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Looking at your chart you show 2 days from color to ripe for Red Lebanese BV . How long from the time it swells to colored or ripe? I ask because mine are still green and hard down here on Long Island 7A. I going to time it when this happens and if I see a longer lag time then it will tell me it needs more sun time.
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Unfortunately, it's hard to notice initial swelling unless there is also a color change. And I don't inspect all the fruit on all the trees every day. So the 1st date records when I notice. The 2nd date record when I deem the fruit ripe.
My sense is that initial swelling precedes the initial color change by 1-2 days. Initial color change precedes ripening by 2-3 days, but you could let the fruit ripen even longer.
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Color today on De Tres Esplets . . . .
Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Well unfortumnately, this report may become a bit more sketchy in coming weeks. I ruptured my left Achilles tendon yesterday. Tours of the fig trees may be truncated.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Really Joe? Toughen up, rub some dirt on it and get back in the game.Originally posted by jrdewhirst View Post
Seriously buddy, that sucks....get well soon my man.Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania / Zone 6bComment
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My first ripe snuck up on me. Hiding at the back of the tree in the back row of trees, I found a badly split, but nicely ripened Florea today. Exactly one year from my first ripe Florea of 2020! There are two others on the tree that have started coloring.
And so it begins...
βThe best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.β β Source Unknown MA 5b/6a
Part Owner at Catskill Mountain LavenderComment
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To my surprise, Hative d'Argenteuil ripened a 1st fig! With the distraction of my busted Achilles tendon, I had missed the first color.
Probably the fig could have used one more day on the tree, so I'm going to record the ripening as of tomorrow 08/27/21. Still that's two full weeks ahead of last year's 9/12/20. That's probably due partly to warmer weather and partly the maturation of the tree. In any case, HdA by end of August is great news -- Hative is finally living up to the name! Sorry, there's no picture -- my granddaughter and I ate it too quickly.
Black Greek also ripened a 1st fig today, 4 days ahead of last year's 8/30/20.
Finally, Moscatel Preto is showing color today 08/26/21, which is a week ahead of last year's 09/02/20. Picture below.
Edit β Iβm eating the Moscatel Preto now with some friends, with some great scotch as a chaser. A friend said βhoneydewβ but Iβd add βmaple.β Really good, though not overpowering.
Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-28-2021, 06:36 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Sorry to learn about your injury. I hope you have a good recovery! Great news on the Hative d'Argenteuil. I'm a few days from a Ronde de Bordeaux. Finally...Travis - Zone 5a, Central WI
Wish list - VerdolinoComment
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That's very unfortunate to hear about your Achilles tendon. I wish you a quick recovery.
I see you've had your first fig of each of the 3 early varieties (improved celeste, rdb, florea). Any luck with PastiliΓ¨re this year?Ottawa, ON π¨π¦ β USDA Zone 4aComment
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Good question. I have a 4th yr [I think that's right] Pastiliere in a 25 g pot; it's got a decent crop of green figs and it seems to be holding most of them. A few have dropped. While there's no clear sign of normal ripening yet, I'm still optimistic. There's also a 3rd year daughter tree in a 15 g pot. It has a small crop of green figs but has dropped some too. I think it's a toss up whether it'll ripen any. Finally, there's also a 2nd year daughter tree planted in-ground this year. It's just getting established. Bottom line, the jury is still out but we should have a verdict soon.
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Malta Black has multiple figs with color. One fig is nearly ripe, so it must have had color yesterday but I missed it. For the purpose of the record, I'm going to pretend that I noticed. After walking to the trees on crutches, I realized that I had forgotten my phone, so no picture. But by now you know what a ripening Mt Etna looks like.Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-27-2021, 05:42 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Hope all goes well with your surgical repair & rehab. Joe. They will probably have you non-weightbearing in an adjustable boot for a few weeks. Exercises that help limit atrophy of that leg will definitely be part of your rehab. protocol. On the bright side, it will be a great time to have ripe figs picked & delivered to you! -
Cguitar -- LOL, yeah provided that the person picking & delivering stays in good humor.
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LSU Purple has very good color on at least 1 fig.
Also, I picked Moscatel Preto and Malta Black.
Table above updated.
p.s. Ate the 2 large MP with friends. I asked for taste impressions. One said βhoneydew . . . Very good honeydew.β I thought I tasted maple. The flavor is not overpowering but still excellent.
For Nero 600M, she said elderberries. For RdB, raisins.
Edit: Here's LSU Purple, 1 day later. Still 1-2 days before ideally ripe
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Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-29-2021, 03:14 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Here's the table, updated and bumped.
