Fig Father - Greenvile, NC

[Shaft]

My name is Malcolm Heath. Last February, 2020, I became a father to now-18 month old Ronin. This was just before the situation really struck, right before grocery store shelves went empty. We came home from the hospital after an extended NICU stay, and were basically unprepared for the chaos in the world around us. It was like we were sheltered in the hospital from everything that was going on, and the system had ceased to function. I went to buy my family food, and there was nothing on the shelves. No meat to be had. I'm a chef, so my job is to come up with some unique creations, but this taxed even my skill. I never wanted to be in this position again. I felt like a failure, and I had barely been a dad for a week. I vowed to never let this happen again.

I started a garden. We have 14 acres of land outside of Greenville, NC. I knew nothing about gardening. Literally, nothing. My land is hard-packed clay. Very highly acidic, does not drain well at all. We are, in other words, a swamp. I made every mistake possible, with the intent of making as many mistakes as I could as fast as possible. I learned what worked, and what didn't. I got a few crops in the ground, most failed. Zucchinis did well, cucumbers kind of did, watermelons not so much (weeds got them). Butternut squash was probably my best harvest. We tried a hugelkultur bed. We did all kinds of stuff, the types of stuff someone who doesn't know what they're doing does when they look on the internet for help.

My stepdad reminded me in July, seeing me get so interested in growing my own food, that we had a fig tree. I loved fig as a kid, but I'd only eaten from this tree once. I just didn't spend a lot of time outside. I was a computer nerd. I forgot about it for most of my life. I got a massively abundant harvest of some of the best figs I could imagine. I shared them with everyone. I dried a bunch with the dehydrator my stepdad gave me. I was in love. This particular tree was given to my stepdad when I was 5 years old, 25 years ago, and he planted it immediately. This was a rooted cutting grown into a plant from the mother tree, which was itself a cutting from a tree in Israel that my stepdad's friend, a preacher, had smuggled through customers from Israel. He thought the fig was so good he risked jail time to get it here.

I went fig crazy.

Today I have 13 types of fig, most as cuttings I am attempting to root. I have a Celeste I bought locally in the ground, a White Marseilles as well as two Chicago Hardy. I ordered a Black Mission fig as well online. I've got cuttings of Maywood's Adriatic fig, Black Mission, the Carr Fire fig, Col de Dame Blanc, Texas Everbearing, Celeste, the Israeli fig (I7), a fig my friend gave me cuttings of (M77), Strawberry Verte, and Violette de Bordeaux. I'm having a hard time getting them to root, but I've got leaves on some of them. One, a M77 variety, has a nice sized leaf on it and is budding well. It's the only one that leafed out whose leaves did not shrivel. Should I have been watering more? I'm not sure why that happened or what I should have done differently. Once they get a leaf, I'm unsure whether I should put them under a grow light or keep them in a tub with wet mulch at the bottom and around my cups (Mike Kincaid's method). This container is sealed, or slightly ajar to maintain good humidity levels, and sits on a heating mat. I have got a lot to learn.

I have also planted a Heritage raspberry, a dewberry, a mulberry, two types of paw paw, about 40 pecan seeds, about 20 mimosa seeds, a eleagnus x ebbingei, 2 types of asparagus, 3 types of strawberry, 3 types of blueberry, 3 types of watermelon, 3 types of tomato, 7 types of pepper and a few nitrogen fixing trees as well. I'm hoping to create a permaculture food forest paradise that will grow up as my son ages, to provide for his needs all his days and those of his children as well.