My gardening endeavors started slowly. I've always kept a potted plant or two since college, but I rented in apartments and houses and whatnot, so real gardening wasn't really in the cards. A couple years ago, I started renting a house on a 1/2 acre plot of sunny ground. Add in a friend who had an industrial tiller, and BAM 1200+ sqft garden. It was big. Too big; but I learned a lot. I began a grow setup with lights and all to start my plants. I grew everything from seed, including peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, etc. I also began growing raspberries, blackberries, and a couple potted flowers. Lastly and most importantly, I also started my first real endeavor: The Fig.
As it turns out UCDavis hosts a USDA germplasm depository/distribution center for a bunch of stuff, including the fig. In the name of "research" you could order fig cuttings for the cost of shipping of dozens of varieties, as they needed to prune their trees every year anyways. Naturally, I got 10 varieties. (Alas, they've since discontinued this service...too much demand, not enough people to help with paperwork). Many months later, I had heard nothing from them, and despite emails, had heard nothing back. Bummer.
Fortunately, the fig community is large and passionate, and through a couple of sites (figs4funforum.com and ourfigs.com), you can score huge numbers of fig cuttings for dirt cheap in winter. That winter, one forum member was offering 2-3 cuttings each of 10 varieties for 30 bucks. Sure! Why not? As a bonus, when they arrived, he had sent half a dozen extra, less common varieties out of good will. Jesus these people are friendly! I spent the better part of the next couple months trying to root them, which turns out to be pretty easy (a topic for another day), but has its complications for sure.
Four months later, and I've got a crap-ton of little fig trees..maybe 15-20 or so. Sweet! Then one day I get a shipping notice that looked very official. The USDA repository was shipping me 7 of the 10 varieties I requested. A week later, and I've got 20+ sticks rooting again. By late spring, I practically had a fig forest. What the hell do you do with multiple plants of 25-30 different fig varieties? More on that in a second.
Regrettably, I got some bad news during all of this. The house we rented with a nice big plot got taken away from us when our landlord told us she wanted to sell the house, and we were in no position to buy. Shit. It got bought within 7 days of going on the market. Double shit. Now, not only did I have all these plants (plus some blueberries and a few other things in pots), but I had to move them all! Worse still, I was trying to finish grad school, and my girlfriend was in between jobs. We didn't even know if we'd be in the same state in 3 months.
Fortunately, the girlfriend landed a sweet job in town, I graduated and picked up a job a few months later, and we ended up renting another house a couple miles down the road with another nice big plot of land. To this day, I have 3 varieties in ground, and another 12-15 or so varieties in pots. They come with different flavors, sizes, textures, ripening times, colors. And damn. I will say that some of them absolutely kick ass in terms of flavor versus what is available in store. Next summer, I'll try to catalogue the varieties I grow, and comment on them more extensively. My goal for now is to give away/dispose of some of the less impressive varieties, and work towards honing my collection to something...in contrast to my blog title...more practical.
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