Strategies & ideas for collecting fig varieties

Use to sell a quite a bit on Ebay…yes fees and shipping (which i believe is a lot higher then when i use to sell) will eat away. Ebay also tends to really protect the buyer and if you don’t get item/item isn’t what you ordered/broken/etc…the buyer can get their money back (i think if i remember Ebay holds funds for an amount of time and doesn’t release them to seller). Unless you are selling in large amounts or selling stolen goods or laundering money :slight_smile: its hard to really make much profit.

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I’ll happily contribute to a cutting exchange in the fall. I’ve got a large number of figs and I usually cut back a little before bringing my plants in and putting them to sleep for the winter.

Though I think Drew has more than I do… (I’ve seen his collection in person)…

This year looks to be one of the best for my figs (and peppers and tomatoes). One of my Autumn Olives is absolutely covered for the first time too… My stone fruit, OTOH is not doing as well as @Drew51 's evidently are doing.

I’ve tried a couple times to root Italian-258 (and I had it years ago) but is been a bust for me the last 2 years.

Scott

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I have an extra GN AF which is the same as I-258. I’ll save it for you. It’s a decent size. Figs next year.

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Thank you very much, @Drew51.

Hope your summer has been great. My wife keeps planning out of town outings every time we get a stretch of hot-dry weather so I spend the time worrying about not being able to water.

Scott

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Ditto, yes I just spent the last hour watering. A couple looked really bad.

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How are your figs doing this year? Most years only about 20% of my figs push fruit that really develop. This year I’ve got about 50-60% with fruit expanding well. The fabric pots seem to be doing the trick (so thank you for that suggestion).

I’ve got a bunch more that need to be moved over. I used to have a cheap source of 5 gal pots (a donut shop around the corner) but these cheaper pots have become terribly brittle over the last couple years and now even trying to move them results in pieces cracking off. I’ve had a couple that have vertically split which means when I water it just runs out the crack and never hydrates the soil.

Scott

Mixed. I damaged some,. I’m going to be more conservative with putting them out in the future. Many though are loaded. They may be late, but i should get hundreds.
Containers are a problem for me too. Dumpster diving can help! But the best times to find good pots in the trash is spring and fall.

I was on the fig hype wagon many years ago… furiously trading for the hottest of the hot. Then as the “hot” figs fruited I realized they were not any better than what I already had. My best fig overall remains Celeste, the old classic southern fig.

I would offer cuttings of my sizzling-hot varieties from 15 years ago but I am sure they are all considered old duds these days.

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I tasted Celeste for the first time only last year — a version called Sweet Diana. Excellent fig. I could keep eating it without stopping.

There’s only maybe 10 varieties (or families — most within the family are quite similar) there that are truly outstanding. Most others wont produce a large crop outside their ideal Mediterranean climate.

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I just went down the rabbit hole of figbid the last couple of weeks. What surprises me the most is many of the figs can be bought cheaper at online nurseries. I got a Pappa John, LSU Black, LSU purple, and O’Rouke for under $85.00 at Petals From the Past. Hopefully they are legitimate. No way I could get over one, maybe 2 for that price in Figbid. There are some good deals, but currently seems to be a little rich for my blood. I can see getting 30 to 40 dollars for a plant, but cuttings to me should be much cheaper.

I hope they go down in the fall. It seems pretty hot to root cuttings this time of year anyway.

Most figs that I get from Peter’s Honey are horrible in our climate, I am getting rid of it next year, it’s a variety best in hot dry climates like the Arizona desert and like Los Angeles California. It’s the only variety that I have actually bought a tree of because someone who lived in dry California was always complementing it.

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PftP’s figs are nice. O’Rourke is not true to type, but it is an excellent Improved Celeste, which some folks say is superior to O’Rourke. (Petals is not the only nursery to makethis mistake, btw.) Papa John is a very good Mt. Etna-type fig. None of the figs I have received from them have had any mosaic symptoms or detectable fig bud mites (though I always treat for the latter as a matter of course).

