Figs are one of my most important fruit simply because I Iove fresh ones so much and besides having to protect from winter they require so little work. Plus, my wife says fresh figs make her happy. OK, maybe the last reason is more than an add on.
This year we are having summer drought and day after warm, bright sky day- very good weather for most species of ripening fruit but especially for figs. The quality of one particular fig seems to be as good as anything I ever had in my CA days. The brix is 26%, which just goes to show that brix level is only part of the sweetness story because they taste sweeter than anything else from the orchard. Lack of juiciness affects brix readings as much as sweetness and acid reduces the perception of sweetness which figs seem to completely lack.
Any more sugar in these figs and it would go from a positive to a negative to my palate.
I’m glad you are getting such great fruit!! In a couple yrs I hope to have a really good fig report. Right now mine are not nearly uniform enough in culture to compare varieties.
For years I only grew Hardy Chicago and LSU purple because I thought hardiness would be helpful which it wasn’t. But they were sweet and good and I got all the figs I needed so didn’t try anything else. But then a neighbor gave me a little twig from a variety she was growing mostly indoors but she’d received from someone who’s father had smuggled it in from Italy years ago.
Well this unnamed variety is far superior to the other two in productivity and size of fruit. It looks pretty much like the Brown Turkeys I grew in Topanga, CA. Now I’m growing it for my customers. I think I like it without a name but if BT came from Italy, maybe this is it, although the eastern BT I used to grow didn’t produce large fruit here. I had started thinking that you couldn’t grow big figs here.
I am fortunate to have an unheated well house built into the side of a hill that is perfect for winter storage.