Of Fig Trees (1)

There can be all the difference in the world between reading advice and taking advice from a person you respect...

February's RHS magazine tells you how and when to prune figs for the best fruit yields.  I must have read or skimmed this article, and I knew it was appropriate to do some light pruning in November, but it was not until I was on the plot talking to H, our resident horticulturalist, that I saw the point.  We first had a wide-ranging conversation down by the manure heap and then H walked up the muddy path to visit our warmest plot.  She complimented us on our autumn sown broad beans and the primulas under our apple tree and then turned her attention to the fig trees by the small greenhouse.  She told me to break off and discard all of last autumn's unripe fruit. 

I must admit, I had left these figs on the trees.  They gave the illusion of fruitfulness.  Many were rotting, some had a dark ressemblance of ripeness but were dry and bitter, others were hard and green.  Some had fallen down among M's daffodil pots.  I asked H for a reason because I respond better to advice when I am given an explanation. 

So H told me that last season's unripe fruit, if it remains on the tree, will inhibit the growth of this season's fruit.  Unlike Cyprus, the fig in these northerly latitudes will bear one crop, not two.  The second crop stands no chance of ripening.

So I broke them all off, straight away, as H suggested.  The trees looked a little bare.  This year's figs were tiny and unformed, hardly the size of the fingernail on my smallest finger.

Later H came back, bearing a small fig in a pot that she had propagated to be kept under shelter in the greenhouse.  It is a gift for M when she gets her own plot.