According to historical records, fig trees had shown up in the New World by 1579; in 1769, Spanish Franciscan priests were growing them in what is now San Diego, California.
Some people find figs sinfully delicious; others find them peculiar and fraught with Freudian overtones. This pear-shaped (pyriform) fruit is eaten many ways: as fresh fruit everywhere; sugared and dried whole in Turkey; cooked with lamb kabobs in the Middle East; fermented into wine in the Mediterranean; pickled, brandied, or as jam in the American South; blended into every kind of cake, cookie, pastry, and pie; stuffed with sweet chocolate; and, in corporate America, dried into a paste and stuffed inside a soft cookie covering (thus becoming “Newtonized”).
For many gardeners, the sub-tropical fig tree might be considered a tad exotic, but since it’s relatively disease- and pest-free, it’s very easy to grow in the proper climate. Granted, you won’t find large, mature fig trees in Fargo, ND; Taos, NM; St. Louis, MO, and up the coastal lands of the Carolinas.
But the places where figs can be grown with a little bit of horticultural gymnastics (much care and careful burial each fall); do extend as far North as Vancouver Island, Canada; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; El Paso, TX; Cookville, TN; Norfolk, VA; and, if the tree is buried each fall, even in Chicago and New York City.
Burying fig trees is an ancient practice that protects them from severe winters. One digs a deep trench out from the fig tree, as long as the tree is tall and deep enough to hold the entire tree. The branches are tightly tied like those of a Christmas tree; the soil is shoveled out from under the roots, leaving enough of them attached to keep the tree alive while dormant; and the tree is carefully laid into the ground.
Before selecting a fig variety for flavor, you must first study the climate range for fig trees.
Fruit-tree catalogs list fig trees as tolerant of USDA Zones 7-11 without protection, and of Zones 5-7 with winter cover. It’s the details of your microclimate that determine whether a fig tree will flourish. Take a look around the neighborhood. If you see any fig trees, talk to the gardener about how the fruit tastes, and ask how many times in a decade the limbs froze back.
The variety that works best for a nearby neighbor should be first on your fig wish list. Next, contact the local Cooperative Extension, or retail nurseries with similar questions.
Various reports from around the southern parts of the country rate completely dormant (deciduous) fig trees as hardy, under best-case conditions, to 3o-15o F, depending on the location and microclimate. (Most cautious growers and authors list the lower limits as 15o F and up.)
Young fig trees are less hardy than mature ones, so protection in the early years is important, especially in marginal climates. Ray Givan, Chairman of the North American Fruit Explorer (NAFEX) Fig Interest Group in Savannah, GA, figures an unprotected fig is risky below 10o F and temperatures below 0o F require burial, wrapping, or moving a pot-grown tree into a shed kept above 20o F.
In cool-summer areas, the problem is generating enough heat to ripen the fruit. Dolan again recommends ‘Desert King’ as “quick to fruit, quick to recover from winter damage and our most reliable fig, followed by ‘English Brown Turkey’ (a different variety from ‘Brown Turkey’).
Other figs for cool summer areas include: for Coastal California—
Givan (NAFEX) recommends—
Some newer varieties, just recently on the market and suitable for container growing:
In summary, read all the catalogs; quiz each nursery; talk to your local Cooperative Extension, and survey nearby gardeners.
Before making your choice of fig varieties on the basis of flavor, make sure your yard’s soil is suited to fig roots. Fig roots hate clayey soils and will usually die in heavy-orange and black-gumbo clays.
Fig trees almost seem to prefer rocky soils. Throughout the Mediterranean, large, robust fig trees can be found sprouting from craggy slopes and fractured rock cliffs. Since drainage is essential, figs prosper in rocky soil few other fruit trees would tolerate.
A majority of plants and trees prefer rich, loamy well-drained neutral soil. Figs, however, don’t need as much fertility as most fruit trees. There’s no need to fertilize any type of fig tree when its new growth has exceeded six inches. (A mulch of well-rotted manure, aged compost, or various straws or wood chips helps conserve moisture.)
The fig is like its botanical cousin the mulberry—only turned outside-in. Common garden figs, with their male and female flower parts inside what is carelessly called the fruit (actually a hollow fleshy body botanically known as the “syconium” or receptacle), are self-fertile. Many common figs don’t produce viable pollen and will form seedless, parthenocarpic (12) fruits inside the receptacle.
