The Good, the Bad & the Great

Remember my last post when I said that our good weather was supposed to last?  I should know better than to trust the long range forecast.  We are now in the midst of a cold trough with chilly days and some nights approaching the freezing mark...again.  Spring, where are you??

Anyhow, on to the good.  I took my fig trees out of the cold cellar back in early March and within a week, buds had developed.

Fig trees on March 12,
one week after coming out of the cold cellar



Buds were an encouraging sight

Frankly, I was quite surprised - I didn't expect them to leaf out that quickly.

And then, about 2.5 weeks after taking them out of the cold cellar, there was another unexpected surprise on one of the trees…actual, honest-to-goodness figs.
 

Baby figs on Mar 20

I was so excited!  But all of that excitement fizzled in the past couple of weeks, which is where the bad comes in.  While our chilly weather does indeed fall under the "bad" category, it was unfortunately not what I was referring to in the title of this post.

Firstly, the 3 baby figs that were on the tree shriveled up and fell off.  So sad.  I’m not sure why that was – perhaps the tree was still too small to support them or I didn’t water them enough.  I use a water sensor probe to check the moisture in the pots and they seemed to be ok, but sometimes the probe gives me erroneous readings depending on where in the pot I place it.

Also under the "bad" category is something else that was completely my fault.  I have been placing the figs outside for a limited amount of time on nice days.  No problem....until I completely forgot about them and left them outside all day a couple of times.  The result?  Many of the leaves ended up with a sunburn.  Oops.

And, since bad things come in threes (don’t they?), I noticed that some of the leaves on the plant had a decidedly odd look.  This was completely unrelated to the sunburn as I started to see this before the plants were placed outside:

Some leaves developed a mottled look,
long before I started to place the plants outside.

It seems that my trees have a virus – Fig Mosaic Virus, to be precise.  When I looked this up, I found a lot of contradicting information about it.  Some sites indicate that ALL fig trees have this virus and how they are ultimately affected is a matter of variety, while others state that only some trees are infected.

What I do know with certainly is that both of my trees have it.  Since this is obviously a widespread problem and I may never be able to get a virus free tree anyhow, I’m going to carry on and see how my plants do.  I’ve seen some people indicate that the first flush of leaves on their tree would show signs of the virus but with some tender lovin’ care, this disappeared as the plants grew over the summer.  Fingers crossed that this will be the case with my figs.

Figs on April 28

Yes, I feel bad for them too, with their sunburned/virus infected leaves.  But as with most things, sometimes it takes me a while to settle in on a method and/or routine.  I’m fairly confident that I can turn things around, so long as the virus doesn't do too much harm.

Ok, my fig tree blunders seem to confirm that I am still decidedly challenged when it comes to caring for potted plants.  But there is hope.  Look at this guy, who I've had for over a year now (even that is a miracle!) and has finally flowered:

Kalanchoe Blossfeldiana in bud

Flowers revealed

Looks like I’m not a totally lost cause after all :)

So that definitely falls under the "great" category.  But I have one more, which is beyond great, in my mind.  I was practically dancing around the backyard yesterday after I saw this:

Hurray - It's alive!

Finally!  I was really starting to get worried as I kept hearing everyone remark how their asparagus was up and I didn’t see any signs of mine yet.

Peaking out amongst the straw

Only a few spears have broken the surface so far, but they look nice and thick.

The most advanced spear so far

Unfortunately, I won’t be harvesting any this year – I want these babies to send all of their energy into developing a nice, big root system so that we can maximize future harvests.

Now all I have to do is muster up some willpower so that I can resist picking "just one" :)