Black Madeira (from UCD 2010; heavy FMV. In ground); prone to souring.

Black Mission (from local nursery. In ground); good growth, excellent, no souring.

Black Mission NL (from Encanto 2010); superb quality, no souring, but tree died due to root problems. Saved air layer in time to try again.

Conadria (DFIC0005 from UCD 2010. In ground); prone to souring.

Desert King (FJ, 2014); good, no souring--too early for beetles.

Excel (DIFIC0020 from UCD 2010; In ground); prone to souring.

Hardy Chicago (from Cathy 2012); prone to souring.

Ischia Green (DIFIC0052 from UCD 2010. In ground); prone to souring.

LSU Gold (from Cathy 2012); prone to souring.

LSU Improved Celeste (bare-root from JD 2012); prone to souring.

LSU Purple (sucker from GF 2011. In ground); prone to souring until late in season when few figs are left, but insect activity has declined.

Marseilles VS (from vicki; originally from Encanto); prone to souring.

Panachee (from Mike G 2014); still small, but few mature fruit last year were sour.

Tena (DIFIC0021 from UCD 2010; prolific, sweet, prone to souring, ant damage and splitting—likely discard)

Unknown Georgia White Hybrid (from GF 2011) Outstanding, but prone to souring.

Violette de Bordeaux (DIFIC0063 from UCD 2010); extremely prone to souring--100% loss.


At this point, my only completely reliable varieties are Black Mission and Desert King, although I'm still trying a few other varieties that aren't mature enough yet to be certain how they'll perform.

Mark, the jury is still out on the Wilma, as I haven't yet learned how to tell when they're mature and ready to pick. I picked the first four too early.  There are ten more to go, so hopefully I'll get the timing right soon.

Several years ago a forum member (sorry--I don't remember whom) told of having good success with potted figs placed in a big tub with an inch or two of water in the bottom, so the roots always had plenty of moisture available throughout the heat of the day. I wondered about keeping roots constantly submerged, but tried it and my plants seemed to thrive.

I decided to expand the idea, and threw together a crude plywood tray with 2x2s at the edges to form a shallow dike, and then covered everything with a plastic sheet. I ran some drip emitters to it so the tray would fill to overflowing once each day, and put my smaller potted stuff in it. Usually by the end of the day, most of the water has disappeared, so the bottom isn't always 100% submerged:


Anyway, it's been working fine for years, with the following drawbacks: mosquitoes, and stinky, anaerobic soil in the bottom inch of each pot (which as near as I can tell, doesn't seem to hurt the plants any in my dry climate). I try to make sure there aren't any roots at the bottom of the pots when I first place them in the water tray, but often they grow roots right out through the drainage holes.

SO--my question is: Why bother with elaborate "self-watering" pots that have small reservoirs underneath? Is that really any better than just sticking a pot in a water tray, and keeping an inch or two of water in it? What am I missing?

My reason for asking is that I just purchased a 3 gal Pickering Mango, which can't survive Tucson's winters in the ground so it's doomed to stay in a pot. I thought I'd move it up to a 5 gallon container and then set it in a plastic tub fitted with a 1/4" water line and float valve to maintain an inch of water in the bottom at all times during the summer (in cooler months I'll let it dry out). I'll wrap the pot with a light-colored cloth that hangs down into the water, to shade the pot and keep it cool via evaporation. Then, I'll "cloak" the whole thing with mosquito netting to baffle the blood-suckers. The upper part of the soil will stay pretty dry but grow progressively wetter lower down, with the bottom inch always under water.  I figure the roots will grow into the zone of ideal moisture and avoid anything they don't like. Does anybody see any fatal flaws with this idea?

Those of you plagued with green fig beetles, aka green June beetles, may find this easy-to-build trap useful. I found the basic idea online but thought step-by-step directions might be helpful:

 
1. Cut both ends from a 2-liter soda bottle, creating a funnel. The "neck" hole needs to be big enough that beetles can easily fall through.

 
2. Make a plastic baffle that fits snugly into the soda bottle. I cut two rectangles from a plastic ice cream tub, with a narrow slit halfway up the center of each so they could fit together in an "X" shape.  One of the online sources said traps with bright colors at the top worked best, so I painted some decoy "fruit" dots in different colors. I don't know if it really helps, but it might!

  3. Using the wide end of the soda bottle funnel as a guide, use a Sharpie to draw a rough circle around the neck of a gallon milk jug--avoiding the handle. Then cut the circle out with scissors, taking care to stay inside your line far enough that the soda bottle will fit snugly into the hole. It doesn't need to be perfectly round--the bottle will conform to the shape. Then cut a couple of narrow slits in the sides of the milk jug, about 1-2 inches up from the bottom. These will allow rainwater to drain out.

 
4. The critical part is what to use as bait. In years past, I've tried similar traps with no success--using over-ripe fruit that beetles had already been eating. The online source I read recommended isopropyl  alcohol, with some grape juice mixed in. Rather than pour it into the bottom of the jug, put it in a small container with a hole drilled in the lid for a wick. I used a pill bottle with a rolled up a paper napkin for a wick. To keep it from falling  over, I stuck it in the lid of a spray can, which I snipped into a daisy shape to keep it from filling up with gunk. The snipping was probably not useful.

 
5. Fasten it in, or near, a tree where beetles like to hang out. Don't do what I did, and tie it to something--because when you want to dump the stinky, drippy dead beetles it's a pain to have to untie a knot. Now I use a spring-loaded clamp to clip it in place. The final step (best done after it's in place) is to put 2-3 drops of dishwashing detergent in the bottom, and then pour in water till it starts to dribble out the slits in the jug. The detergent water will quickly drown the beetles.
 

That's it. Check it every couple of days, because soapy dead-beetle soup is super stinky, and probably won't attract many new beetles. Unclip it, pull out  the funnel and dump the beetles, hose it out, and reset it. This year it was just an experiment to see if it works. It does. Now I'll start saving milk jugs & soda bottles to have a bunch of traps ready for next year.