Thanks Mom and Dad for the Deseret King fig tree. I planted the tree next to the driveway where I now have 2 figs (the other is Peter’s Honey from OGW) and 2 Serviceberry bushes (Northline and Smokey). My folks went to Serbia to see my niece get married and just drove back home today after being gone for almost a month. They got the fig at Home Depot, Oceanside, CA the other day after they flew back to San Diego. Home Depot here in the Salt Lake area only sells Hardy Chicago fig bare root in a small box. The cold hardiness on back of the card says -10 F, so they should be selling these here. It was $40 in a 5 gallon pot. A truly beautiful specimen with 2 brebas!
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This cultivar was originally named “King” as the flagship fig for the King Fig Plantation Company, San
Francisco. It is a prolific producer of delicious breba (end of Spring) fruits – provided the fruit bearing branches are not removed in the prior year. Its summer crop (ripening in Fall) will usually fall off before ripe unless pollinated artificially or by the fig wasp B. psenes. No matter, the breba crop is worth it. The present day name occurred as a misspelling of Dessert.
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I’ve heard Lou Monti say that it was originally Dessert King, but I haven’t been able to read anything on this. Do you have any source to read more on this?
@rsivulka
Below is an excerpt from: Ira Condit “The Fig: A monograph”, 1955.
As for the dessert part, this initially occurred in the 1990’s at an infamous East coast nursery, and was mistranscribed when picked up by AgriStarts for TC production in the early 2000’s.
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According to the writings of an accomplished fig grower some of the desert king’s main crop will ripen without the wasp. Which is consistent with my experience. Each summer I get many ripe main crop desert king figs. As far as I know the fig wasp is only located in the southwest. Does anyone know where else the fig wasp might be located?
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This is true, see Condit above. However, long time fig growers will tell you that other than novelty they are not worth eating.
Actually, in the U.S. it is only naturalized in portions of CA – and not contiguously.
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My desert king’s main crop tastes good. Though the early breba crop is the reason I grow it.
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I think you need some better figs for comparison.
Doubtful. I grew up in Southern California with an agricultural family. I’ve had every type of fig imaginable.
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That would mean you know 7 fig cultivars.
Btw, they got it off the 76 in Jeffries Ranch.
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So where do you live now that you’re getting a main crop? How old is your tree and when did it start giving you a main crop? How many do you usually get?
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I grow desert king along with several other types of fig trees at two locations, my home in the central Willamette Valley of Oregon and my family’s land in the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County, California. The desert king produces main crop figs in both locations. Each year I get many that ripen until cold weather shuts them down. The trees were about 5 years old when they started producing a couple dozen main crop figs. They taste good. I’ve eaten figs my entire life and I know a good fig when I taste a good one. They are sweet as honey. The main reason I grow desert king is to have early figs from the breba crop, though the main crop is a nice bonus I had not been expecting.
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Desert King isn’t hardy to -10F. No fig is. Furthermore, it’s not a good fig in zone 7, my zone. In that zone the breba will likely be frozen off. And the main crop won’t reliably ripen especially after being frozen back.
The local nursery was selling Desert King here this spring for $69. That’s a total rip off. It’s about the worst fig you could sell here and I’ve grown ~200 varieties. Chicago Hardy would be a much better choice.
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This is another name coined by the infamous east coast nursery. It is claimed to be from Mt. Etna but is actually from Abruzzi. This misinformation led to the erroneous naming of a group of figs – the so-called Mt. Etnas. Several of these appear to be related to a native race from Dalmatia, and as Roman authors noted were farmed along the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea.
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Lou Monti is in 7A and B, and he highly recommends it. He says it needs no protection in 7B, but may in 7A, though a number of years it won’t. And he always has an abundance of this variety.
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Zone 7 Utah is probably more fig friendly than 7 in west Texas. Yours is a more steady cold. We’re up and down all winter long. So hopefully it will work for you.
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We’ll see how it goes, but I certainly plan on protecting it like I do the rest of my figs.
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OK, now we’re not talking zone 7. Why protect it if it’s hardy to -10F?
I’ve got protected figs that never saw a freeze for 18 years. That’s zone 11-12 in my greenhouse. When the heater went out this winter it dropped to 17. That wiped out all of my cuttings/wood and all breba figs. They were a month to three months late growing back. A few still haven’t started growing.
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I know no tree is hardy to -10… without protection. Even in my 7A, 1) I still don’t want to take a chance and 2) I want to protect for Breba as best I can and not just let all the growth happen from the roots for the main crop. Last winter was the coldest I’ve ever seen here. Got to around 2… briefly though.
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