Most trees produce either a summer crop (also called the breba—Spanish for “first crop”) and/or a fall (main) crop. The summer (breba) crop usually produces a few figs, each much larger than the individual figs of the fall (main) crop will be. In mild summer areas, the summer crop may be the only one to count on, since early fall rains or cold will ruin the fall (main) crop.
In areas with long, hot summers, the fall (main) crop may have sweeter and more complexly flavored figs than the summer harvest, due to the heat and length of time for ripening. Those who prune their trees heavily before wrapping or burying them for the winter can only count on the fall (main) crop.
Examples of figs that produce only the fall crop are the marvelously green-and-yellow striped ‘Panachee’ and the ‘Pasquale’ (also called ‘Vernino’). The ‘Celeste’ (or ‘Malta’), ‘Ischia White’, and ‘Improved Brown Turkey’ (also ‘California Brown Turkey’ and ’San Piero’) produce poor to fair crops in the summer and a variable fall crop. Good summer and fall crops are found with the varieties: ‘Kadota’ (also ‘Dottato’) and ‘Mission’ (also ‘Franciscana’).
Now comes the best part: choosing a fig by flavor, because the taste is highly personal. Microclimate will also have a big impact on sweetness and flavor. Diana Lalani at Hidden Springs Nursery in Cookeville, TN, and Givan (of NAFEX) rate ‘Celeste’ as their favorite variety for taste. Givan’s list also includes: ‘Conadria’ (2nd best), ‘Alma,’ ‘Beal,’ ‘English (also called Eastern) Brown Turkey,’ ‘Chicago’ (small, but tasty), ‘Excel,’ ‘Flanders,’ ‘LSU Purple’ and ‘Osborn Prolific.’
Howard Garrison, who maintains the USDA collection of more than 50 varieties of fig trees at the Wolfskill site near Davis, CA, rates ‘Panache’ as best followed by ‘Brown Turkey.’ Lalani considers ‘Brown Turkey’ to be second on the list of flavor which includes ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Brunswick.’
Fig trees bear on both one-year-old growth and on current terminal growth. What this means to the pruner is simple: cut the fig tree back severely and you’ll just get the main or fall crop; never prune the tree and you’ll harvest two crops, and judicious pruning will allow harvesting of some of both crops—summer and fall.
To control the tree for a harvest without a ladder, simply cut back all the shoots that you want to save to just above two or three buds that have formed on last year’s growth. Growers of figs for fresh fruit in the central valley of California routinely do this. The trees can be decades old and yet are still below 10 feet tall and easily harvested without tall ladders.
Because fig trees need superior drainage, the prudent gardener will plant the tree on an elevated mound—perhaps three to five feet in diameter and 12 to 18 inches tall (the mound will settle by up to 50%). Drainage around the vulnerable upper 12-18 inches of the root system (the crown) will help prevent root rot (Phytophthora spp.).
The tender bark of a bare root fig tree is especially predisposed to sunscald, so immediately after planting, rinse off the trunk from the lower limbs to an inch below the soil. Let dry, then paint with a solution of 50% white interior or exterior latex (not oil-based) paint and 50% water. Start slightly below soil level and coat the entire circumference of the trunk up to the first several branches. Put the soil back over the first inch of the trunk.
By the time the tree grows for several years, and the paint flakes off, the bark will be hardy to full sunlight and there’s no need to repaint. This one-time application of reflective paint helps prevent sunscald, which dries out and kills young bark tissue. A. J. Ballard, the Special Consultant on figs for NAFEX, urges growers to shade or paint as much of the tree as possible to “prevent dieback that forms when cold winter nights are followed by warm, sunny days.”
Birds may be the most common fig pest; their depredations can be limited by harvesting early each morning or by netting the tree (another reason for pruning the trees low).
Other occasional pest problems (and their “cures”) include:
“This post is provided as an educational/inspirational service of the National Garden Bureau and our members. Please credit and link to National Garden Bureau and author member when using all or parts of this article.”
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I’ve had good luck with a green ‘Stella’ fig tree which has grown quickly and most years has produced lots of delicious figs. They have green skins and very pink insides. I’m in the Willamette valley about 100 miles south of Portland, Oregon. It grows on a mound in a former gravel driveway (but not where the vehicle was parked), so there is probably poor soil and lots of pebbles embedded below the mound. Otherwise we are on clay. This year we had a cold April so it got a late start. I’m hoping it will have time to ripen the heavy crop over the next month.