Fig Tree Progress Report. 7.5.18

Fig tree "Smith", about 7 years old.  7.5.18

Fig trees "Champagne" and "Atreano", about 7 years old.  7.5.18

Here are a few of my fig trees. 


I left the Smith for dead last year, after historic cold spell winter of 2016-2017 left most of the shoots looking dead.  It survived and grew anyway.  I thought it would have brebas this year, but they fell off.  The main crop seems to be developing nicely.

The Champagne is an O'Rourke (Louisiana) development.  It has not had many figs.  It is starting to develop main crop.  No brebas.

Fig tree "Brunswick", about 17 years old.  7.5.18

The Atreano has its first two brebas this year, nicely developing.  There is some competition from a fir tree to its east.  Main crop is also developing.

I moved the Brunswick at around 10 or 11 years old, to its current location.   Much of the original trunk died over the subsequent years, but there was vigorous growth of new sprouts from ground level.  It looked like there would be a lot of brebas, but only a few have not fallen off.  Main crop is often lost to fall rains.  We'll see how it does this year.

These trees have full South and West exposure, and some have full East exposure as well.

I'll have to post separately on the row of fig trees, south of the house.  Some of those are more established as thriving in the Pacific Northwest.

I grew all of these trees from dormant cuttings.  When small, some had winter protection, but I've left them unprotected for the past several winters.  I did have deer fences surrounding them, but as they grow taller and seem to have tougher leaves, I removed the deer fencing.  There is rare browsing of some lower shoots.

Fig Update. Looks like a good year. 6.4.18

Brunswick Fig Tree with Brebas.  5.4.18

The fig trees are doing great this year.  With a mild winter, and early spring, those with breba crops have lots of growing fruits.  The trees that look the most promising this year for big early crop:  Brunswick, Carini, Lattarula, and Desert King.  It's interesting, since Brunswick has not usually done that well.  But it's a big, sweet, delicious fig when it does. There is also a small tree that I started from a bonus cutting a number of years ago, "Sicilian White", with some brebas.

Trees that, earlier, had a lot of brebas that fell off:  Atreano (one remains, which will be the first taste if it matures), Smith, Hardy Chicago.

Most of the new growth on the fig trees, is past the 5-leaf stage.  That's when I tip the new growth to encourage a main crop.  I've been doing that on the daily tree inspections.

Kitchen Garden Harvest. Sweet Corn, Figs, Tomatoes. 9.30.16

Tomatoes and Brunswick Figs.  9.30.16

Bodaceous Sweet Corn.  9.30.16

It's been a spectacular year for me in the kitchen garden.  Not everything works out, but the things that do are great.

Now is the end of September, and still harvesting tomatoes, sweet corn, and figs.

There are lots of other veggies out there too - peppers, radishes, collards, and others.

This corn variety was Bodaceous.  It's great, nice thick juice in the kernels.   Tastes like sweet corn.  Mirai was overly sweet and not very corn-like, watery juice.  Bodaceous is so much better.