Tissue cultured plants can be made virus, blight, and bacteria free in the process of propagation. However, if a nursery gets virus free tissue cultured trees and puts them next to ones that have the virus, then, they get it, too. I also see people on here complaining that it takes forever for TC figs to produce, or that they never do, or that you can take a cutting from one and the cutting will produce before the original tree. Another thing people complain about with TC plants is that they are tiny. They start out as a few cells. I have bought TC muscadines and the vines were about the size of a matchstick and the roots were in a bag with much less potting medium than a sandwich bag would hold. But they caught up with the same variety purchased at the same time in half gallon pots within 3 months. I have no reason to believe my fig trees are virus free, so I'm not worried about it. But if I was starting out, I would have nothing but TC plants guaranteed to be virus free.

I live in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) which I believe is supposed to be Zone 5. I've no experience with VDB, but I've got a Desert King that I planted in ground last year. It's just a 3' stick of right now, but it has about 7-8 brebas coming up already. So it can work in ground if you protect it properly. The fruits that I got from it last year, when it was in a pot were very sweet and juicy. For winter proctection, I planted it at an angle and pinned the branches to the ground in the winter. I then covered it with about 6-8" of dry leaves and a piece of plastic on top. I weighed down the plastic covering with a few bricks at the corners to prevent the wind from blowing it away. The secret here is to keep it as close to the ground as possible to have the ground regulate the temperature. If you want to keep it upright over the winter, you'll need a much thicker insolation. Hope this helps.

Bass its a good 5 days away still as its still hard our weather is now warmer all of sudden going from low low 70 to hitting 80 each day but loseing sunlight as days get shorter, the embryo's seem to have a slight tinge of violette on head when the come out and as they get slightly bigger they get more and more violette thruout which im not used to a fig doing although all mine are darl types that stay green until they get ready. Sal you crack me up!

VdB type figs and RdB are very nice dark berry tastes very similar. The deciding factors I see are; - RdB is unifera (1 crop only), - the Vdb is bifarous (2 crops) and produce abundant brebas. - RdB is cold tolerant have mine in ground Zone 6. grows and produces well. - VdB are not cold tolerant and need to be grown in containers here in zone 6. I have small dormant RdB and VdB trees that can be easily shipped. $29 each and also fig cuttings for $7 each.