“You planted a Black Jack Fig in your garden?” asked the nursery specialist, peering at me over his Ben Franklin glasses. “Now that’s a great tree for the Valley.”
If it was so great for our area, why was I having problems with it?
The San Fernando Valley is famous for fruit. In the early twentieth century, it was home to more fruit trees than people. Its flat, fertile acres were planted in commercial orchards of orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, apricot and fig, which were packed and shipped to markets throughout the country.
After World War II, a boom in home building swept the Valley, plowing under the orchards for suburban streets and single-family houses. Now that I live in one of those homes and want to embrace the Valley’s rich history of successful fruit orchards, I planted several fruit-bearing trees in my garden. In less than a century, growing fruit trees had shifted from a big business venture to a past time for the home orchardist. But my new hobby turned into heartache as I witnessed the ravaging of my newly planted baby fig tree, by a predator I’d never seen.
Hence my visit to the specialists at Armstrong Garden Center in Sherman Oaks. I was trying to discern what was decimating my fig tree’s leaves. Every morning the joy of a new, bright green Black Jack leaf was replaced by sheer frustration when it was chewed to nothing but veins within 24 hours.
Read more here!
