Fig Questions: Brown Turkey vs. Texas Everbearing or Blackjack?

General Fruit Growing
#21

The best advice I can give you in a zone similar to my own.
Focus on early ripening. Most all will grow, but ripening is a different story. Do not worry about the size of the tree. You can make the tree whatever size you want. When it comes to the cold in some respects bigger is better. Look around and see what others are growing and their success. My experience has been feast or famine with figs.

#22

Does your Florea split easily after rain? Edit: ignore, I just looked it up, is a famous splitter.

How about AJH and RdB for splitting? I see conflicting reports on them.

#23

I don’t have enough experience with AJH but RdB is prone to splitting even just from overwatering (without water hitting the fruit). To me it seems figs don’t regulate their xylem flow very well, maybe because they have such a short window from color change to ripe.

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#24

Splitting happens much less in the fall for me than the summer. One reason must be soil temperature, and lower humidity. Another seems to be that figs on waterspouts and suckers tend to split less than figs on more refined branches, but that is hard to judge because the ones on fast growing shoots ripen later too.

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#25

Lattarula is a smaller tree than Desert King- at least the ones I have seen.

#26

I can speak for Adriatic JH - it splits badly after rain too. But it’s a great tasting fig when it doesn’t split, and it seems to ripen better in cool weather than many others here in Z7b

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#27

Thank you… Not keen on splitters but will see how it goes. Will add Red Lebanese Bekaa Valley this year, reported to resist splitting.

#28

Good luck! I haven’t grown a fig cultivar yet that doesn’t split at some point if we’ve had a lot of rain, but some seem to split even if there hasn’t been a drop of rain and just a jump in the humidity. Smith has been a good one for me in terms of being less prone to splitting.

#29

@ncdabbler Are you growing Smith in a pot?

#30

Yes, I have Smith in a 25 gal pot - a plastic drum cut in half, but I’m going to try planting it in the ground this year.

#31

Please update us how Smith does in ground in your 7B.

#32

Black Jack is a compact tree (kind of semidwarf), but the fruit is worthless in my opinion (I agree with what @Monardella wrote above). Mine is going to be top-worked this spring.

#33

There are just so many BT varieties (BlackJack included). I’ve heard a lot bad things about BTs. Then some people dispute those comments and say their BTs are really good.

Most of the bad comments about BTs are about the taste to be bland. This may have a lot to do with soil, fertilizer, sun and ripeness. My Hardy Chicago produces tasty figs. But occasionally I got some fruits that taste bland. In general, those are not fully ripe.

I’m adding a few varieties next season. BlackJack and possibly BT are included. I just want to see how well they do in my climate. I get plenty of room. Jus grow them and give them a chance.

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