After most of the stone fruits finish at the end of summer, it is a great pleasure to pick and eat soft, sweet, succulent figs from your own tree and to enjoy fig delicacies from the kitchen.

If you don’t experience frost or heavy snow where you live, figs may be a great tree for your garden. They easy to grow, require little maintenance and can be highly productive.

There are many ways you can eat them: jams, chutney, drying, glazing, caramelizing, chocolate dipping, poaching, cross-cutting and stuffing with cream and other cheeses.

If buying from a nursery (or your cuttings have rooted sufficiently), mid to late winter is the time to plant.

Good cuttings

Stout cuttings taken from trees in vigorous condition are ideal. A couple of longitudinal slits made along the lowest 50mm of each cutting with a razor blade (to just below bark level) will aid the rooting process, which should take about 4-5 months before they can be planted into their permanent position.

As mentioned before, mid to late winter is the time to plant permanently.

Sun, soil, watering

Figs need a warm sunny position to do well. If protection from the hot wind of summer is available this will help. Supplementary watering during the fruit development period is important in areas where rainfall is scarce at this time of the year. Water stressed plants in fruit will readily defoliate when experiencing hot and drying conditions. A constant supply of water will also mean the difference between picking dry, chewy fruit or ones that are soft and moist. Figs don’t have a high fertiliser requirement to fruit well but a generous mulch of well rotted cow manure applied to the base of the tree in early spring will maintain plant vigor leading to large fruit.

The right variety

Not a lot of fig varieties are readily available — maybe a dozen or so, though well over 100 have been listed back through history. Presumably, in the culture of the day, varieties that were considered unattractive were discarded. Your local plant supplier can advise you on the best varieties. There is quite a difference in tree size, (an important consideration when netting trees against birds) fruiting times, fruit size, color and suitability for jam making and other culinary uses between varieties.