Thursday, February 2, 2017

Figs in Early February

Here are some pics of the rooted trees being grown in our greenhouses this winter.  There are around 4,000 figs in rooting cups in these pics, and another 1,000 are about to be added.








We get many questions about when orders will be ready and whether we will ever be able to grow enough of the rare trees to fill everyone's orders.  The short answer is this: YES you will all get your orders soon!  Many of the $7 tree orders will start shipping out as soon as it gets warm enough, and even orders waiting on the very slowest growing varieties should be ready by the end of this spring (which is still 4 months away).  We will email you when your order is ready so that we can discuss shipping details and any possible substitutions you may want to make.

The variety we get asked about more than any other is Black Madeira, which was the #1 most ordered tree among our customers, so we'll use it as an example to demonstrate.  Our potted Black Madeiras started waking up a couple of weeks ago, and our in-ground ones just started waking up a couple of days ago.  Our current Black Madeira inventory is as follows:  5 in-ground in greenhouses, 5 in 7gal pots, 10 in 3gal pots, 18 well-rooted young trees that need up-potted, and 11 more that are rooting in humidity bins and are looking good.  Combined, that's 38 trees with a good shot at up to 49 very shortly (let's conservatively estimate 45).  That total is far short of what is needed to satisfy all of the Black Madeira orders to date, but that is about to change drastically in the next few months.

Since the growing season for these Black Madeiras has already begun, and since we should get 30+ cuttings per potted plant and 50-100 cuttings per in-ground tree over the next 4 months, we're on pace to have enough Black Madeira wood to provide around 1,500 cuttings by the last day of spring.  We won't put all of that wood toward cuttings, since some of it will be air-layered off along the way to help create more trees as quickly as possible, but the point is clear:  very soon we are going to cross a threshold and have more than enough material to fill all orders for trees and cuttings.  That's the power of exponential growth.  

NEW HIRE ANNOUNCEMENT

Things are starting to proceed very fast here, and in the interest of doing our best to make sure that the endeavor succeeds, we have hired a professional horticulturist to work on-site for 5-10 hrs/wk.  He's got a lot of experience managing pro greenhouses and fairly large hydroponics systems (~150 containers), has collected and grown orchids as a side hobby, and currently works for the Kansas Department of Agriculture, so we think he's got a lot to contribute.