Fig tree

[Maggiethecat]

I love the fruit! But never considered growing a tree.

Does anyone have one and what conditions suit it? Do you get lots of fruit?

Excited thinking about it!

I’ve got one - we are in the north west so wetter than they are supposed to like but it is extremely productive. It does have a nasty habit of waiting until we go away in the summer then ripening all at once so the wasps get all the fruit.

is it quite a big tree (recall seeing them on hols) but wonder if the varieties here are smaller?

It has been well printed to keep it under control. It would like to be big. It’s a good 5 metres tall and as wide

Pruned 🤦‍♀️

I have two, in Yorkshire. Get about 200 fruits a year. The main tree is about 30 years old, the other was a cutting from it, an insurance when we had to move the main tree.

Brown Turkey is a reliable cropper in the UK and the most commonly grown. Big fruits a deep red when you cut them in half, lovely raw and also cooked. Rich flavour.

confine the roots when you plant, so that it doesn't spend all it’s energy on vegetative growth

Sound brilliant! I want one!

what type of soil do you have? We have clay.

We’re on clay. South facing garden, but a bit of a frost pocket, 400 ft above sea level

I have one, it's not a massive fruiter but I don't care because even at just a few fruits a year a fresh fig off your own tree is totally orgasmically magic.
Mine doesn't fruit much because my garden is tiny and it's bunged into the only available space, which I'm sure is all kinds of wrong for it. If you've got a good place for one go for it. If you like figs you won't regret it.
I look at those little boxes in the supermarket with four not ripe hard tasteless figs costing ££ and I go home and pick a single, soft gorgeously sweet and juicy fig and for those two minutes I am on top of the world.

Do it. Grow a fig tree. 🌳

@MereDintofPandiculation - great to know that yours does well in clay.

@heldinadream - I’m not greedy - a few fruits a year will do. Do you have Brown Turkey too?

heldinadream

They sound delicious.

I have one in a pot, espaliared (sp!) up a wall, which is quite common in Asia. It's a brown turkey, got it in the Range about 3 years ago. After its first year I cut it down by half to make it more of a shrub than a tree. It's year 3 now and we got about 3 figs, none of which ripened fully. I'm not that bothered about the production, I just love how it looks.

A friend of my dm gave me a cutting from her Brown Turkey Fig. Hers grows in a pit with concrete sides, so the roots are very constricted. I think she said it was a gap left after major house renovations. It's against an west-facing wall, so gets south exposure as well. SE England, clay soil. I remember visiting in my teens, and the tree was a scraggly shrub my height. 30 on it's nearly as tall as their house! The figs are so delicious. Sweet and juicy. Nothing like supermarket figs.

My cutting is in a large concrete planter embedded in the soil against a SE facing wall. Also SE England, but soil is slightly loamier. It had one fig this year, which I left too long and so didn't get to taste . Fingers crossed for next year!

@MereDintofPandiculation and others, thanks for the encouraging talk. May I ask how long the trees take to become established and fruit?

From somewhere I was led to believe they take several years before fruiting.

We haven't bothered with asparagus or rhubarb for that reason. But we might when we are in the new house.

I can’t remember it being more than a couple of years. You could start with it in a large pot, then you could take it with you when you move. They’re happy with root restriction, indeed, it’s advised, to encourage fruiting.

It had one fig this year, which I left too long and so didn't get to taste Very easy to tell when they’re ready to pick - the neck goes soft so instead of sticking out rigidly they start to hang down. Remember that they have two generations of fruit each year, but in our climate the second doesn’t come to anything. Anything larger than pea sized in winter will probably fall off.

30 on it's nearly as tall as their house! they can be pruned, and it’s probably a good idea because they fruit on new growth, and pruning encourages a cluster of new shoots.

Yes one in a huge pot - does really well

I have just spent the morning butchering my very very happy fig. Fruit production is variable - depends on the summer, and whether I remembered/CBA to take off all the unripe ones at the end of the previous year. Although it is planted right up against the house in a very cramped spot with slabs to prevent its roots getting far it's still too big for the space.

My dream is a huge sunny space with a massive fig in the middle of it, and me lying on a hammock gorging on ripe figs underneath.

I prune one of mine to make sure I can reach all the fruit from a wall whose top is about 6 inches above knee height, but as I get increasingly of an age where people get worried about me climbing things, I shall reduce it to about 2m.

The other one is more to block the view of neighbours parked cars, so I keep it at 2m

whether I remembered/CBA to take off all the unripe ones at the end of the previous year. Do you find that makes a discernible difference? In theory it should, but I’ve never been convinced. Maybe it depends on where you are?

My dream is a huge sunny space with a massive fig in the middle of it, and me lying on a hammock gorging on ripe figs underneath. I’m not sure I’d trust my hammock to a fig - the branches are very soft and bendy even when quite large.

I've had this bookmarked for ages. About a forest of wild fig trees growing by the River Donn in Sheffield. A comment mentions something similar by the Medway in Kent.

ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/river-don-fig-forest/

Ooh good thread. I have a baby fig tree, I think it’s a White Marseilles. I planted it a couple of years ago when it was twig sized - it’s now about 1.7m tall and would like to be equally wide but I’m trying to encourage it to go tall as we have a teeny garden and it’s wedged into a tight corner. Really there shouldn’t be a tree there but I fig-ured (boom boom) that figs are tough and can survive anywhere.

Fruiting on new growth… hmm … I keep removing the new growths as they are all trying to go wide! Might explain why there’s been no sign of fruit …

We have one on the south side of the house but shaded by other trees, very stony dry ground. It grows like a weed so we hack it back in winter and get loads of fruit off it. Quite late though, September onwards. It loved the weather this year.

Fruiting on new growth… hmm … I keep removing the new growths as they are all trying to go wide! Might explain why there’s been no sign of fruit To be more accurate, it fruits on the new ends of branches. So left unpruned, you have long branches with a bunch of leaves and figs at the end. Pruned, you get more branches, so more ends.