Fig

Growing and picking fresh fruit from trees in your own garden can be fun and rewarding. If you live in an area with mild winters, planting a fig tree can bring sweet figs to your table in just a few years. The common fig tree needs just a bit of special care to produce flowers in spring that can lead to sweet, edible fruits.

The fig tree is most productive in a spot that gets full sun for the entire day. It can tolerate some shade, but needs a minimum of 8 hours of full sun daily. It grows in any type of well-drained garden soil.

The fig is tolerant of drought once established and needs only average moisture during its first year or two. Although mature trees need no fertilizing, feeding a young tree every month from spring through July can help give it a good start.

The common fig tree has all female flowers and needs no cross-pollination by another tree or by insects. This tree is quite unusual, however, because it generally bears two crops of fruit, the first appearing in spring on new shoots that grew since winter.

The second crop develops in late summer or early fall, from flowers that bloomed in spring on old wood from the previous season. The first crop usually is smaller, acid-flavored and not edible. The second crop is the tree’s main, edible crop, which should be allowed to ripen on the tree before picking.