Hi All,

My trees are inside now, and it's given me time to reflect on my non-existent fig season.  I started a new business venture in Oct 2015.  It has taken up so much of my time, that I was not able to properly take care of my fig trees.  The trees did not come out of the garage until June.  I think I can count on my hands how many times I watered them this year, and I cannot remember feeding them at all.  I have about 25 trees I rooted in 2015 that are still in their 1 gallon containers.  I had planned to pot up my larger trees to free up those pots for the smaller ones.  That didn't happen either.  All of this neglect along with a mid summer hail storm that shredded most leaves means that the total growth on all of my trees for 2016 is less than many of you had on one tree.

Even still I had some interesting observations this year.  All of my trees that were in <3 gallon containers that sat on the floor of the garage froze.  Clearly, some insulation is needed between the ground and the bottom of the containers.  I had three larger trees that looked like they had froze.  One of the varieties, I had two of.  They were rooted at the same time, in the same size container and cared for the same way.  While they sat next to each other in the garage, one lived and one did not.  About a month my Paradiso (Gene) started pushing out a leaf from below the soil line.  When I dug a little into it, the trunk had been girdled about an inch below the soil line.  I checked on Green Greek (Durio) and Malta Black (the duplicate) both had been girdled about an inch below the soil line as well.  GG was showing signs of growth, but MB was dead.

My participation in the forums has been even more dismal.  I have a few trees I promised to others along with a couple of trades I dropped the ball on.  I will try to reach out to those people and rectify this situation before the end of the year.  I am hoping to be caught up with work by Dec 21.  Barbra and I host a Winter Solstice party and she has made it clear my business and trees (there are 28 in the living room) are not welcomed guest to the party.  If I can catch up on bookkeeping by the end of January, I might actually be able to have a 2017 fig season.

It was summer until a week ago here.We ca wait a couple more weeks for spring. ;-))

Sheesh, that's dismal! I had a similar year with not being able to give my trees the progressive care and feeding they need, but compared to yours..mine was great. My goal for this year was for them to survive, and that's about it. If if weren't for the fact that I have shady areas my smaller trees would have likely not grown much at all. Keep your chin up Bijan, hopefully this winter and next year are better.
I'm a bit worried about this winter's storage myself. The new garage doesn't have insulation or drywall on 2 of the walls or the ceiling, and I won't get time to do it. I'm thinking I'll put them up against the wall of the house and secure a tarp to it, sort of a lean-to warm pocket. I've been looking for the digital display piece of our little weather station so I can put the remote sensor in with the fig trees so I know if I need to add some Christmas lights to keep the temperatures up enough to keep everyone living. I know we have it, it one of the boxes..somewhere..I spend more time wandering around looking for things in piles of boxes or looking for a tool that I just had yesterday or even 10 minutes ago.

I hope your business does well!

Hi James, If I were you, I'd move everything to TX in ground and keep the real producers in CO. Hope that all goes well.

Sounds like it was just not a good year for figs in CO. I was helping shut down a company in January and by April had co-founded a new one out of the remains. Needless to say, keeping my trees alive was about all I could manage.

Here's to the CO figs in 2017!

Hope you are well,

Hope you have a better 2017 season James.   I've missed your posts

Hope you have a better season in 2017! If it makes you feel better I think I have at least 40 varieties last I checked (number keeps growing lol) and have only samples two so far. I kinda ignored them in August, got very busy, but they seemed to pull through ok. I hope that you business goes well for you and you find more time to relax amongst the figs this season!