The whole greenhouse, as well as the area in back--all potted figs, each with fruit, green, or bruise purple, sprouting from the stem under the mitten-shaped leaves.
Turns out once upon a time an Italian man had a variety of large fig trees from the old country, each prolific with punching-bag shaped fruit, which, as he grew older, he couldn't care for, so to son and son-in-law the fearsome vitality of the plants was passed on to be divided into cuttings grown into the multitude of short and tall plantings I saw yesterday.
Vastly more than enough to satisfy the rather modest fig tree needs of the neighborhood, the nursery sells its different kinds around the country. 'People drive up from, like, Pennsylvania, just to buy a tree. Do you want to stay and see the city, I ask, 'No, we'll just get on home.''
Am I ready to become a ficophile? A set of copied instructions written by the heir to the trees and owner of the nursery can tell me what kind of relationship I'd have with my container-grown fig.
You would need me to give you a spring fertilizer heavy on phosphorus, bone meal and lime pressed into four finger hole pressed into the soil around your base, and then more fertilizing every three weeks till late summer, and lots of water until fruits ripen, with regular repotting during fall dormancy with careful root ball trimming, and cold weather relocation indoors or else outdoors with winter wrapping of blankets and sacking, then in the spring, if you have sprouted, keeping you in semi-sun till your leaves have hardened-off: in short, as much care as a puppy or a small child.
You would repay me with luscious fresh figs, of course, but also with yourself growing, maturing, and carrying forward the spirit of those trees brought long ago from the old country and cultivated for who know how many millennia before that. Am I ready?
Turns out once upon a time an Italian man had a variety of large fig trees from the old country, each prolific with punching-bag shaped fruit, which, as he grew older, he couldn't care for, so to son and son-in-law the fearsome vitality of the plants was passed on to be divided into cuttings grown into the multitude of short and tall plantings I saw yesterday.
Vastly more than enough to satisfy the rather modest fig tree needs of the neighborhood, the nursery sells its different kinds around the country. 'People drive up from, like, Pennsylvania, just to buy a tree. Do you want to stay and see the city, I ask, 'No, we'll just get on home.''
Am I ready to become a ficophile? A set of copied instructions written by the heir to the trees and owner of the nursery can tell me what kind of relationship I'd have with my container-grown fig.
You would need me to give you a spring fertilizer heavy on phosphorus, bone meal and lime pressed into four finger hole pressed into the soil around your base, and then more fertilizing every three weeks till late summer, and lots of water until fruits ripen, with regular repotting during fall dormancy with careful root ball trimming, and cold weather relocation indoors or else outdoors with winter wrapping of blankets and sacking, then in the spring, if you have sprouted, keeping you in semi-sun till your leaves have hardened-off: in short, as much care as a puppy or a small child.
You would repay me with luscious fresh figs, of course, but also with yourself growing, maturing, and carrying forward the spirit of those trees brought long ago from the old country and cultivated for who know how many millennia before that. Am I ready?
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