Mine is from Tam!

Actually I got it from Rewton who got it from Tam.  Thus "white madeira #1"

BM1 died last year to root shock when I was stupid in transplanting it in July.

The first root cube survivor is 6 and a half feet tall and is my biggest tree right now, my second BM mother tree is also one of the root cubes from back then.

Hey Jeff!

I'm also in Columbus Ohio, OSU alumnus, and grow many different figs.  Stop by sometime and I'll show you how I do it, and maybe buy a couple trees from me.  :-) 

-Greg

Hey Tom!

Can you please tell me about the conditions and lighting in your transition environment the video starts in?  With the towels as walls.

Fellow fig enthusiasts, please lend me your experience!

I've got rooting cuttings down to a near flawless system, and I'm pretty stable in caring for them after they're established, but I suffer a lot of casualties in between.  I root them in plastic shoe boxes with slightly moist sphagnum moss then once they have a good amount of roots I pot them up.  I've tried a variety of methods and still can't quite nail it.  Either my figs dry up on the top or rot or amazingly both at the same time.  Some years I've had much better results than others, but it seems like as I get more experience in every other aspect of growing I get WORSE at this part!

I've tried putting them in pots of just perlite, of a mix of perlite/bark/compost, of just dirt, of perlite and just dirt, of just compost.  I've put them in smaller versions of 'Bill's Buckets' that my grown figs do so well in, I've tried them in sealed cups so the moisture can't escape.  I've tried a variety of these buckets outside inside of a larger bin to keep in some humidity, I've tried this inside under lights.  I just can't get better than a 50% survival rate with anything!

Please help.

Hello fellow fig enthusiasts,

This winter/early spring I am looking to trade for or purchase dormant cuttings or rooted trees of berbera/bebera, white greek, white ischia, bourjasotte gris, & sumacki.  Two of these I tried last year and failed to keep alive between rooting and putting outside like a total novice who didn't remember how Ohio weather works.  :-(

Please PM me, thanks!

I do once a year, when doing up-potting in the spring.  And also with any new planting.

We appreciate your bringing us back to 2012, Eithieus.  But that mistake was long resolved and everyone I sold those to was paid back and/or reimbursed.  Will continue to haunt me, deservedly, but let's stop bringing that up at every opportunity please.  Jon himself has even said that the issue is done here (and I believed banned two negative nancies in the process.)  Onward and upward!

All of my figs these days are thoroughly documented, researched, and verified.

Barry, I have Figo Preto, Paradiso, Pipo, Red Lebanese, and Piccolla Negretta (officially unknown) for trade. 

Title says it all!

I want to add those three varieties to my collection.  I have lots of figs for trade and cash.  PM me please!

-Jolly Tiger (variegated)
-Berabera/Bebera black 
-Col de dame grise

Thanks,
-Greg

Dale, I think I'm going to convert it into a 5-top grafting host next year.  :-)

It's in 5g right now, might put it in a 25g replica of 'Bill's' fig buckets. 

You know how I keep wolverines out of my garden, Rich?

I put up a goal line.  :O)

NortheastNewbie gave me cuttings of Sicilian Red in late 2011/early 2012 when I started growing figs.  I was unsuccessful are rooting them.  In 2012-2013 my family live in New Jersey for three short months.  During that time, I met NortheastNewbie at his home/orchard and observed his many fig trees, he gave me new Sicilian Red cuttings and Dark Portugal.  Sicilian Red was again *very* difficult to root, it remains my hardest to root fig so far, 1/10 cuttings survived, and even that one just had a few very wimpy pathetic roots for the first several months.  

It grew very slowly and sadly until this year.  It took off in the spring of 2014 right on schedule with all my other figs.  Then, come May, it created this one tiny fruit on low old wood from last year

 
A few days ago (from today, August 23) it swelled up and became a very pretty red color.  Today it was finally ripe.  My pictures do the red no justice, here is it next to a much darker Dark Portugal also harvested today (also from a cutting given to me by NortheastNewbie):

(Sicilian red: right, Dark Portugal: left)

The Sicilian Red was *really* good.  Better than all of my other figs except Black Madeira, and very close to Black Madeira.  I was blown away!

(Sicilian Red on left, Dark Portugal on right)
   

This lovely lady was standing guard on the garage door a few feet away:
 

Look awesome!

Suzi, we harvested our first drop of honey on the same day!  Mine was on figo preto around 2pm today:

It didn't occur to me to eat the honey separately either. :-(

The leaf is really similar looking but still looks distinguishably different to me. 

Looking through old photos, I found this picture of the original fruit I started this thread with back before it was ripe, and in this pic it resembles my ripening BM's very closely.  Hmmmm.

 

And here's one from roughly the same time of BM coming into ripe:
 

On thing all of the Black Madeira fruits of mine have in common is the purple speckling around the eye of the green fig.  None of my FPs have had that.

By 'tomorrow', I meant I had to go look at the difference for myself right away.

Admittedly the leaves do look pretty similar in these pics, but you can see the difference in lobes somewhat.  The fruit comes in much differently.  BM comes in with this pale green upright fig then it stays the same for a while then one day swells up big and purple then turns black.  Figo Preto has much darker green straight fruit that speckles black onto the green then just fills in black.  At least that has been my experience with them this year.

My Black Madeira also tasted significantly better than my Figo Preto.

All of these are my Black Madeiras right now:
         

I have it growing side by side with Black Madeira that I have also harvested this year.  It is definitely not the same.  Not the color, not the taste, not the shape, not the fruit cycle, not the leaf shape!

Will take side by side pictures for you tomorrow.

Figo Preto, round 2!

Much better this time properly ripe and even a drop of honey!

