Figs 2018

Today I got to enjoy a few Adriatic JH. They are so sweet and flavorful even with all the rain coming down. Their thicker skins helps prevent a lot of splitting.

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Have you try the LSU Gold. LSU Gold is a big fat bag of HONEY! Also
Strawberry Verte is a very good top green fig.

Tony

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No Tony, I haven’t tried LSU gold, but it sounds very nice. I have an Italian honey fig, but it didn’t produce this year for whatever reason. Strawberry Verte is just beginning to ripen for me. The flavor was similarly enjoyable like AJH from what I remember.

I hope we have enough warmth this year to ripen col de dame and more I-258. Today feels like fall at my house.

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I like this time of year as humidity drops, and we haven’t had much ran, so figs can begin to even dry on the tree. Here is some I picked today. Many of my trees were damaged last year, and as a side effect I have been getting a lot of small figs. So these are on the small side.
Malta Black, Battaglia Green, and Excel

Earlier in the year i would have to pick them much sooner.

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Looks delicious!

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Finishing my season with a nice haul…

Genovese Nero made the best of the year, large, rich and syrupy…

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A few are still ripening despite this cool weather and constant rain. One of the latest for me is col de dame grise. Definitely a good fig to close out the season.

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Up here in northern MA we’ve been getting persistent rain for the past few weeks, causing some serious spitting issues for me. I’ve been pulling figs a bit early (BT, Malta Black, HC, Unk Teramo) because I’ve already lost a bunch, but taste has still been good. I did get a ripe Teramo yesterday that was fantastic! Creamy texture, mild. My HC ripened nice and early this year and has been awesomely sweet.

Like this? :smile: I forgot to bring the potted figs in. By the end of the day, all Paradiso looked like this. Ronde de Borbeaux was almost as bad.

Chicago Hardy and Improved Celest are quite cracking resistant being exposed in the same condition.

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Those remind of that man eating plant,in the movie,Little Shop of Horrors. Brady

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Remind me of Venus flytrap, too. Every fig on that Paradiso slpit like that creating a weird looking plant.

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Figs and rain don’t get along at all.

Ouch! Anyone know if just putting plastic around the base to prevent root uptake of the rain will prevent this, or will enough rain be brought in by the leaves to cause a problem anyway? I could bring mine into the garage, but I’m too lazy at the moment :slightly_smiling_face:

Agreed that Chicago is very resistant to this, as is my Malta Black. My BT, not so much…

It is an increase in humidity that splits figs. The water goes in through the roots and out through the leaves and figs, humid air and rain prevents that water from getting out so it builds up and splits the figs… They still split in a greenhouse during rainy weather without any extra water. The only way to prevent splitting by withholding water would be to keep the tree so dry it was wilting, and that is really bad for the tree and the fruit will be poor quality/pasty.

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A guy on ourfigs put plastic over his potted figs. They came through a heavy storm just fine while his in ground trees were showing signs of splitting. So yes, putting plastic over the pots can help.

I saw that, but the result was actually for one single fig, and a fig that was “ripe” within 2 days of putting the plastic on so it must have already swelled… figs mostly split when they are swelling, once tree ripe they can’t split anymore because there is no sap going through the stem.

And completely bagging a tree in clear plastic like he did and putting it out on a sunny day could kill it. This reminds me of someone saying that keeping your cuttings in vacuum sealed bags was the best way, well I tried it and it killed all the cuttings because they are alive and need oxygen. They didn’t do any sort of scientific test against other traditional methods, and did not even store them longterm before they reported how great it was, I believed them because they were popular and thought of as an expert, I’m the one whose responsible for killing my cuttings though because I wasn’t skeptical enough. What is really unfortunate is they never corrected their bad info, so it is still confusing for the new growers.

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Not sure if my figs are enjoying the 2 inches of the first snow of the season.

Tony

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Wow!!! Is that normal for snow to start this early. A few years ago, we had snow on Halloween. Lost my first apple tree which toppled over when snow fell on trees full of leaves.

This year the snow is real early with the 12 inches of rain the last 2 weeks. I am afraid with all this extra moisture will bring a bad snowy Winter. So far only 13% percent of corns and soy beans are harvested. Our farmers are very uneasy about the level of moisture in the corns and soy beans.

Tony

No! That is too soon. :cry:

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