@PatapscoMike These varieties you tried are better if grown in hot, dry places like California. Preto is very good but, as Drew said, ripens late. Perhaps it ripens too late in your climate for you to fully enjoy. You need figs that do well in the Northeast that will give you volumes of fruit without much extra care.
My advice is look for stuff like
A Mt Etna variety like Chicago Hardy, Gino’s Black, Takoma Violet, etc.
Violette de Bordeaux or other similar varieties like Vista, Nero 600m, etc.
A good Adriatic type like Adriatic JH, Dalmatie, Battaglia Green, etc
Ronde de Bordeaux
You could even plant the above mentioned varieties in the ground at your location and have success, especially if you provide winter protection.
I’ve not tasted Smith that @Drew51 recommends, so I don’t have an opinion. Many folks seem to like it though.
That list should be a good starting point and those varieties should not cost $50 or more especially if buy cuttings. Some figgers might just send them to you for free…
Maybe it’s an age thing. I teach college and ran a food garden for the students. Students (young adults) disliked figs in any form (even fig newtons). I was always perplexed.
Your zone should be no problem to grow rhubarb. May be you didn’t get a good root? Do you want to try my? I do not take a specific care for it - actually, no care at all, it grows like perennial decorative at the side of the property. I do not mind to divide mine in the fall or next spring and send you a good piece.
I have a greenhouse, so I can bring them inside to ripen. No problem there. I’ll see how I like this Preto. And I’ll learn how to properly spell it… It’s a lot of searching, expensive and years of work to even find something I enjoy eating more than a few of. Hence the disappointment. If I didn’t find them such interesting plants I’d have given up years ago.
Too early for me to be disappointed by anything since I don’t have too many plants that I would consider “mature”. Ive also been extremely selective with what I grow because of limited space. However, a few things have been more frustrating than expected.
Raspberries being #1 frustrating due to SWD. Fruit just turns into mush the second it ripens later on in the season. Trying now to spray and focus more on floricane fruit production.
@Monardella I wish you taught at my school back in the day and had all these figs. My mom would bring up figs from our trees when she came to visit me at school. I’m the fig eater in the family. My parents think they are too sweet when ripe and would rather eat underripe figs…yuck!
@PatapscoMike I know what you mean. I can only eat 15-20 fresh figs at most in a day, even my favorites. It’s too much sugar after a while and I lose interest. Also keep in mind that figs might not taste the best if its their first year bearing fruit. They usually taste much better in the 2nd or 3rd year in my opinion.
Here’s another fig story that just popped into my head. When I started teaching, a retired Lebanese professor would come check his mail everyday in the department office, and I got to know him. He had a fig tree, but he knew no one (except himself) that liked figs. When he learned that I love them, he brought in bag after bag! He would stand there in amazement as I ate them.
Connell Red apple is amazingly vigorous, productive, trouble free, enormous fruit with only slightly more flavor than NW Greening in my corner of the world. Eight weeks after picking, even the ghost of the taste is evaporated, or something.
I got Erwin Baur on top of it this year. (Flavor Bomb, I’m hoping!) Next year will try again with Nutting Bumpus for scaffolds. Will save a branch or two since the fruit is impressive and, well, nice until Thanksgiving.
@chriso,
I know tons of people who don’t like figs, no matter how delicious figs are to you.
While you are right that people can be turned off from bad experience of eating figs that are not fully ripe when picked, grown in bad soil, bad weather, etc. Nonetheless, the truth is that many, many people don’t like figs because of fig’s kind of sweetness, texture, taste and after taste. That happens to all kinds of fruit no matter how ancient they are or what their pedigree.
Over here in the left coast, avocados should top the list for most backyard gardeners. I am sure everyone would have killed at least one. Even the trees that shake off early mortality will endure water/heat/cold/salt stress and may have unexplained reasons for not being productive. From what I learnt recently, they are also harder to multi-graft.
Cool! I agree what Andrew says about what to try. If you want to try others I can send you whatever for 20 bucks to cover postage and my time. I’m rooting some Smith cuttings, but also have all on Andrew’s list too. If all you want is one fig Preto is an excellent choice. As long as you can ripen the fruit. Tell the truth if you can only ripen half the crop it’s so good, it’s worth growing for half the crop. Why I grow it! I don’t have Preto but have two others that are the same kind of fig. I get at best half to 1/3 of the crop. I don’t care, I want to taste this fig every year. Makes it that much more special.
@Drew51 Grow I-258 if you don’t have one already. Mine ripen at least 2 weeks before my Preto and Black Madeira KK. It’s not the same but similar enough for my taste buds and yields many more fruit.
@aap I’m looking forward to next year when your cuttings should fruit!
I totally have to agree Rhubarb is a very disappointing plant to grow. I love Rhubarb pieces in my apple pie and have been trying to grow it years. I kill it every year by second year and then buy a new plant every year. Not bare root. Mostly potted plants. Every year it struggles and then pushes out few skinny looking leaves next year and gives up by summer. Here is the one I planted last spring, getting ready to die…
I have Genovese Nero AF which I guess is the same thing. It should fruit for me this year, first time.
I don’t really like honey figs, Everyone I tried seemed boring to me. Then I tried a first year fruit off of Izbat an Naj and that was really good! A great yellow honey fig.
I finally got a rhubarb to overwinter (after 5-6 tries) and this spring it pushed 2 leaves and a flower stalk that looked like a purple broccoli . I pruned it off and it has just sat there doing nothing for the past 2 weeks. As those original 2 leaves started to yellow I was sure that it was done for. This morning I noticed it is pushing 2-3 more leaves about 3 inches from the original crown.
Che is among my most disappointing, simply because they never have ripened for me (its been discussed recently, so I won’t discuss it here).
Japanese Raisin tree has been a flop for me as it grew well year 1. Died back, grew a new shoot weirdly from the base (it looks like it formed a tumor and grew from that bulbous growth). This year (year 3) it is pencil thickness and has just in the last few days started pushing leaves. I need to trim an Autumn olive nearby so that it gets more light.
I have a damson plum that doesn’t ripen its fruit as well as pears that allow me to fatten the neighborhood squirrels too.
I’ve also had poor luck with mail-order rhubarb “crowns.” They mostly look like dusty chunks of rotting wood and many never sprout. I also have some ancient plants I moved from our former homes several times that do much better.
