Who runs FigStead

Why this exists

Sourcing true-to-type wood is the part of this hobby that kept going wrong for me. You pay for a named variety, root it, pot it, carry it into the garage for a winter — and when it finally fruits in its second season it is plainly not what the label said. The money was never the real cost. There was no receipt, no price to check it against, and no way to tell whether the person who sold it knew.

So the things this site has are the things that were missing. Every completed sale price is public, so a rare cultivar is priced by evidence rather than by whoever is loudest. Sellers carry feedback that follows them from one listing to the next. Payment runs through a card processor with a real dispute process, rather than a transfer you can never claw back.

I grow the things I sell on this site

It started with a clearance-rack Chicago Hardy on a February night — a nine-inch stick I was fairly sure would die. It gave me over seventy figs that first summer. Eight years on I have grown more than seventy varieties and keep around thirty at any one time: I cycle them — a variety gets a few seasons to earn its space, and the ones that don't are replaced. Most are container-grown and moved into an unheated garage before it drops below 23°F, which is the only reason Black Madeira and Violette de Bordeaux survive this far north.

The ones I actually reach for are Black Madeira, Spadafora Dark and Calderona. The ones that won't punish a beginner are Chicago Hardy, Celeste and Ronde de Bordeaux.

If you would rather see the operation than read about it, the overwintering and propagation walkthroughs are on YouTube — same handle, same trees.

I sell here too, and you should hear that from me

I sell my own plants on FigStead as @Chicagofigs, and I also run Chicago Figs, which predates this site and is where the collection and the growing notes live. It is the same person, the same trees and the same name in both places. Running a marketplace you also sell on is a genuine conflict of interest, and it is worth naming plainly rather than leaving to be discovered.

What that means in practice: my listings pay the same selling fee as everyone else's, sit in the same search results in the same order, and get no placement, badge or promotion that is not offered to every other seller on the site. If you ever find otherwise, that is a bug and I want the email.

How FigStead makes money

Right now, it doesn't. The selling fee is 0% until Mar 1, 2027 — sellers keep the full sale price and the site takes nothing. After that it is 2% of the item price when something sells. Charged on the item only, never on shipping. There are no listing fees, nothing to pay in order to browse, bid or watch, and no subscription of any kind.

Card processing is separate and goes to the payment processor, not to me. Your card details never touch this site — checkout happens on Stripe's own page, which is also why a disputed charge runs through Stripe's process rather than through my goodwill. The full fee breakdown is on the seller page.

What happens when something goes wrong

Plants die in transit, packages go missing, and occasionally someone sends the wrong thing. Tell me first — most of it is fixable in a day, and I would far rather sort it out than have you open a dispute and never come back.

If it cannot be fixed, the card dispute process is there and I will not fight a legitimate one. Sellers who repeatedly ship dead material or do not ship at all lose the ability to sell here; that is the only real currency a small marketplace has. Staying safe in the guide covers what to do first, and the Terms set out the formal version.

The unglamorous part

Fig material cannot legally be shipped everywhere. States run quarantines against soil pests and root diseases, and the rules turn on details most people selling plants online have never heard of — California alone has four separate ones that reach figs, and whether a plant may go depends both on where it started and on whether it is potted, bare-root or a cutting.

FigStead works this out for you instead of leaving the seller to guess. The rules are transcribed from the National Plant Board's state summaries, each carrying the statute it comes from, and last reviewed August 27, 2026. They are a platform default rather than legal advice — the Plant Board says its own summaries are not legally binding — but they mean a listing tells you it cannot ship to your state before you have paid for it, rather than afterwards.

Reaching me

Figstead@protonmail.com — or the contact form, about an order, a listing, a bug, or the site in general. Growers who want to sell here should start at Become a seller, which has the application on it.