luck, Tom.

here are a few more pictures of the grafts. The full tree picture shows the oldest graft from last year. It is the variety that I posted about asking for an ID today. It is a great early ripening, really hardy dark fig. The other varieties can be determined by hovering over the pictures. There are two grafts of Battaglia Green, one of Excell, one of Enderude (not pictured), one of Texas BA1, One of Atreano (not pictured this time) and two of Hardy Chicago (not pictured) in addition to the Unknown Dark.

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  • BLB

Nice work and a great resolution to having planted smyrna figs.

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