Tasting December Figs | Announcement 

Thanks for the kind words! Figs are so easy to get into once you start. You have a very solid collection.

Thanks for the encouragement! RLBV is a winner!

About twice a week has been enough with a volume of around 2 gallons or so at each watering. With our highs going up into the 70s and flirting with 80 degrees, I add a third watering in the weekly schedule. Once the trees defoliate, once every other week should be fine in the absence of rain.

Given how shallow builders bury pipes on new builds, I believe the water temp is around the same at my place during summer. My irrigation lines (pvc and poly) run off city water. The actual emitters are sprayers for the most part to my plants which does help the water cool off a little bit. Shading the ground is key; my new goal is to achieve at least 80% shade coverage in the garden areas to keep everything cooler including the water lines

@@EnlightenmentGarden I hand water from the tap that comes straight out from the house. Our house lines are always so hot. It seems that everyone in this community of about 45,000 people literally turns off their hot water heater in the summer. Not just down, but off. We have to shower in the summer with just the cold water tap turned on and even that is too hot and uncomfortable at a distance. You can never have a cool, let alone refreshing, shower in the summer. I keep a kiddie pool and a large tub on the covered patio. Every night around midnight, I scoop water out of it to water everything. When done, I fill them back up again. The mass of water and the large amount of surface area help to cool it down for the next night. It's not cold, but at least it does not burn them. I did not know you have a website until last night. I went there and saw you are all sold out of figs. I so wanted to get Figo Preto and Pastilliere Raintree. You don't happen to have any more you can cut, do you? I honestly do not mind if they are growing or not, just as long as they are not soft and flimsy.

@@cs7717 That's a good strategy for watering. Sorry; my trees are all pruned up and already breaking bud. I cannot sell you any cuttings as active growth = failure. I'll sell cuttings again in early 2025 or you could sign up to be notified when Raintree gets their pastilliere back in stock. Best of luck and remember that most nurseries sell rooted figs in spring. You may want to contact One Green World nusery about any fig varieties you want. They are excellent and imagine will have a ton of variety in rooted fig plants in a couple months

While they should all work, those are such great varieties, that you may not want to graft to them and sacrifice fruit from the parent tree. I generally recommend getting a widely available variety for grafting where you top work it all and don't allow any of the rootstock branches to grow. The key to vigorous grafts is preventing the rootstock or host tree from taking over. If the rootstock is allowed to grow, all the energy will go into its branches and not your grafts. RLBV is a solid choice and will definitely give you more fruit and extend your harvest cycle.

@@EnlightenmentGarden Thanks, Natasha. I’ll definitely leave a spot open for grafting purposes and will rewatch your videos on fig trees, especially the ones on grafting. I have the Bell icon selected so I should be notified when your cuttings go on sale. 😊

Indeed; Mt Ednas are such productive trees. If I could only have one variety, it would be in that family.

Fig trees do so well here! There are no fig farms here to taste figs. Figaholics is where I buy my cuttings and the youtube channel of the same name offers 100s of past tasting videos on many top varieties. I chose varieties based on research (appeal to my taste, closed eye, performance). A lot was trial and error to find the best for our climate. As there are over 1,000 common fig varieties, it would be hard to identify an unknown variety. Hard to say what you have. You could post some pictures (outside and instead fruit) with weight noted in the ourfigs forum and a member may be able to ID it. Perhaps a TX Blue Giant?

You are welcome!

Mt Edna-type figs are not considered late varieties but the rest mostly are. I'm not growing BNR or CdD types presently but those would likely perform or ripen similarly in the Phoenix area.

My shop is online on the Etsy platform.RU-vid tends to block comments when links are added, but if you check my channel description, you will find the link to the Etsy shop. Thanks!

Wow! That's impressive!

What’s your thought on the taste of the Olympian?

@@epigeneticnerd4244 to me and the family the strongest taste we get other than the normal fig flavor is peach,and I’d say a pretty significant peach flavor ,the family prefers the tiger pinache berry flavor over the Olympian peach flavor .although Olympian out produces the pinache every season and for us has a longer harvestable season

Neem oil is an all-natural insecticide and fungicide. You can mix 1TBSP neem oil with 1 gallon of water in a sprayer and spray down the trees. I like to do this at leaf fall to prevent any disease or bugs from overwintering and causing damage. While you can treat your trees any time of the year, I personally avoid it when temperatures exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit as it can burn the leaves.

Thanks! My Etsy store will open for sales in mid-January - www.etsy.com/shop/EnlightenmentGarden

Yes; I'll be selling likely mid-January on my Etsy store.

I clean up the trees of fruit after full leaf fall as there is little chance that the figs will ripen at that point. That's also when I'll hit my trees with neem and/or horticultural oil.

@@EnlightenmentGarden Wow it never even occured to me to hit them with neem oil. I'll try that.

Yes, fig trees should be pruned hard in winter for us in a hot climate for fruit production the next year. I did a video last year on the process, "Harvesting & Storing Fig Scions + Pruning Fig Trees". My hens stopped laying for about 8 weeks when they went through their full molting process. That puts a lot of strain on their body but now that they are fully feathered again, they are back to laying eggs and letting the neighborhood know. It's pretty common for hens to take a break in winter

@@EnlightenmentGarden seems like I saw a video of someone saying figs only produce on the new growth of the year, not preexisting wood. Is that true?

@@epigeneticnerd4244 It depends on the variety. Some fig cultivars (like VdB) can produce a breba crop on old wood and others only produce on new wood/main crop. For example, Black Madeira does not produce breba. In parts of the country where they don't have a long enough season for main crop, they mainly grow varieties capable of a strong breba crop and that is pretty much all their climate will ripen. It's totally different here. In fact, the breba fruit generally aborts once we warm up in spring and the tree goes to work setting the main crop.

32 fig varieties at present but I have trialed over 80. My linked Google document on the channel has all the details on the varieties along with other fruit trees I grow. TFW!

All figs are sweet to a degree. The less sweet figs generally have more acid. Bass' Favorite and Martinenca Rimada are both very complex/intense berry figs with strong acidity and are less sweet IMO.

No; I ended up culling it. CdD types in general have not performed well for me so I'm not growing any of those currently.

​​​@@EnlightenmentGarden do you grow cluster figs? I've heard both that they can ripen without a wasp pollinator and also heard they don't properly ripen (so they aren't very good or edible) without a wasp pollinator (which I know we don't have in Phoenix).

@@chosen2030 I am not. Looks like an interesting tree but all the fig varieties I grow are ficus carica (common fig).

Sorry; I announced sales started on January 12th on the community page and store and was sold out a few days later. The figaholics sale is expected to start in February. I highly recommend getting cuttings from Harvey at figaholics. Simply google that name for the link. I'd put it here but youtube blocks it. Since this is the last year he will be selling (as he is selling his farm), make sure you don't miss out. You can follow his facebook page for updates. There are also many other options for purchasing fig cuttings including figbid

@@bluejay713 Hi! Sorry, I'm sold out for the year but One Green World Nursery has many already rooted Chicago Hardy trees in stock right now. You may want to check them out

@@bluejay713 My most recent video discusses and shows how to easily graft fig trees. When you graft, the benefit is having multiple varieties on a single tree but grafting does not change the genetics of the varieties and mix them together to make new varieties. The grafted branch of each stays true to the original type.