...............................................Col or.............................Ripe............... .....Total
Variety............................Date..........D ays ..........Date..........Days..........Days
Florea.........................08/13/21.........92..........08/15/21..........2................94
RLBV..........................08/15/21.........94..........08/17/21..........2................96
Improved Celeste........................................... 08/18/21............................97
Natalina.......................................... .................08/18/21............................97
Ronde de Bordeaux...08/17/21.........96..........08/19/21..........2................98
St Rita........................08/18/21.........97..........08/21/21..........3...............100
Smith..........................08/19/21........ 98..........08/21/21..........2...............100
Salem Dark................08/19/21.........98..........08/22/21..........3................101
Iranian Candy............................................. ......08/22/21............................101
De Tres Esplets.........08/23/21........102..........08/26/21..........3.................105
Black Greek............................................. ........08/26/21.............................105
Hative d'Argenteuil...................................... .....08/27/21.............................106
Moscatel Preto...........08/26/21........105...........08/28/21.........2..................107
Malta Black.................08/26/21........105..........08/28/21.........2...................107
Green Michurinska....................................... .....08/29/21.............................108
LSU Purple.................08/28/21........107...........08/30/21........2....................109
Norella........................08/29/21........108...........08/31/21.........2....................110
Violet Sepor................08/29/21........108............08/31/21........2.....................110
Pastiierre....................08/29/21........108............09/01/21.........3...................111
Nordland.....................08/30/21........109...........09/01/21.........2.....................111
Nero 600M..................08/30/21........109...........09/03/21.........4.....................113
Valle Negra.................08/30/21.........109..........09/03/21..........4.....................113
Danny's Delight...........08/30/21.........109.........09/03/21..........4.....................113
JUBI.............................08/30/21.........109.........09/03/21..........4......................113
Takoma Violet............................................ .........09/08/21.................................118
Grise Olivette...............09/05/21.........115.........Last edited by jrdewhirst; 09-08-2021, 06:33 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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A lot happening today . . .
1. Norella has color finally. This is usually a fairly early Mt Etna variety but is lagging some others this year. Last year I recorded color on Norella on 08/24/20, so Norella is 5 days later this year.
2. Violet Sepor is swelling with a tiny bit of color on more than one tree, so no fluke. This is huge news. Last year I reported color on 09/06/20, so Violet Sepor is 8 days earlier this year. VS is an awesome fig, and the color now suggests that most of the crop can ripen in decent weather.
3. Pastiliere is showing color. This is also huge news. Pastiliere is rumored to drop figs, and my most mature (4th yr) tree has never ripened a crop. But this year looks different.
4. Green Michurinska ripened two figs!!! [Again as with some other yellow/green figs, I missed the initial swelling ad color change.] Need I repeat myself? -- This is also huge news! Last year, I reported a ripe GM on 09/10/20. So this is 12 days earlier than last year.
There are pix of Violet Sepor and Pastiliere below. GM got eaten too fast.
Violet Sepor (one close and out of focus, another lower in background). Those are unripe Nordland in far background:
Pastiliere:
Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-29-2021, 05:28 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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You seem to be having a great year and getting some varieties to ripen considerably earlier compared to previous years. Would you attribute that to the trees being more mature? Warmer year? Any other factors you might have noticed?Ottawa, ON π¨π¦ β USDA Zone 4aComment
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VentSolaire -- I've given it thought but haven't gathered much data. My impression is that temperatures have been higher than average this year, but it has also been rainy and cloudy. So all told, average weather hasn't been so great.
On the other hand, once the season got started this spring, there was no "setback" weather event. In 2020, there was a frost on May 9 -- a week and a half after I took the trees outside. This year, the last near-frost / light frost day was April 22 -- just before I took the trees outside. This is a crude metric, but maybe it suggests that the growing season was effectively roughly 2 weeks longer this year. -
We did a little bit of shuffling at the beginning since our trees woke a little early but unlike last year with the bad frost late, our WVZ5B growing season once started stayed warm. We are having a week of hot dry days followed by a week of super high humidity with evening thunderstorms, been hard to get perfect figs sometimes, lots of watery tasting figs some days on the other hand the trees are growing well. RdB pooping open all the time, Smith gets some pasty figs and then some perfect this is why we grow this tree figs!
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Thanks for the reports. I was glad to see the report on Hative de Argenteil, my potted tree grew poorly with significant FMV problems but I put it in ground and it grew massive with no sign of FMV. I need to be on the lookout for figs because itβs still set a few dozenComment
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I appreciate your report π and hope you recover quicklyπππNorthern VA, zone 7a/7b
ββwww.instagram.com/figs.4all
Checkout Figs4All on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/figs4all/Comment
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Today's news . . . .
1. Nordland is showing color, 5 days earlier than last year (09/04/20). This is a mature tree so the difference must be weather.
2. Nero 600M is showing good color, as is the look-alike Valle Negra. This is 7-8 days earlier than last year (09/06 and 09/07/21, respectively). Again, mature trees. I've questioned whether VdB-family varieties are too late to ripen here. But I'd be very happy with ripening that begins ~9/1. Note that hangtime between color and ripeness can be long for these varieties.
3. Jason's Unk Black Ischia (JUBI) is just starting to show color. This is 5 days ahead of last year (09/04/20).
4. Danny's Delight is just beginning to color. This is normally a fairly early Mt Etna variety, very similar to Malta Black. But this color is 4 days later than last year.