Thank you all for the kind words and advice!  

I'm writing it off as a victory since there was a valuable lesson learned, and because I don't like taking failures!  :-D

Suzi, we did talk about using prosciutto and probably will try it at least once.  I *LOVE* bacon, and imagined, "how can this possibly go wrong?"  Lesson learned. :-P

Today we harvested (1) figo preto and just stuffed with goat cheese raw, was very good! 

I have been waiting, patiently!, for years to have dark figs stuffed with goat cheese wrapped in bacon.  I wanted to wait until I had at least 3 that I grew myself ripe at the same time.  I've been growing figs for coming up on three years now, the first year had no fruit, the second year had a few, this year has had several but only one at a time...

Until today:

Four beautiful dark Portugal figs all (mostly) ripe on the same day!  This is the day, it's going to finally happen!

As it turns out, maybe one of them wasn't ripe enough to be picked, and the other two could have used another day too, but the top one was perfect.

 
I shoved a ball of goat cheese in each of them.  They oozed with deliciousness as the sweet mushy fruit merged with the creamy goat cheese.  I licked my fingers clean at the end and legitimately thought I was going to cry for a moment it was so delicious.

 

Then I trimmed the fattiest part off the bacon and wrapped it around neatly one time on each cheese stuffed fig.

 

Then they went in the over @ 300 degrees.  We cook bacon slowly on a low heat to render the fat out and it's perfect so I thought that would be a good approach.  We put them in a pie pan raised up on crumbled foil so they wouldn't sit in a pool of bacon grease.  We watched them pretty closely until the bacon was cooked.

Glorious bacon wrapped goat cheese stuffed figs!  But they were a total flop...  During the cooking process the figs lost all of their flavor, the goat cheese melted and got lost in bacon grease, and they were borderline inedible.  So disappointing, but I think next time will be a success.  

They were so good before I added the bacon (which just feels ridiculous to say), all of the problems came from cooking them with the bacon.  And the bacon didn't even come out very well, it never does when I wrap it around food, it's never consistent.  I feel like it needs a flat consistent surface with regular flipping to cook properly.

So next time I'll just stuff the raw fig with goat cheese and cook the bacon separately then sprinkle chopped bacon over the fig.  

The moral of the story is this: if you're thinking about cooking your fresh figs, be aware that they're going to lose some flavor!  Or at least mine did.

I have a 4x2x2 terrarium that contains dracula orchids and heliamphoras.  The orchids are not doing as well as I'd like, and I have grown suspicion that this is due to not dropping the temp down to an appropriate 50 degrees at night.

Terrarium is totally automated, it needs to run for days at a time without my input, so ice and anything that I have to replace constantly is not an option.

You folks have ideas?

Thanks!  And thanks for your insight, you may have well saved my tree.

Can you direct me towards some resources grafting technique you recommend?

The graft canopy is now bigger than the entire mother plant!

I have it firmly supported at the moment.  But I think I'm going to air graft most of it in a few weeks.  That should decrease the weight and risk of breaking, not to mention give me 4 new plants if all goes well!

That whole canopy is sitting on just the greenwood saddle graft.  I will take your advice on using a tutor as well.  Grasa has advised me to use a Tpost which seems solid.  Will update when that's done.

Appreciate all the love, everyone, and all of your useful wisdom. :-)

7/4/14 update:  I had three 1g survivors from the root cube experiment.  This winter I sold one, but that one died frozen in transit due to USPS losing the package for nine days...  So I sent a replacement in May leaving just one survivor from the 6 root cubes, and the one grown from a full cutting (let's call that one BM1).

But that survivor is now larger than BM1 side by side, and has two healthy vigorous shoots.  Here it is side by side with BM1 (she's the one with the purple fruit.)

Now, in BM1's defense, she's been growing fruit all year and that takes a whole lot of energy.  But the survivor is grown from 1/6 the amount of wood BM1 is grown from.  It is worth noting that this survivor was the shortest of the three I had.

So I think by now it is fair to say that the node cuttings in rock wool grew more tree faster than the one grown from the tried and true root chamber method.  But the rooted cutting is much thicker and fruiting.  At least for now... 


 

Update 7/4/14:  Looks like I might get a black one (or more?!) this year.  That bottom fig started darkening just 5 days ago, and now it's all purple and swelling. 

Cement sleeve brace complete!  The clothes pins were not big enough to contain the branch and both Popsicle sticks, so I went with good ole' duct tape.  It isn't pretty, but it sure is solid! 

In a week or two I'll snip off the duct tape and fill up any gaps with more treekote.  That way it won't restrict it, so long as the treekote is flexibile enough! 

  
  
  

Also the Galicia Negra fig was ripe and literally bursting with deliciousness today on the mother plant:

Should I be letting them ripen more?  It seems like the white fleshy margin on my figs is way thicker than most pictures I see.  Anyone know what that has to do with?

Awesome, thank you for that!

Is this how you do grafts from the beginning, just putting them in that sleeve when you put them together at first?

Interesting interesting!  You have any pics of this process?  I mean like when graft takes place and months down the road?

It seems like a good idea, I just found my popsickle sticks and treekote!

Retracting a bid on eBay is easy:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?RetractBidShow

What should I brace it with?

I wondered about that when I removed the parafilm from the graft.

Yup I have a mother plant and a graft, the graft is growing faster in the last few weeks than the mother.  But the graft also isn't trying to support fruit!  :-)

The graft I have is not one from the 2 I attempted with dormant wood, those both failed.  I also tried two grafts with the fresh green shoots from December 1st, this is the one that lived. 

Very excited to eat this one I expect it to be ready tomorrow or within the next few days.  Will post pics!