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Mary Lane in the hoop

Just picked my first Mary Lane in the hoophouse.  This tree is growing in the 'addition' which is unheated and has no residual heat like the North side of the original hoop.  Like all the other trees in the addition, it froze to the ground last winter with no protection.  Also like the others (except Blue Giant which died), it grew tremendously during the summer, and was one of four or five that had to be cut back after reaching over five feet tall.  New growth on Mary Lane again grew quite tall, total height about ten feet.

Despite outside temperatures below freezing many nights this fall with similar temps inside, this was by far the sweetest fig I picked this year.  It also had good flavor, unlike the Alma and Italian Honey growing in the residual heated North side which were almost without flavor or sweetness the entire summer.  Mary Lane was so sweet, I can still taste it after rinsing my mouth over ten minutes ago!

Discovered an interesting situation when cleaning up fallen fig leaves in the hoop.  A 12 ft. tall limb of Texas Everbearing had to be bent over when we replaced the dropped ceiling on the North side and it had broken from the stress, leaving only a small amount of tissue attached.  Today it has root nodules on it.  I expect it will root readily if put to soil, or an air-layer 'poultice' applied.  Italian Honey has dried air-roots on a limb about 18 inches off the ground.  Guess it was a moist season in the hoop late this year.

Mary Lane has always been recommended for cooler climates here is CA, such as the beach. Normally I expect things which are recommended for marginal situations to also be marginal in perfromance/value. Mary Lane is definitely a nice surprise because it is far more than marginal - it is a really nice fig. Congrats.

Wow Elizabeth, sounds like a really nice fig.  I have heard it was a good fig for cooler climates, but it is not talked about much.  Congrats on a delicious fig.  None of my figs matured this year due to the cool summer.  Maybe next year I'll taste my first fig.

Elizabeth:
thanks for the Hoop good news.
Dunno nothin' 'bout no Mary Lane, but I'll be asking Jon if has any to spare!
No good news from my Figgie Hoop House with 45+ trees, except that FIGS WILL GROW IN A SWAMP.
Who knew?
My HH is sited in a marginal wetland, as it turns out. Sure didn't look that way in the winter when I was scouting it.


Don't know if anyone noticed, but Herman2 has some nice Mary Lane Cuttings listed on eBay.

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