i have started a database for my figs, bananas and grapes, showing date of purchase and source. will link to video clips and pics showing my plants at planting, in spring, through summer, etc.. so i can have well chronicled growth
and care. when you start getting up to 50 figs, not to mention 50 muscadine grapes and 10 types of bananas, 7 types of blackberries, etc... it starts to get a little fuzzy if you try to carry any details in your head. that fuzzy little walnut between my ears is easy to overload. i just don't trust it :).

the most important thing to me here is that people realize that my word and reputation are extremely important to me. losing track of plants and trading someone what turns out to be the wrong thing will seriously undermine this, and i am not taking any chances.

having said all this, i am now going to repurchase all the types i bought from willis nursery, this time from reliable forum members, so i can raise 2 for comparison. if willis sent me the wrong plants, i can assure you i will let everyone here and at gardenweb know it. and if they sent me the right ones, i will vouch for them.

Papayamon,
yes i also like what your doing.

Too many unknowns out therei think being passed around or with wrond ID.

I think it may get worse as many unknowingly bought plants off ebay from one particular person that either mixes them up, dont know what he's actually growing , or ripping folks off.
In several years as membership grows here folks will say "hey my plant does not look like that at all"
I found this out firsthand with one i bought in past and properly destroyed it.

As for my others there all documented where they came from and they are what there suppose to be EXCEPT 1 which my friend brought back from Italy
and i call it Italian Unknown , i destroyed the parent of this one because it drops all fig for 4 season except 1 ripe fig , but kept a small rooted one to experiment with.

Martin

i'll tell you what really irks me: when someone trademarks a name and sticks it on a variety, as though it's a different fig. that only ads to the disinformation and confusion. we should focus on culling the extra names, not propogating them.

in the future when i am giving out cuttings or plants, i want to be able to show the mother from planting to growth to fruiting, as well as whatever history i know about the plant. i won't give out private member names as sources, however, only that a plant was obtained from a reliable member with a great reputation, otherwise i'll stir up bothersome emails to members. it's ok if people think i'm a dumbass. i only want them to think i'm an honest and careful dumabass :).

Mike,

That is where I got to with the pl;ants I sell as Encanto Farms: I can't swear that anything is what it is supposed to be, so I am left with "this is what it was called when I received it, and this is what it looks like, and this is a picture of the fruit at my locations, that is the best I can do and your results WILL vary." I have plants I have traded with a friend in Orange county, 90 miles north and not too different weather, and his plants here perform differently and look different, and vice versa, mine at his location. When I sent pix of Paradise Nursery varieties I was growing, they didn't recognize them and had no idea what they were. Welcome to the "FUN" part of figs.

all that means is we've got lots of experimentation to do :). i'm wondering if it's more than climate. for example, will a plant look different depending on ph, fertilization, etc? i'll be carefully documenting the circumstances and performance of the genetic material in my hands :).