Hello all. Happy New year ;)
I've been reading and enjoying you all's posts and thought that I should share a little about my figventures thus far.
It's been well documented that 2013's winter was unkind to our outdoor figs. I'm recovering from wrenching losses by buying new figs that I had been wanting to try.
Some hopefully nice ones that I've gotten this spring are Smith, Montrouse, Atreano, Violletta, Olympian, Celeste.
Rooting at home in the winter was wearisome because so many rooted in the ziploc/spgahn only to die in the cup. Sigh... I finally gave up and let the remaining cuttings rest in the fridge.
On the upside just about all of my cuttings from the fridge rooted in an outdoor container filled with muracle grow and worm compost. Go figure..
Lots of work does not always equal higher yields at least not in my case with indoor rooting.
I got some nice cuttings and some young trees from very kind hearted members. They are doing well. Thank you!
A kind member who sold me some cuttings that died replaced them and the new set is doing well. Thank God.
Oh, I must be special (well at least my family seems to think so), back to the point.
I got a visit from the USDA! Apparently my ebay purchase of some Turkish fig cuttings were reported by EBAY to them!
Thankfully they had all died along with my other winter cutting failures so he didn't have to confiscate my fig babies. That would have hurt.
The man actually came to my door! Then, he called me on my home phone when he didn't get an answer (I was busy and thought that he was selling something so I didnt answer the door when he knocked.)
I asked the USDA man how he got my contact info and he told me that Ebay gave it to him. EBay gives them info on all international sales of any type of plant material. Apparently, it is illegal to purchase from overseas, any part of a plant living or dry seeds without accompanying plant paperwork.
Well that was news to me. Maybe I'm not all that special but I was certainly uninformed.
I think that Ebay should post some sort of warning for international buyers instead of letting buyers take the loss of money/plant materials.
I understand the need to keep our lands/soils safe from pests abd diseases and am for that yet it would help to let folks become informed about all of these matters by at least posting some sort of bulletin.
Finally, I'm looking for an Orphan Fig cutting or plant. Please respond to this post or pm me if you have any leads.
Peace, true love and ripe Black Madeira figs to all.