Wow. It is almost the end of August !! Time is really flying !! Thanks again for all the advice and for the seed offer. I would love to see your gardens someday and get very jealous... Hope you all had a great summer ! We are still stuck in the apartment and can not get the house yet since we still own our Florida house. With all the economy problems, we are just scared to make another purchase at this point. With all the real estate changes our Florida house really dropped in price and we can not sell it now without loosing a lot of money...Ah..hh. My garden had grown sooo much and we are not there to eat the goodies and trim the trees the "right" way. With all the tropical rain that Florida gets in the summer, my garden became a jungle... I am worried about the garden more then a house I guess...isn't that weird ? We have a nice lady renting it for now, but I wish I could just swap my house in Florida with a similar one here. Is that possible at all ? Did anybody hear anything like that being done ? Or is it just one of my silly dreams? Any of you gardeners want to relocate to Florida to my Eden garden and let me happily take over yours? :) I catch my self day dreaming more about my lush green garden there while it is so hot here in Arizona. I started to propagate my Chaya plants (perennial Spinach bush) that my friend sent me from my garden. So far it made tru the summer and got bigger. I will get another package of Chaya cuttings and Lemon grass suckling from Florida in the fall. If anybody wants to have a Chaya cutting, I might have some to spare. I can ask my friend to send extra if needed. It is a very rare and wonderful plant to have in the garden. It is also very delicious when cooked, very nutritional and healthy. It supposed to grow here very well because it is not picky at all. I looked at many nurseries here and could not find these plants, which were my favorite in the garden. Hope everybody's gardens made it well thru this very hot summer, which is not over yet as I understand. My patio garden is not happy at all and many plants burned. I can not really move my heavy boxes much and some of the plants got too much sun and decided that they did not want to live any more. I planted my favorite jujube from the seed and it is doing well. It is about 1 foot now and I have good hopes for it. It is a very tasty variety from my garden and I hope it will come true to the seed. We will see. I could not find any of the Indian jujubees here either. They are very hardy and can stand sun and poor soil and very fast growing. Talk to you later my fellow gardeners :)

Texas A&M did have a fig breeding program, but the timing seems wrong - they introduced Alma in 1974. The California fig breeding program in Riverside is close to San Diego and the timing seems more likely for one of Dr. Condit's hybrids. There isn't anything particularly strange about it - mama fig + papa fig = new baby figs. As Gorgi mentioned it is a long process weeding out the good figs from the bad. This is a partial list by Richard Watts copied from the link below. All of the following varieties came out of the breeding program at Riverside, Calif. and were selected on the basis of being crack- and split-resistant; most have a small eye. All have very high sugar content and are very resistant to decay. In addition to the varieties listed, there are several others that I have not included as they are still being evaluated. Conadria. The first variety released. See under Nursery Varieties. Excel. Medium, yellow skin, yellow pulp. Tena. Medium, yellow skin, pinkish pulp, roundish form. Gulbun. Large, yellow skin, yellow pulp. Deanna. Large, yellow skin, yellow pulp, splits but doesn't decay. Flanders. Large, long purplish skin, pink pulp. Very firm when ripe. Di Redo. Large, yellow-green skin, amber pulp. Your fig might be one of these. There are pictures of figs at http://figs4fun.com/ . If you don't recognize your fig there, posting a picture here might get you some possible ID's. There is a book : The Fig Storey, W.B. et al, Jurupa Mountains Cultural Center, Riverside, CA. 1977. I believe it is still available. Here is a link that might be useful: California Rare Fruit Growers

greendesert, I visited Fanicks nursery a couple of weeks ago. They knew I was coming because I called them and asked them if there was room for a semi truck. Was a little tight but I made it through. I picked up a couple of Jujube trees from them and a Loquat tree. They have a few fig variants, A nice citrus selection along with a large fruit tree inventory. The fragrance from the flowers was filling the air. It is a nice place to visit and the next time I visit them I will drive away with much more plants. In my opinion, The prices are not great or bad. They are average if not better than average. Good luck, Rafed

It goes to the thread "2nd season in Phoenix".