I don't have fig trees yet, but I can't wait to try some! I am hoping to find one or more of the varieties that you mentioned at one of our local nurseries. I keep checking but haven't seen them there yet.

Flis

Dorothy,

I love fig harvest time! It is almost as wonderful to eat the first ripe fig as it is to eat the first ripe tomato!

I hope you enjoy every yummy bite of the figs.

My fig trees have had a difficult summer. Well, at least one of them has.

The two Brown Turkey figs that we have had been growing in large pots since I bought them in the spring of 2011, and had produced well last year. This year, after we finished fencing in the new back garden where part of the soil is sandy-silty and well-drained, we transplanted the fig trees into the ground. That probably was in early May because I know we didn't finish the fencing until the end of April. I may have waited until after the last frost, which was the first weekend in May, because the trees already had set the breba crop.

In late June, one tree abuptly started wilting one day. The next day it began leaning over, which is how we learned that voles had eaten the roots underground. We immediately dug up what was left of it. I'd say 98% of the roots were gone. We potted it up, pruned it back very hard (it had been about 7' tall and we pruned it back to roughly 8-10" tall since there were almost no roots left) and put the container on the east-facing covered patio. For the first few weeks it was only allowed to have an hour or two of sunlight a day since there wasn't much root system to support it. After it began putting out new foliage, I progressively moved it out from the back corner of the patio so that it eventually was getting a half-day of sun. There it remains. The roots must have made a nice comeback because there's quite a lot of leaves now, but it hasn't made much upward growth yet. Obviously this one lost its figs when we pruned it back. I want to replant it in the ground, but probably not until next spring and, when I do transplant it, I will plant it in a hardware-cloth wire gopher cage to protect its roots from the voles.

The second tree is fine and as far as I can tell, the voles didn't bother it, even though it sat only about 15' from the one they devoured. Its' breba crop ripened in July, and then it formed new figs which aren't beginning to ripen yet, but I'm watching them carefully.

I've had all kinds of issues with voles out there in the back garden that I never have had in the front garden (though they did attack two of the raised beds of potatoes in the front garden this year too). Our 10 acres of woods is full of voles but they haven't been much of an issue in the landscape or garden in prior years. It looks like they will be a big problem in the back garden, though, and that is causing me to rethink how I'll do things back there in the future.

In the half of the back garden that has sandy-silty soil, I'll probably plant fruit trees and blackberry brambles, using large wire gopher baskets made from hardware cloth to protect their roots and trunks. In the half of it that has clay, we probably will build raised beds this winter, lining them with hardware cloth, and will use those for veggies, herbs and flowers. The voles have had a field day this year, devouring some plants while not even touching others. I've kept a list of what they like to eat and those are the plants that will go into the new raised beds.

I knew we'd have trouble when we found gopher tunnels while rototilling that soil. We haven't seen any gophers or moles in years, as our cats (and the bobcats that are around most years) pretty much have wiped them out on our property, but the voles are plentiful here in our area wherever there is some sandy soil and they will use the gopher tunnels that remain. I think the kind we have are pine voles, and they mostly live in the woods, but have been venturing into the garden in search of yummy stuff to eat, especially in the hot dry periods of weather.

I intend to grow some other varieties of figs, but may just keep them in large pots since a lot of them are likely to be marginally hardy, if hardy at all, here.

Flis, I bought my two brown turkey fig trees at the Lowe's in Ardmore in the spring of 2011. It probably was either March or April and they were inside the store right beside the area where the outdoor cash register stands are located. The figs were in 1-gallon pots and they were in an area where other fruit also was available in one-gallon pots---mostly blueberries and blackberries. They usually have them there until at least May, and the figs tend to sell out long before the blueberries and blackberries do.

One year they had Black Mission and I bought two of those. I think that was in 2009. They did well the first 2 years, planted in the sandy soil on the western edge of the big garden out front, but then they died in the year we had all that snow and the temperature dropped down near zero....I think that was February 2011. I then bought the brown turkey figs as replacements for them, but since the spring of 2011 was exceptionally hot and dry, I potted them up into larger pots and kept them there until this year.

I want to grow Black Mission figs again, but may keep them in pots so I can overwinter them in the greenhouse. We are zone 7 and they are cold hardy to zone 7, but we have zone 6 temperatures every now and then and they can freeze back to the ground. I think my Black Mission figs were just too small to survive the zero-degree night in February 2011. They might have survived if they've been a couple of years older and if I'd had them mulched a lot heavier than what they had.

Our neighbor grew Brown Turkey figs in Fort Worth when I was a child, and their tree was huge and produced hundreds of figs per year. It rarely froze back because they had in in a really nice microclimate, between the house and the driveway, which kept it nice and warm in winter. I haven't had trees get nearly that big here yet, but hope that the one brown turkey fig that the voles didn't attack this year is well on its way to getting that big. Time will tell.

Sometimes you can find fig trees in 10 or 20 gallon pots, though I have seen them more in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in pots that size than I've seen them here. Every now and then you can find them in the larger pots when all the fruit trees in containers are at the stores in March through May or June, but there's never very many fig trees compared to the other kinds of fruit trees. Fig trees grow so fast that there's no reason to buy them in a bigger pot unless you just want to start out with a bigger tree.

You also can order them online from places like Bob Wells Nursery (Lindale, TX), Womack's (DeLeon, TX), Stark Bros (Missouri) and from many other online retailers. Some of them will ship in time for fall planting, but if you're buying a variety that is hardy only to zone 7, you might want to either put it in a pot its first winter so you can bring it inside a building if a bitter cold spell hits, or wait and buy the fig trees/plant them in the ground in spring.

Chicago Hardy is the most cold-hardy variety I know of that is fairly easy to find at major online retailers.

Dawn

My figs are almost done now, here in Durant. At least this round. We picked for about three weeks. There are a few stragglers at the moment, but the trees set out another round. I am hoping they will mature and not drop off. It has been an awesome fig season for me, even have enough for ten gallon batch of wine.