Fig Boss Newsletter: A Giveaway, The End of the 2022 Fig Cutting Sale & End of the Year Blog Posts

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the first monthly Fig Boss newsletter. Due to technical barriers, being notified by email every time that I write a blog post is not possible. After some research I've learned that the mail servers eventually consider those notifications spam. Not only are they considered spam, but they won't even go to a spam folder. How nuts is that? My workaround: Paying for Google Workspace and sending a monthly newsletter that's written by hand. So here we are.

If you want to be a part of more monthly newsletters in the future, submit your email in the box at the top of the page! Before we get into announcements and other information, I want to wish you all the very best in 2023. I hope that it's a happy and healthy time for you and your family and speaking of health, that's what this year's fig cutting giveaway will be in support of. Great Chiropractic care. Starting in 2021, I became a patient of a local chiropractor who changed my spine, my posture and in turn my health (he's actually an avid fig grower himself). The organization he is a part of and teaches for is called Pierce Results System Chiropractic: https://prschiropractic.com/ - The money we will together raise will be in support of educating other Chiropractors to give great chiropractic care. If you're in the area and think chiropractic care is right for you, check out my chiropractor here: https://www.burlingtonchiro.com/ - I can't recommend seeing Dr. Jim enough and if you have a similar positive story about your own chiropractic journey, I'd love to hear about it. The details of the giveaway are as follows: To get your name on the raffle list, donate a minimum of $10 to: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8QqdxxbuWf The winners will each receive 3 fig cuttings of Noire de Barbentane, White Triana, Ronde de Bordeaux, Panache & Cul Noir. That's a $165 value per person. 3 winners will be randomly selected on Monday, January 9th using this tool: https://wheelofnames.com/ - the announcement of the winners will follow. If you're one of the winners, PLEASE contact me with a mailing address. Additionally, I want to announce that the fig cutting sale of 2022 will end sometime next week. Sadly, my work on the fig trees needs to slow down as my life becomes bogged down with tax season. I'm also pretty much out of inventory. It's a special time of the year for me as I feel really good about spreading the special genetics I've acquired over the years to people like yourselves. There's no better gift than giving someone the ability to grow their own food and especially something as special as the fig. A very big thank you to everyone that has participated or contributed some sort of support this holiday season. The remaining listings can be found here: https://www.figbid.com/Listing/Browse?Seller=rossraddi - There are still some really special figs left. One I want to particularly highlight is Burgan Unk - This is a fig found by the collector and commercial grower Brian Melton. He sent me figs in the mail to try and review a few years ago. I was blown away. They are like a caramel flavored Black Madeira. It's early, productive and a faster grower. I highly recommend it for mild climates and drier locations. I've yet to evaluate its performance in the rain. I hear it also tastes great when not caprified, but I will be hand pollinating it next year. This to this day is still one of the best and most complex tasting figs I've eaten. There's also Panache and Noire de Barbentane for all of the commercial growers out there. Colonel Littman's Black Cross is a Black Madeira replacement (arguably a better choice for many people). La Borgeoise is a Coll de Dama replacement. Sucrette (Baud) aka Cul Noir - Sucrette is one of the best tasting figs I grow. Perfect dense texture, productive, mid season with some serious drying capabilities. Can split if the soil is too wet, but overall it's one of the best figs for humid climates. This Sucrette is the real deal and comes from Baud. Sucrette has also been proven to be one of the best choices for its hardiness. Reliably hardy and top performing in zone 7B.

I talk about the newsletter in video format here:

In other news on the blog, 2022 has been a wonderful growing season and I hope to have a 2022 recap soon. I have however been hard at work writing and organizing my thoughts on the blog about important end of the year topics. Some of those topics are: The best tasting fig varieties: https://www.figboss.com/post/the-best-tasting-fig-varieties - Want to grow the best tasting figs? Let this blog post act as an introduction into how special figs can be. If you taste one of these varieties when picked perfectly ripe, I promise that you'll want to plant your own fig tree. Fig varieties with a short hang time: https://www.figboss.com/post/fig-varieties-with-a-short-hang-time-the-most-important-characteristic-in-humid-mild-climates - Hang time (or the susceptibility window I've dubbed it) is a fig varietal characteristic that I've talked about a lot over the years, but I've never compiled a list of varieties on the blog that I've come across that have a much shorter than average hang time. Unique and underrated varieties: https://www.figboss.com/post/unique-underrated-fig-varieties - I wanted to make this blog post to highlight some important fig genetics. There is some amazing genetic diversity within Ficus Carica, but once you've tried 20 or more carefully selected fig varieties, you may be wondering how much more different it can get. These varieties are great choices for something a bit different and I've also added in some underrated options for good measure. My best overall fig varieties as of 2022: https://www.figboss.com/post/my-best-fig-varieties-as-of-2022 Best New Fig Varieties of 2022: https://www.figboss.com/post/wrapping-up-the-growing-season-the-best-new-fig-varieties-of-2022 - 2022 was a great year for new fig varieties. I managed to properly evaluate 16 varieties that I believe are among the very best and will perform well even in humid climates. 6 Fig Varieties that Rose in the Ranks from Prior Growing Seasons: https://www.figboss.com/post/6-fig-varieties-that-rose-in-the-ranks-from-prior-growing-seasons And a bonus list of must grow fruiting plants to grow other than fig trees: https://www.figboss.com/post/must-grow-fruit-trees-vines-shrubs-in-a-backyard-orchard - In this blog post I want to let you all in on a number of varieties that I am very fond of in terms of eating experience. I think they are so good that like fig trees, you must grow them to experience how amazing nature can be. After all, isn't that why we buy a nice bottle of wine or go to a nice restaurant? It's for the experience.