On the broader thread topic of overpriced cuttings/plants: to each his own. But I’d much rather buy from a nursery I trust or trade with another grower whom I trust than waste big bucks on sticks of this season’s hot fig, when: 1.) it may not, for whatever reason, root; 2.) it may be unhealthy; 3.) it may be unsuitable for my climate; and 4.) it may not be true to type or might even be a repackaging/renaming of a common cultivar.

Where enthusiasm abounds and cash flows beware of careless sellers out for a fast buck and even outright frauds. Beginners especially will save themselves a lot of trouble, expense and aggravation if they will limit themselves at first to readily available (and proven) cultivars, healthy specimens of which can be found for reasonable prices–sometimes for free.

And where should they look? Well, as has already been mentioned, there are a lot of great members who make stuff available–sometimes for postage–on the Trading Post and For Sale sections of this forum. There are good nurseries out there, too, where you can get a healthy fig for a reasonable price. We’ve just mentioned Petals from the Past. I’ve also bought healthy figs from my neighbor at Peaceful Heritage Nursery (who has recently expanded his fig catalog; and who is, as they say, “redpilled” on fig bud mites). And there are more: just ask around.

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I find the prices to be a bit much sometimes.
Some people are probably paying the mortgage with their fig profits. Good for them.

When i cant talk friends and family into growing them i sell my extra fig trees on craigslist & Facebook marketplace when i have multiples
They have paid themselves off at this point.

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Wasn’t it tulip bulbs that formed a bubble all those years ago. Maybe there will be the great fig crash of 2020 :slight_smile: People won’t be able to give them away.

To be honest…i was laughing when Tesla stock was around 200 a share–i thought it was still overpriced…oops (its 1878 right now)…lol…

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There was also mulberry mania. In both cases it was sellers driving up prices, and figs are no exception.

There have already been crashes with figs, but a steady stream of new “entrepreneurs” keeps it going. That, and the market is easily manipulated by sock puppet buyers or sellers working together to inflate prices.

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You guys make me laugh. Reading this you’d think selling figs rates well below used car salesman, certainly below serving alcohol or pushing pot. Hopefully above cooking meth.

Here’s a little perspective on fig tree sales on figbid. In 2.5 yrs total sales of trees are in the range of $500,000. If bought equally by the 5,000 members of ourfigs that would be an average of $100 or $40 per yr.

Annual sales of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs run $1500 per year per person in the USA. $6,000 for a family of four if you want to look at it that way. What would that be 10% of an average family income? Oh and add on $4500 per yr for prescription drugs per family.

Maybe figs aren’t the ruination of our great country.

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I understand your point, which is that people spend way more on other junk. Buying figs would definitely be a better use of that money. If you have the money to spend on pot / alcohol / junk food / etc., then you should be able to come up with the money for figs or other trees. I don’t spend money on those things. Even prescription drugs are mostly unnecessary IMO.

But I also think it isn’t a bad idea to come up with strategies to reduce costs. Hence I thought it would be cool if three people got together, each bought 3 different varieties, and then handed out a cutting of each variety to the rest of the group in the next year. That would result in 9 varieties in the span of two years, for the price of 3 varieties.

It’s a good idea. If I didn’t have what i wanted, I might be interested in trying it. We have pooled resources and bought stone fruit that way before.
I think it’s funny that some consider this money. It’s not you can get 2 thousand dollars or more of marijuana off of one plant. Here you can grow 12 plants. That would be 24K worth of pot every year. Now that is a little better. I never saw a fig go for 2K. I have grown it before and it’s one of the easiest plants to grow too. If you want to make money and enjoy growing, try pot instead of figs.

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Anyone want to start a pot business with me? :joy:

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Zone 8 in WA, Olympic fig died. Brown Turkey lives. I guess it is the best tasting fig that can grow here?

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