This whole project is just Amazing!! Thank you so much for sharing all of this work (especially the photos) with us...... Please keep us Amazed!! :)

i have to go with Frank on this one... 
just awesome!!!  THANKS!!!

A bark graft at one year.  You can see the still-wrapped-in-mildewed-parafilm original scion tip

 




Here is a graft from an earlier post, taken May 2013


 




Then in July 2013

 


And finally 10/17/14, taken from the other side, so the new branch is on the left, the chip graft is on the other side, and the healing cut-off in the center of the pic is the end of the rootstock branch.

Another update on a graft from an earlier post.

This is Bealle FN, from May, 14

 



 


And from 11/28/14

 

And from 3/16/15


 



showing the breba 3/16/15 on this graft, and the successful whip graft of the same variety down-branch to the left

Enjoying your posts Brackishfigger.
What grafting knives have you used? Is it important to use a single edge blade for even cuts? Recommendations?

This is the graft that I prepared before realizing that I was working on the wrong end, Armenian, I think.  I just flipped it over and grafted the other end instead.


June 2014

 



March 13 2015


     





Top view


  

Holy Smokes   this is awesome.  I sit here at my dining table on the lanai and pot away with my cuttings and look at how huge your host tree is when it struck me   could I do this with Mr. Nasty the fig tree that was here when I bought the house.  It gives me one maybe two disgusting tasteless fig each year maybe and is all shapeless and twisted looking from my husband loping off branches that hang over the sidewalk.  Could I use this piece of poop later on to do what you are doing.   Does it matter what the host is?

so long as it is a fig, you can graft other figs onto it.  I would certainly use it if it is in a place in the yard where you would be happy to kkep it.  Don't waste that rootstock! 

thanks so much   i guess it doesnt matter if it is sprawly mess.   Now where do i go for the little pieces to stick it to him.  LOL   Joyce

I really enjoy coming back to this thread; it's so inspiring.

Did you ever try your idea of grafting the ends of your long extended branches to other rooted stock for pillar like supports?


Tim   Zone 10a 

Trim it back brutally so that most of the new growth is your preffered varitey/varieties.  Get rid of the sprawly mess!

Thanks Tim, and everyone else that have made nice comments. 

I have not planted other rootstock around the periphery for support, but I have many young branches pointing down from the top layer and up from the bottom layer and I may create grafts joining the two layers (not the branches end-to-end) for more rigid support and for aesthetics. 

Each year has been a different experience with this tree, and I don't think I am done yet with its shaping and personalizing.  It's never really done.

I really do encourage you Joyce to pick the four or five varieties you would like, or can get cuttings of, spend some time just staring at that tree, thinking about what you'd like it to be in five years, thin it drastically, and bark-graft your cuttings onto some of the stumps.  It is the right time of year, or will be soon depending on where you are.   

Start a thread with some pics of the tree and I'm sure you'll get some great feedback.  THis has been a moderately challenging and greatly satisfying diversion for me, and I would share it with you!  plus you get to post pics and receive praise from a bunch of weirdos!!



ETA:  I thought it bore mentioning that, although I am here, now, and often, and I do post, and I undeniably do have an unhealthy obsession with gardening in general and my painstakingly-crafted fig tree in particular, I am most certainly not, unlike the rest of you freaks, I repeat, not, a fig weirdo. 

This photo inspires me for some reason.  I found it looking at google images for "fig espalier", it is at a South African farm/resort

http://blog.babylonstoren.com/2013/07/26/tree-sculptures-2/

 

I tried my first grafts not long ago but none made it, lol, I guess I need practice.

Wowie! What an amazing project.

I've grafted plums, but never figs.

To brackishfigger and anyone else who has experience grafting figs: I have a graft where the scion is starting to leaf out now.  It is outdoors and the graft junction is held together with parafilm and then covered with aluminum foil. It was leaking sap for a while but seems to have stopped finally. What is the general rule of thumb regarding when to remove the foil and parafilm?  Thanks!

the parafilm will crack lengthwise when the graft takes and begins to swell/callous.  You can then rewrap it (over the old parafilm), or just leave it alone.  I tend to rewrap.  It will eventually split again, and by then should be good to go.  The foil don't hurt nothing, so no reason to remove anytme soon.

