Sometimes dreams do come true... I have been planning and working on this project for about 5 years.
Finally, ,I live in area that can support such an orchard (North Central Florida) with enough chilling hours to accomodate my plant's needs, with enough sunny, unobstructed pasture land that I can spread my plants out and see how things go. It is a ton of work and a one man operation. Soil is a sandy clay that drains fairly well and I have close to 3 acres to work with.
So far I have planted many persimmons, loquat  
, peaches, nectarines, plums, apples, pears, asian pears, mulberry, chestnuts, olives, pomegranate, and to date 51 fig trees (70 more waiting to go in the ground).

I will probably be done sometime in early spring with irrigation to supplement rain if needed. More to come as I get better pictures. I have been quiet on this forum as I did not have much to contribute... this is about to change. SOme of my plants are duplicates and a few had the tags removed by wildlife, but I will retag them when they produce and I recognize the fruits... it will be an exciting spring once I am done. Will provide details and more pictures as time allows

LUCKY!

I do have to admit, I'm jealous. Best of luck to you and a quick question. Is this for the love of growing or will you be selling at a farmers market?
Thanks
P.S. looks great.

Hi Ben.
Congratulations and good luck with your own piece of heaven.
That has always been my retirement dream, but for some reason always got side tracked.
Now I'm too old and lazy.
Thank you for the Ficazzana cuttings, they turned out to be some great trees, they sure produce some monster figs.
Vito

Very impressive.

Just.. WOW! Sooo happy to hear you were able to make your dream come true! I know it must be a lot of hard work but when you are working your dream so to speak it must leave you feeling so satisfied at the end of the day :) I dream of having something like this too one day down the line.. What an inspiration to see that sometimes.. When you dream long enough & work hard enough.. your dreams can come true!

Looks like a lot of fun. Congratulations!

Hi ben_in_sofla,
Congrats !
Where are the citrus trees, orange trees, and mandarine trees? You need that to call your place a Mediterranean orchard ! And bitter almonds too ! and some aloe vera !
Having citrus, orange and mandarine trees in my own garden, is my own dream ... Perhaps, one day !
But, I'm more seeing that in a greenhouse, than in the wild ...

Hi Ben, 

Congratulations, it does look like a dream come true! :)

Regarding the missing labels on trees, what about making a simple tree map of your property to keep at home in case labels get lost/stolen? Then you wouldn't have to rely on waiting for the tree to fruit and identifying the variety among the many I'm sure you will have. 

Thank you all... some answers...
the top picture shows the 3 rows of figs, only, 17 trees per row. To the left of the pictures are 6 rows fully planted (minus 2 empty spots)of all other types of fruits listed on my original post.
All rows are 15 feet apart, first 6 rows I spaced fruit trees at 15 feet also. Figs get 12 feet spacing and rows 15 feet apart. I believe that would be plenty of space. Only 70 figs left to plant....

Also have several more asian pear trees and chestnut trees to put in the ground. Trees are clustered if they need cross pollination such as apples, pears, plums, asian pears, olives, chestnuts, blueberries... otherwise they go in on straight rows (peaches, persimmons, loquat, pomegranate, mulberry, etc)

As far as citrus, I have a few waiting to go in the ground as well, however due to citrus greening disease prevalent in the state, I do not hold a high hope. Someday the University of Florida (just a few minutes away from my place) will come up with a solution, meanwhile the florida citrus industry is definitely dying a slow death. I left out a few pineapple plants and and many different varieties of blueberries, southern high bush and rabbit eye varieties I also did not mention that I have a whole fence line of seedling loquat trees and prickly pear cactus. The loquat planted in the row are 14 grafted varieties of large and sweet fruit varieties. The seedling trees are a third generation of a really sweet fruited tree from my Wife's grandpa's tree.

My handle should change to Ben_in_NorthCentral_FL but I don't believe it can be changed. I will have to create a new one and the climate zone here is 8B-9 depending on which site you refer to. 

Most of the trees are listed on a spreadsheet and on a pad as backup. They have been in pots for a couple of years and will all get new tags as I record and inventory all. 

At some point I will contact UF to see if there is any interest in doing a test plot for different varieties of figs that are resistant to rust, nematodes, humidity, etc...

I fully plan on sharing fruits with some wildlife. Deer have already been picking at some fruit tree foliage. Hopefully the first cold front will knock foliage down. I have removed some foliage on some trees to remove the deer temptation. All these fruit will be for personal, friends, neighbors, relatives consumption and no business interest. No farmers market interest at this time. Would much rather be fishng on Saturday morning....

To JDSFrance, I did have a great citrus tree orchard in South Florida, all mature trees that produced heavily every year. The state of Florida decided that it was more important to remove all citrus in backyards to protect commercial growers from citrus canker. That was a very sore time in my life. My family used to pick citrus (Dancy tangerines, minneola tangelo, valencia orange navel orange, persian limes, murcott tangerines....) with a wheel barrow and I would send my son with his red wagon full of fruits to the neighbors to distribute the fruits.

Until University of Florida and or the citrus industry in this state figure out what to do about citrus greening, I will not commit much land and resources in my orchard to citrus...

Hi Ben,

Nice to see you back. It's been a long time.
Very nice orchard you have created.

Navid.

Vito,  glad the ficazzana figs are growing and doing well for you. So far they are the biggest figs I have ripened outside of Sicily.
Ficazzana should do really well in a very hot dry climate as in SouthWest or Calfornia.
The plant originated from Palermo Sicily

Next year will shed light on all the varieties that I planted and should be an interesting comparison. 
My plan is to fertilize all my trees regularly and push growth on the first year. Second year cut back on feeding and push for fruit production.
I look forward to a diminished work load on the orchard and just walking through it and picking and eating ripe fruits with my Grandson.

Wow!  You are definitely living the dream.  Good for you.  God bless and good luck with your new orchard.

Congrats Ben. Your orchard looks great. Best of luck on all your growing efforts and I'm pretty sure one day we'll be talking about Bens awesome fig fest!

Thanks fignutty and  Chris, however the problem is we do not have enough people to
connect a chain from florida to california to pass buckets of water so the plants can survive.

No water drought here.... 60 inches a year on average....

and the orchard is mediterranean in scope and plants, humidity not withstanding...

HI Ben. How is you orchard doing today?

Congratulations, I missed this until now.  I hope you're getting an amazing amount of fruit.