Posts by ThaiFig

1483423676

	Subject: $7 fig trees for spring/summer delivery, around 150+ varieties	Replies: 775
	Posted By: ThaiFig	Views: 28,740

Hi James, thanks for responding.

To any others who wonder why I care, I'm genuinely interested in what's going on. I have my own reasons that I needn't go into, they're not relevant to the discussion. I genuinely hope the project succeeds. I just have serious doubts. They haven't gone away. Questions I ask are those others are asking as well. Not everyone is as sanguine about waiting as others posting here apparently are. And the sale of cuttings will finish in the next couple of months; if people don't buy them now, they may lose yet another growing season waiting on what the computer industry calls vaporware.

To James

I note you skipped over the first two points I raised. That doesn't make the questions go away.

[ On October 9 he said "As of right now it looks like I'll be able to finish the trees for about 1/3 of the 2016 orders by sometime in November". Anyone get their trees? ] (I'm guessing the answer is no)

[ On November 7 he answered macmike with "Your order for $7 trees should ship within the month, and your order for 2017 trees should ship in spring of 2017." Did macmike's order arrive? ] (I'm guessing the answer is no)

You'd previously gone down this road with your post of 9/10, about changing your mind of shipping mother plants. Two months later, you're apparently doing it again? So what happened in the 3 weeks from Nov 7 till the end of the month that caused you not to ship as planned? Given you couldn't predict issues 3 weeks in advance, it seems a quite a stretch to expect people to have faith in your predictions now. I'm not attacking you here, though it may seem so. But it's a question others have raised, and goes to your credibility. It also doesn't speak well about your promise to be more communicative.

To your response:

"The underlined portion is incorrect. I had 4 existing greenhouses, and when I didn't get new land, I built 9 additional new greenhouses on my property in order to handle production. Therefore, the reason I was saying that "2017 trees should ship in spring of 2017" was because I was building those 9 new greenhouses that I needed to make that deadline. Failing to get new land didn't prevent me from building the necessary greenhouses, it just caused me to build all of the greenhouses on my own current property."

OK, on Sept 7 you did say "I say 'probably' because I could set up a couple more greenhouses on our property and expand a third one, which *might* give me the capacity to meet the deadline even without any extra land."

So I'll grant you that point. But at some point you changed the delivery date for 2017 orders to "Fall" without mentioning it in any of your posts. It now says: "Advance order your fig trees now for Fall 2017 delivery! You can now advance order fig trees for delivery around October 2017." But your order form still lists March as the estimated ship date for each variety. - Need to update that - Question is, if you already know it won't be possible to fill those orders for another 9 months, why take advance orders now when last year's orders and this Spring's orders are still unfilled? I think we know the answer to that one...

The clue to that is in your first post on this thread : "So what's in it for me? A large part of the cost of growing the fig trees will be heating my 4 greenhouses, where I also grow lots of fish and bananas. Heating is really expensive, so I usually only heat half my space, and I only heat it a minimal amount. But I would crank up the heat for your fig trees, and that would have the side benefits of making my fish and bananas happier and helping them to grow faster. So in a nutshell, in exchange for hooking you up with cheap trees, you’d help to pay my heating bill and allow me to grow bigger fish and bananas. "

Now the bananas have apparently moved out, and you've added all this new polytunnel space.

But more significantly "Last year I upgraded the greenhouse/shed/orchard area from 20 Amps to 100 Amps, and tomorrow I've got an electrician coming out to upgrade it to 200 Amps." So I'm guessing without the cash flow of future promised sales, that electrical bill, on top of refunding people who've given up, would be a bit much to handle? What about the shipping charges? Have you escrowed those for use when the time comes to ship, or have you had to use that money for your running costs and expansion? Without the continued cash flow of future sales, would you be able to ship all the orders even if your fig plants are ready?

"I need all cuttings ready at the same time for shipping purposes" ... sorry that's unrealistic. I have trouble getting two air layers to mature at the same time growing them on one tree. Cuttings all mature at different rates, even of the same variety, let alone multiple varieties. I think that's at the core of your problems. People ordering many different varieties with different maturation rates making it impossible to get a complete order together for anyone. Adding one or two layers of poly cuts down the light available by half. Add to the shorter winter days, colder temps, and sunlight coming in at a low angle, it's no wonder that you're now growing under shoplights. Whatever growth expectations you have for in ground figs during these next couple of months are just not going to happen.

"None of the potted or in-ground trees in any of my greenhouses are dead, they're all fine. The only issue I've had is that small pockets of them went dormant at all sorts of various different times." Probably uneven heat distribution contributed to that. Not an uncommon problem in a polytunnel with no fans. Not dead, *yet*. Winter is just getting started. Hope that's still true once it turns to Spring.

"I planted my orchard long before October, and the only trees I put in-ground around that time frame were planted indoors in heated greenhouses. " Not according to the pics and post of Oct 9 where you said "Not all of the orchard has been planted yet, and a few of the empty planting locations that we had marked earlier will need to be moved slightly to get them inside the tunnels, as you can see in the first picture." or the pics you posted on Oct 10. Look like small plants being planted in your new tunnels to me. According to your last update they may have some heat but are in need more. Which obviously weren't enough to prevent dormancy, which was my original point. That projections of growth in December, let alone January, in those tunnels were unrealistic. And such young plants with limited root systems are going to have a hard time surviving if it gets cold enough.

In short, I think you're innovations are admirable, but your expectations are still unrealistic. Be happy to be proven wrong.

And to the rest of you, could we please try to stay on topic? On second thought, nah, that's also unrealistic...

- Dieter aka ThaiFig(s).

Modal title

Insert Code

Please paste your code into the box below: