I agree, I literally only keep the OG “celeste” around because it was my first fig tree ~5 years ago lol
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There’s certainly some figflation going on! I remember when people used to grow figs just because the fruit tastes good… I’ll pay good money for a fig variety, but it better be tasty and perform well, and not just in magical California or some other Mediterranean weather place.
BTW if no one has used figflation yet, I choose to copyright it!
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@Ahmad – I’m sorry to hear that. IMO, fig trees in 15-25 gal pots are fairly easy if (1) you have a good place for winter storage, (2) you avoid the laborious spring “fig shuffle”, and (3) you can manage watering.
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There is different kinds of serious within the fig community, the toxic kind I think is caused by the stress that can be associated with being in the fig community, dealing with false identifications that could have been prevented, dealing with people who have closed minds, the occasional trouble maker that shows up. The stress of having too many cultivars to take care of, or to make sense of. If you have too many cultivars at once it could become nearly impossible to makes sense of all that you are eating and growing. It stops being fun eventually and becomes a chore, especially if someone with a huge collection starts to have health problems, then if new collectors show up who think that they know more than someone who has been growing fig cultivars for decades, then that is when the stress really kicks in.
Me I have used the method of researching other people’s growing, to help me choose what to try, that way I don’t have to try over one hundred cultivars to try and figure out everything myself. In my opinion a fig fruit can be even better than a pear, which is saying a lot since I love a great pear. Once someone tries a truly incredible fig, I think that is where the desire to find the best fig cultivars starts.
Also fig trees over all are very resilient trees, although lacking cold hardiness compared to some other trees like pear or maple, and so on. Here in zone 7b North Carolina, our greatest problem with fig trees has been shot hole bores attack them if they get cold damage, at that point it becomes irrelevant if they can crop after a late frost damage or after a deep frost in the winter. Although it does seem that those beetles go after fig trees less and less as they age.
I think that in the long run the seriousness that does not lead to fighting and arguments will be a great benefit, each person only growing the very best cultivars for the area.
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Yes, I don’t have the time/patience to protect figs each winter (maybe add aptitude to the list, as even when I tried, it often didn’t work…). For the last 3 years I haven’t been protecting figs at all. The first two winters after I made that decision were some of the warmest we’ve had in a long time. Or rather, the lows were comparatively high (still pretty cold to me…).
Both winters had lows around 10F and that was enough for one year with some dieback and another year of almost no dieback for Reservoir fig. This past summer, I got a decent sized breba crop around August 1st, then a larger harvest in September.
This was the first time I got a breba harvest, so I didn’t get to the property prepared to pick figs. Luckily I had an extra shirt in the car…The ones at the bottom of the pic were the damaged ones.
The fig has gotten pretty big. The only way I can pick to the top is to bend the shoots over.
The main crop:
The original bush finished up in mid-October, but a cutting of it that I planted at another rental (on West side of building) started ripening the main crop (no brebas that I noticed) much later, in October.
From cutting, a couple towns away:
It continued into November and I even got a few stragglers in December, when the leaves dropped:
I also have a Black Bethlehem which was pretty productive at another rental. The RDB at my house has produced a few fruit, but not that much. Most figs haven’t done that well at my house though, which is just a tad colder (5 miles from ocean vs ~1 for the rentals).
I did get quite a few Adriatic JH in 2020, but I don’t think they ripened in any other years. And they did crack badly, but it was so late in the season that they didn’t go bad. They were actually very tasty- hopefully I can get them to ripen again someday. They are along a tall SW stone wall, so that may delay them a bit. I tried putting a cutting at one of the rentals several years ago, but I don’t think it survived the first winter. I should give it another shot.
I’m curious to see what type of die-back I have this year, particularly on Reservoir. It went down to about 0F once this winter and around 5F several times. So, it was the coldest winter (of 3) in the time I haven’t been protecting the figs.
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I look forward to hearing an update on how the ‘Black Bethlehem’, and the ‘Reservoir’ did this winter.
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@Drew51,@alanmercieca
Here’s something I cooked up for you. More information is at https://geneticdistance.org/.
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Figs are a lot of work, but I enjoy growing plants. I’m retired now too, so have more time. Figs is only a small part of what I do.
I also have 12 blueberry plants I grow 11 different honeyberries, 27 plums or pluots.
You get the picture. I eat something out of the garden daily, even all winter. I have lettuce, basil, and rosemary in the house. I grow my own lettuce all winter.
My garlic looks great, about 6 inches high and my tomato and pepper seedlings are doing well. I still have to wait a year before I have rhubarb. I added a 3rd jujube tree this year, and 2 blueberries, Hannah’s Choice and Nocturne. Still waiting on strawberries, the raspberries and blackberries look excellent. Started growing.
I love doing this stuff, as does everybody here.
Looking forward to some new mulberries this year, and getting a larger harvest of pomegranates.
My latest fig project is breeding figs, I currently have 6 seedlings from a
Paradiso x UCR 271-1. I want a purple skinned persistent caprifig. I’ll take any caprifig I get. If it doesn’t pan out I’ll try again. I’m germinating a few more seeds right now. The 6 plants were grown all winter indoors. I just put them out this week.
Some leaf tips were burned by the lights,
I also breed raspberries and have 3 cultivars. a pink raspberry I named Irene, and two primocane fruiting black raspberries that produce giagantic berries. I just sent out cuttings to 6 people of both Lynn’s Black and Sterling Black.
. Of course I still grow succulents, cacti, and various flowers zinnias, peonies, etc. Both annual and perennials.
I have been doing this for over 40 years now. I used to have only a few fruits. I wanted more. I missed the gardens and orchards my dad had and decided to start my own. Grapes were the first fruit I started growing about 30 years ago. I just kept adding more every year. I have some house plants that are 45 years old. I find it interesting to study how a plant grows and to see if I can do it. I have to spray my peaches and cherries, just part of the challenge. I eventually will go to spray free trees, we’ll probably not I’m running out of time and want to do as much as possible. I have a connection with plants. To me they are so alive. I can’t think of any better way to spend my time. It’s not stressful to me. It’s pure joy. The journey is the prize. The fruit is icing on the cake. I can’t stop as too many friends depend on me for fruit. Once you had home grown. You realize how good fruit can be.
Good luck all. Make what you need work. Grow what you love. Figs are far from my favorite fruit but so much fun to grow. Not many fruit trees can provide high quality fruit in a container like figs. I’m fascinated by them. To me they are one of the easiest plants ever to grow.
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One of the reasons that we have not grown more fig cultivars is because we want to grow more than just figs, and a normal garden. 6 of our 7 blueberry bushes had perished before we found out what was killing them, Japanese beetle grubs. We have gotten very little blueberries from our old bushes because of that. Now the shot hole borers are attacking our pomegranate bushes, I think that once they get old enough that might stop, we are going to have to cut them down to the ground, or close to it this year, 5 of our 6 in ground bushes, well one of them has roots in the ground yet is in a grow bag.
The things that are growing best for us are grapes, and figs. I think that the pears will eventually do as well here, yet they are too young to tell as of yet. It looks like the same will be true of the citrus.
Farmer Fred says the more plants you kill the better gardener you are.
I have so many figs because I can. I do plan to eliminate many. I’m looking at the Bordeaux type black figs. I culled Valle nigra and petite Negri. I found Fort Mill Dark and it is intense so much better than most black or VdB type figs. Nero 600 will probably culled next. Great fig though. I have added a lot of winners from the Pons orchard and the Thierry Orchard. So many from both collections look so darn good. We are so lucky to have such resources. Most of the figs I grow are available to members here. Just ask. Some I have go for hundreds of dollars. I don’t care about that just pay postage. Unproven as many have mentioned. I don’t play the inflated prices game.
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Do you by any chance have a list of what figs you have?
No worries Joe 
, at a time I was trying as many top quality (early/mid season) cultivars as I could (about 15 of them; also tried many other varieties from my good friend @hoosierbanana , whom I miss visiting his farm). I had Chicago Hardy and Sal’s and ate from them very good figs, but they are in the 8-9/10 category (that’s why I easily gave away my Improved Celeste, as I heard it’s in their same league). Now I want to have a handful or less of the 10/10 varieties. In ground growing is less work during the season, bigger crop and higher quality figs. I kept RLBV, Adriatic JH, Strawberry Verte and I am rooting RDB and Smith now. I’ll probably keep the latter two potted for a couple of seasons before putting them in ground. Will see how it goes, as I never had the space for in ground figs, but now I have it. I’ll try to follow all your advice for winter protection.
As a side note, figs are in my top five fruit types (together with Egyptian mangoes, nectarines, pluots and apricots). They are easy to grow, but not easy to achieve top quality in the wet North East. Last year I had two additional major problems; hornets and fruit flies, swarms of them, never were a problem when I lived in suburban Delaware, but are major problems in highly forested CT where I am now (I am learning how to deal with them now). Insect pressure in general is much higher here, but there is a lot of wild life diversity.
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Ahmad – Clearly you have more refined tastes than me. No implied criticism there; it’s a sensible approach. But I have a hard time tossing any productive tree, and I’d rather have 1000 8’s than 100 10’s. So we dry a ton – I’m just finishing last year’s harvest.
Now the key question: Have you got a cold-hardy, short-season mango??
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Bob, I like the look and size of the breba. I don’t understand the abbreviations used in this thread. Helps me not. Zone 6B, however, if you have success with the breba on the west side of a structure and they don’t split or wilt, maybe that is my direction.
RDB = Rouge de Bordeaux
RLBV = Red Lebanese Bekaa Valley
more?
I’d experiment with San Joao Branco x Violette de Bordeaux.
Rouge? Doh, I’d been assuming RDB was for Ronde de Bordeaux.
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I think that is another one with some confusion with the abbreviations; Rouge de Bordeaux from my understanding is supposedly synonymous with Pastiliere or very similar, I don’t have either of those - while Ronde de Bordeaux generally has pretty distinct shaped leaves (with long skinny lobes/“fingers”) and is probably more often the cultivar that people are referring to when they abbreviate “RdB”. I could be wrong though 
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Could be. I’m not familiar with the latter.
BTW, this business about identifying fig cultivars by leaf shape is false. It can work for species though if you also have observations of the fruit sprouting and other morphology.
@Dave8abond, @Richard – RDB is Ronde de Bordeaux. There is another fig named Rouge de Bordeaux aka Pastiliere.
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