I had a special treat today, and was able to swing by Jon's to pick up some Negronne cuttings (Jon, thank you for the generous cutting bag, btw), and Jon was gracious enough to walk me through most of his figs (and bananas, yum!)  Oh my gosh.  That was a LOT of figs.  My goodness.  Jon, you have quite the collection, and quite a lot of pruning my friend, lol!  Thank you for carving out a little time for me during a busy weekend, I sure appreciate it and the time you took with me.  I wanted to stay longer, but I knew you had appointments to make in the afternoon.  Look forward to coming back down and spending more time when everything is leafed out.  Or, maybe in August when there are some ripe figs!!

I would love to see jons setup but im more than a thousand miles away

I visited Jon about 6-7 years ago, He didn't have as many as he does now and was already like walking through a jungle. lol I love these bananas he's growing.

Have about 400 trees pruned, so far. I am cheating, though. I started with the little ones.

To bad you live so far away or i would be there to help prune your fig plants ,the "tagged light ones" would get the special pruning treatment.

I remember the first time I tried to visit Jon.
Got all the way to his street and took one look and said no way! I would have been at crawl speed if I attempted that climb up the hill.

But did manage to visit him couple other times. Once with my cousin and the other by leaving the trailer at the customer.

I still want to know that one fig with the peach taste.

Martin! Naughty boy. Jon, my gosh, I don't know how you do it all yourself. I know a lot are small, but still! It is like a fig fairy forest. You walk through under the canopy of lovely tropical and sub-tropical trees, with filtered light, and a million figs! So much fun. I look forward to coming back down when it's not "pruning time"!

Maybe I can come down and help and will start by pruning some of the Madeira ones for Jon. :)

I've got some new lopers that work real nice.  I had bent the handles on my Vaca and decided to get the Hickock brand after learning they make Vaca and handles are solid and cutting blade more curved.  Not that figs are much of a challenge.  Jon, I have some peumatic prning equipment.  That might speed things up for you.

Sorry, Harvey, this is a finesse project. Every cutting is hand-crafted.

i hit the lotto Jon im going to have to make a trip just to see what you got going on there.

Jon, if you were watching my preparation of cuttings tonight, you would see I take finesse to another level, when warranted. :P

Anybody else here ever graft a scion (not fig) no more than 1/8" in diameter?  How about 3 out of 3? :)

Harvey, I've done grafting with scions as thin as a toothpick. :-)

Guess I'll have to get a toothpick tree, so I can try that out, Bass.

My pomegranate scions were green with leaves and a little bigger than most round toothpicks.  Makes it a challenge for old eyes.

I've not found the need yet but inverted cleft grafts can be used to maximize buds when grafting if node spacing is too close (make the notch in the scion).

I suck at budding.

In obtaining cuttings from at least six sources so far this year I see a big difference in attention to details.  I'm not complaining and appreciate the chance to get all of them but it just seems that some people might not be paying attention to bud count and location when taking cuttings.  I can split some cuttings into thirds and others I'm pushed to get just one for rooting (two buds with wide spacing).  Though not necessary, I appreciate those that mark the cuttings on the cutting itself to help me avoid screwing up when doing a lot of cuttings at the same time.  I started getting tired last night and appreciated the labeling in one instance.