Tired of figs – any ideas on how to process them?

Great! :slight_smile:

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If you have more fruit than you know what to do with, then try making wine with it! Depending how much flavor or how acidic your fruit is, you can use anywhere from 3-6lbs of most fruit per gallon, or some fruits you can use almost all fruit and juice and no water.
https://www.mainbrew.com/fruit_wine-ExtraPages.html

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You cannot make jam set without sugar.
I put figs in the blender
Add pectin and sugar
Bring it to a full rolling boil.
Add a Tbsp of Fruit fresh ascorbic acid.
And process.
Great jam.

It does not bother me when jam is runny, I like the syrup infused with all the fruit juices as much as the fruits themselves. I also like jam that has whole fruit or large pieces of fruit in it. For fig jam I use sugar in 1/5 proportion to the weight of the fruit or even less. Also add a few peeled and cut lemons for acidity and a couple of thinly sliced green apples instead of pectin. I bring the pot to boil and simmer it on low heat for about 45-60 minutes, then let it stay for 24 hours uncovered for the excess water to evaporate. Then bring it to boil once again, then ladle jam out into jars. After the jars cool down they go into the fridge.

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Ok it’s gone.

I think you posted in the wrong thread.

Not sure if anyone already suggested, but fig vinegar is very nice and healthful. Also, traditional fig paste I’m sure is fantastic. Indeed, figs are stellar on pizza (in moderation). We make jams but use very, very little sugar and a few drops of stevia extract and it turns out perfect.
https://peacefulheritage.com/product-category/fruit-nut-trees/fig/

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I have a suggestion for next year, you can freeze them whole in zipper bags. They are almost as good as fresh as long as you eat them before they warm up too much, because it they warm up to much they liquefy, that way you can have figs all year, actually whenever we cook with figs we use frozen figs. Frozen figs are great for smoothies too. Freezing is much easier than drying them, and it gives you a new place to store them.

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How many fig trees do you have? I have one old (35+ years) fig and so far this year it has produced 11 quarts of fruit. Based on the weight of 1 pint of them, that’s about 15 pounds so far, over just under 3 weeks. The other ~15 in-ground figs (none more than about 5 years old) and a dozen or two potted figs produced less than a pound during the same time. I don’t think it is likely, but if they all started producing like that I would drown in figs or need to go pro. What does your production per plant look like?

It sounds like you need another freezer :slight_smile:

Maybe one of those chest or stand-alone freezers would help with capacity. We have one which looks like a refrigerator from the outside, but is just a tall freezer. We like it a lot, though there isn’t really much room in it for me to freeze fruit, as it is where my wife prefers to store Costco purchases due to the large capacity and ease of access.

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I have 18 fig trees in the ground (and about a dozen in pots, but their production is very insignificant in comparison). Of course, not all trees produce equally. Black Jack produces a lot of huge figs but I consider them subpar and plan to top-work that tree with better varieties. I also have a vigorous Brown Turkey which now has 30 or 40 grafts on it, made over the last three years. Other strong producers are Janice Seedless Kadota, Armenian, and Peter’s Honey. I don’t have per plant production numbers since every day during the fig season I would go from tree to tree and collect all the different varieties into one big bowl. Often I would go with two bowls: one for most interesting varieties for fresh eating and another for the rest for drying/processing.

The pick production of 10-15 pounds (two-three large bowls) per day is for about three weeks in August with lesser amounts at the beginning and the end of the fig season. Main crop starts ripening here about July 20 and ends about September 15. After that I get maybe a couple of figs a day through mid-October, but I would often even neglect picking those late ones up. Now it’s basically pomegranate season for fresh eating and olives for curing and oil. Feijoa will start ripening in mid-October.

At the end, I have dried most of the fig crop, as this is the most straightforward way to deal with them. On the photo is about 2/3 of my dried figs. A lot have been eaten fresh. Smaller amounts have been frozen and made into jam and fruit leather.
image

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I doubt that we will ever get that many, yet we do get a lot.

When looked at daily, my 15 pounds in 18 days works out to 0.8 pounds per day. If we pick 12.5 pounds per day for your figure, that yields 0.7 pounds per day per in-ground tree. So my massively productive fig is pretty normal production for you. Maybe a bit above average, but likely far less than your productive trees.

One problem I have is that I only get out to the property every 3 days or so. Which means that only some of the figs are very ripe. I’ve been trying to avoid rotting (fruit flies, YJ, etc) so I’ve been picking as soon as they are colored and droop. But most aren’t at their peak sweetness. My wife and daughter still like them a lot at that stage, but I’m not as fond of them until they are very ripe (and likely damaged).

I was mowing the lawn yesterday at another property which I hadn’t been to since the last mowing and had a couple dead ripe figs that I thought were exceptionally good. Very dark insides with a strong berry flavor. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that when I got back home and looked up the variety, it was Hardy Chicago, and not something exotic. So maybe most figs can get very good if you time when you pick them correctly.

Yesterday’s 3 quarts was the most I’ve gotten in one picking so far, so I think we’re around the peak right now.

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One of the factors for productivity I think is that no winter dieback occurs in my location, so my trees don’t need to spend any energy on regrowth and also the vegetative season is quite longer here.

During the peak of the ripening season, I collect figs every day. I touch every fig that looks close to ripening to check whether it’s ready. It takes me about two hours to check all 18 trees and collect these two-three bowls of figs. My wife does most of the work on washing the collected figs and cutting them for drying.

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