Good luck and post your results!

this so crazy cool ! to bad I cannot grow figs in ground .

someday maybe I will graft 5 or six verity's s on a potted fig !.......anyone do that ?

Some years ago, one of the new members at the time from the northeast (Perhaps someone can remember who it was... they typed in all caps) did something similar with a multi-trunked Atreano.  The trunks were nailed together to form a single trunk.  I do not remember the outcome, but I imagine it will take some time to form a union that will stand up over time.  Perhaps this is why crepe myrtles are braided.

Brackishfigger, thanks for your reply.  I actually tried three grafts on the three trunks of a Florea: a chip-bud type, a saddle graft and a whip & tongue graft.  The chip-bud graft is on a trunk that has several active Florea buds above it.  These were leafing out but a week or two ago I pinched off all those with the logic that it would trigger the chip bud to start growing.  I suppose an alternative strategy would be to allow the chip bud to fully callous and then prune off the branch above the graft to make the chip bud the apical bud.  Which approach do you think makes the most sense?  There is a sucker coming up with leaves that should "feed" the plant in addition to the whip & tongue scion which is starting to leaf out now.

All of the brebas fell.  Otherwise the tree is uniformly going nuts, with loads of figs. 

My most vigorous grower by far is Conadria (second is LSU Purple) with over 4 feet put on so far this spring.  One of  the overcrowded verticals is being air layered.

I use two nested pots.  The inner pot is slit down the side to the middle, and the outer pot has the bottom cut out. 

 



 


The bottomless one is threaded over the branch to be airlayered and pushed all the way down to its takeoff.

 


The inner pot is then put around the branch and set down into the bottomless pot and filled with dirt.  I did a little scoring and propped the pots up off of the underlying horizontal branch using a stick


 





 





The vertical to the left, upbranch of the airlayer, is now grafted to the overlying graft of LSU Gold in the upper teir of the tree. 

I have decided to connect the upper and lower tiers, and that is the first one!  I just scraped the bark of both and used a thin sharp nail to nail them together.  Future grafts will be more traditional/less crude, using sort of a reverse chip graft.

Rewton, sounds like you have things well in hand.  Ultimately you'd cut away all of the branch beyond the graft, making it apical, and in the meantime as the callous matures, to promote growth of the graft, consider scraping the bark away just down branch of the graft, or green-stick break it in the same place, letting the branch hang down below the graft.  So I've read. . .

Brackish Figger, I have delved into grafting a little myself, but man, you take the cake!  Once again, that is an awesome tree!  I hope to have something like that one day, but I am still relatively young, and it is likely I will move in the next decade, so I am waiting my final locale to start such a masterpiece. Thanks for the pics and inspiration!

Cal

Great thread! how very inspiring

The tree continues to grow thick and lush, and is loaded with figs on every variety.  I just can't wait!

My only two new grafts, Champagne and Hunt, from the LSU orchard this spring, look to have taken well.

It's interesting that the parent Hollier trees, and those of others (I've read here), have very short internodal spaces, suggesting stunted or a naturally slow growth.  My scion was that way, but the new growth is as vigorous as all the other varieties.  THe figs have a blue-gray tint.

The Conadria continues its effort to take over the garden.  It gave me one fig a few days ago that I should have left on for another day or two. 

The Conadria air layer I pictured above, created on 4/20/15, was showing a few roots at the top of the soil, so I cut it off today 5/25/15 and was very pleased.  It did have an ant colony in it, so I had to dunk it for a few hours before up-potting.


 


 





 




About a 3 foot tree.





 




ETA: 6//9/15  This airlayer got left where it sat in South Louisiana sun for two days before getting noticed in its sad sad state, rewatered and moved tot he shade.  It shed down to about 10 leaves before bouncing back. 

I'm curious about winter hardiness. Do you have a plan to protect it from freezing temperatures so you don't lose your grafts?