The $1000 fig tree

TorontoJoe said:
I think I recall some amount of the proceeds were being donated. It was a while back. I assume Brian bought it as an investment to sell through ProFig. Have no idea what he was charging for cuttings or trees.
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I didn't see him sell many but I'm not sure why. He might let thr trees get bigger before pruning on them. I think they were 40.00 a cutting.
 
Where are we on rarity of jolly rancher these days? Is it enough to graft a bunch of single nodes or just down to root as many cuttings as possible?
 
@all y'all
Perhaps for us to make a little progress in the name of consensus maybe we should start a list of varieties we are interested in acquiring for our platform FigFanatic?
We already have Sicilian 33, Green Goblin, Jolly Rancher, and Angelito. It might be a great idea to see what else we could be grafting. I also might point out that varieties I wanted to acquire to propagate for the membership have already slipped out of my hands due to the insane price escalation.

BTW any chance of signing up our ((Rich Texas)) friend? I'd love to see them as a member of FigFanatic. I could think of 13 ways past Sunday that we could easily accomplish this.
 
Figless said:
@all y'all
Perhaps for us to make a little progress in the name of consensus maybe we should start a list of varieties we are interested in acquiring for our platform FigFanatic?
We already have Sicilian 33, Green Goblin, Jolly Rancher, and Angelito. It might be a great idea to see what else we could be grafting. I also might point out that varieties I wanted to acquire to propagate for the membership have already slipped out of my hands due to the insane price escalation.

BTW any chance of signing up our ((Rich Texas)) friend? I'd love to see them as a member of FigFanatic. I could think of 13 ways past Sunday that we could easily accomplish this.
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I have talked to Ed a good bit. I will send him a link.
 
MattK said:
I should have 2 air layers coming off my S33 tree. However selling some figs is how I keep buying new figs and fund my orchard. I don't want to list them on figbid because I don't want them to bring more than what I think they are worth. I thought about listing them in a private sale as a buy it now. Then that would effect future sales when Kremp or other sellers went to sell intentionally lowering the market. Would this be against figbid policies?
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No figbid official here. Well, Danny comes in every now and then. Setting your own price is one of the routes you can sell on figbid. I think Eric sold most of his through fixed price instead of auction.
 
Is Jolly Rancher proven to grow as well outside of CA? I remember people were debating whether it was common and then whether fruit quality is as good outside CA. Think I saw that on facebook.
 
MAYBE it will help to list a few varieties that i will be donating cutting to Figfanatics next jan . to take them out of consideration for fellowship purchase :505-H,NV-1,WHITE ALGERES,YELLOW CRINKLE, AND POSABLY SANTA CLAUS LANE . also CRAVENS CRAVING ,ANGILITO.SO far i see interest in S 33 , WHAT ELSE IS OF INTEREST THAT IS RARE AND/OR VERY EXPENSIVE ?
 
Fig Gazer said:
MAYBE it will help to list a few varieties that i will be donating cutting to Figfanatics next jan . to take them out of consideration for fellowship purchase :505-H,NV-1,WHITE ALGERES,YELLOW CRINKLE, AND POSABLY SANTA CLAUS LANE . also CRAVENS CRAVING ,ANGILITO.SO far i see interest in S 33 , WHAT ELSE IS OF INTEREST THAT IS RARE AND/OR VERY EXPENSIVE ?
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San Francois has been one of my white whales this year.
 
Fig Gazer said:
MAYBE it will help to list a few varieties that i will be donating cutting to Figfanatics next jan . to take them out of consideration for fellowship purchase :505-H,NV-1,WHITE ALGERES,YELLOW CRINKLE, AND POSABLY SANTA CLAUS LANE . also CRAVENS CRAVING ,ANGILITO.SO far i see interest in S 33 , WHAT ELSE IS OF INTEREST THAT IS RARE AND/OR VERY EXPENSIVE ?
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Vince #3 NV6, we have a big shopping budget. With your $200 and my change drawer the sky is our limit Sir... jumeirah?
 
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I have well over 500 grafts under my belt so far over about 3-4 years. I have a good bit of potted and in-ground rootstock and a greenhouse. The skinnier the scion the better IMO. Non-fig we have 100 paw-paw, 100 plum, 100 pecan, 100 persimmon and plenty of citrus trifoliata rootstock to graft next spring.

Competition brings the prices down pretty quickly, and I believe that's a good thing. It would be nice to spread the initial risk (and the nodes) of the more expensive varieties in the short term and still over rare/excellent varieties for more affordable prices while recovering the initial investment through rapid/successful propagation, rather than gouging.

I'm not opposed to a cartel, but I think the emphasis should be on finding, trialing and sharing excellent varieties. I'm not really a fan of the REDACTED model - I like think the FigHunter approach (finding new, unique cultivars) brings more long-term value to the market. Since we (AAAJacks and I) are not in wasp territory, breeding/growing out seedlings seems like a possible route for that. We have 300+ common varieties and maybe a dozen capri figs right now and are planning on breeding in the future. We have some land and would be willing to dedicate 1-10 acres, maybe more, to growing out fig trees. Trialing many new varieties would be the type of project that can bring real value, but would benefit greatly from a larger/collective effort.

In addition to introducing new cultivars, I also think getting new people growing fruit trees should be a major goal (insert shameless plug for figroots.com) - figs are great for that since the excitement of rooting a cutting and seeing it produce fruit in a relatively short time period really seems to be positive feedback that many find engaging (almost addictive).

I've been reading about the LSU breeding program.

O’Rourke created thousands of hybrid cultivars through crossbreeding, primarily using Celeste and Hunt as female parents and a California caprifig as the male parent. Of these, they likely trialed a few hundred, since the primary research orchard in Baton Rouge was eventually bulldozed for sorority housing, indicating it was a modest plot on campus rather than a large agricultural field.

Under Dr. Johnson, starting in 1997 an evaluation orchard to compare fruiting characteristics, disease resistance, growth habits, and cold tolerance for commercial potential. The focus was on evaluating existing selections rather generating new seedlings and this work continued until 2007. I was actually in Baton Rouge from 2004-2008 doing research myself (at the LSU sychrontron) and had friends at Hammond (but wasn't yet interested in figs). I contacted a friend who was a grad student in horitculture there and asked if he can find out any more information.

Considering the amount of knowledge and premium varieties available to us now, we should the odds stacked in our favor when it comes to breeding.

Well, it's getting late and I'm probably rambling at this point. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow so I'll wrap this up - we should probably take this to a more private discussion moving forward - before the fig mafia gets wind of our plans ;)
 
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MattK said:
I might be wrong but I also thought Angelito was sold for a fundraiser. By all means if it is going for charity or for a good cause let the price go to the moon.
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That's a good point. We donated a figoin cutting to the figbid fundraiser when they were going for $200 to the St. Jude fundraiser - that would be a great aspect (a portion of the profits) to incorporate IMO.

St. Jude's is so easy to get behind, helping sick kids really hits a nerve with me (like most people), but I bet there are a lot (of worthy causes) that don't have the name/donations that might need the money even more and might make better use of it.

It sounds like $200 is the ante for this thing so far, and I'm down with that.

@TorontoJoe is there a way to take this thread to private group of "trusted" forum members? Maybe invite only?
 
rayray said:
I’ve never seen Kremp Florist jack up prices from what they have listed, even when out of stock.

I guess we’ll see on this one since they have it listed.

I forget which one was fairly hot at one time, cessac, crozes or conde something like that and even when figbid was insane their prices were much more reasonable, for a cutting.
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It was cessac and we got it for like 50 bucks.
 
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