Nordland:
Nero 600M
JUBI:
Danny's Delight (sorry, not a great pic):
Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-30-2021, 03:41 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Tomorrow I'm having surgery for my busted Achilles tendon. That means my ability to report will be minimal for maybe 2 weeks. I thought it might be useful to detail what's left.
First, note that I am not reporting at all on the in-ground figs. There are two reasons: (1) Deer decided this year that fig shoots can be delectable. At least one ravenous deer was a frequent visitor to the in-ground trees until I put up some half-assed fencing that was 80% effective. But as a result of the early assaults, growth was set back. Hence fruiting was set back. There's a bunch of figs now but I wouldn't trust the ripening dates for the 1st ones. (2) Since my injury, I have been walking outside only on fairly flat surfaces. The in-ground trees are on a hill. I haven't laid eyes on them in a week.
Second, note that I gave away many trees last year, some culls and some merely a reduction in redundancy. So you will see many trees on last year's report that don't make it to this year's.
So the potted varieties that so far have not shown noticeable swelling / color are: Black Bethlehem (I think still have one of these!), Takoma Violet (it was root pruned and repotted but it has figs), Black Zadar, Grise Olivette, Paradiso Gene, Dalmatie, and Negra d'Adge. I will try to get my granddaughters to check on these but they may have a challenge finding them in the crowd.
There's also an Adriatic JH and two BM kk but those were head-started in the basement and results are reported elsewhere.
Finally, there are a bunch of 1st year trees/varieties but I'm not including them.Last edited by jrdewhirst; 08-30-2021, 03:41 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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I gave away my potted Laradek's EBT and removed the in-ground tree. I have a box store "Brown Turkey" given to me by my brother-in-law, kept mainly for sentimental reasons. I'm not publishing anything for that tree but it is late-ripening, but not as late as Laradek's. -
Thank you so much for the report and updates. Hope you have a quick recovery and get well soonπππ
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great info, I unfortunately cant start my list yet :{
hopefully today will be day 1 of unknown. Probably celeste.
RDB not far behind.Ike
bergen county NJ 6b
Wish list: oh lets face it Ill take any variety I dont have!!Comment
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You are amazing Joe. You even type with your feet........Originally posted by jrdewhirst View PostLehigh Valley, Pennsylvania / Zone 6bComment
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Surgery was yesterday. All good. Four notes:
1. The painkillers include opiates. Opiates reduce gastric motility. To keep things moving, I'm eating a lot of figs! Probably the tastiest medicine ever.
2. As I am immobile, my daughter-in-law and one of my granddaughters watered and picked yesterday. They picked a ton of figs, some a day or so early (they're learning!). I'm updating the data table accordingly but I'm specifically post-dating Nordland and Pastiliere, which IMO were picked a day early. Even though I wasn't there for the picking, I could identify the Nordland fig on sight. Given my special interest, I directed the ladies to the Pastiliere tree and they hand-delivered the picked fig. It was soft enough for a novice to have picked but still not optimally ripe.
3. Due to my immobility, I couldn't actually witness first hand when other figs were picked. For the purposes of completing the table, I may end up merely inferring ripeness ~3 days after color. Also, the next few pickings may involve some FaceTime.
4. Pastiliere has color on multiple fruits on two potted trees, one the mother of the other (as an air-layer). So both trees held fruit. As noted, we picked one and we will pick a few others within the next few days.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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For the 1st time since the surgery, I picked figs myself today -- on crutches with a lot of help from my wife.
1. I noticed color on Grise Olivette. This is a very nice fig, but it is just a little too late here. It's going to join my collection of varieties that get a head start in the basement under lights.
2. For the past week, the picking has been done by my wife, my daughter-in-law, and my two granddaughters. They're having some fun and learning to tell when a fig is ready for picking. And which varieties they prefer. My daughter in law came in yesterday after eating a Smith -- it just looked so appealing on the tree -- and you'd have thunk that she just had a mystical experience.
I know that this crew has picked figs from the 4 varieties that had only shown color as of 8/30 (Nero 600M, Valle Negra, Danny's Delight, and JUBI), but I don't exactly when. I'm just going to assume four days of hang time for these varieties and infer a ripening date. We picked more ripe figs of these varieties today. For once, critters didn't get to my JUBI -- it was very nice, sweet and jammy.
3. Further to the discussion of Pastilere, which has a reputation for dropping figs: There can now be absolutely no doubt that my trees are ripening a crop. See this pic, for example, which shows at least 4 almost ripe figs. We've picked others too. So my post-game report is that Pastiliere takes a few years to get going, but then appears to behave typically. Maybe it is more sensitive than most figs to a drying out of the soil, so it would do best in the ground or in large pots.
Last edited by jrdewhirst; 09-05-2021, 02:15 PM.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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What valuable information Joe.
Thanks again! πhttps://youtube.com/channel/UCHHopi_E99OBvafBPEcF_pg
Zone 8B - Cottage Grove, Or
Wish List - Crema di WheatComment
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How was the taste on Pastiliere? Worth waiting a few years before getting fruits?Ottawa, ON π¨π¦ β USDA Zone 4aComment
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VentSolaire -- For each variety, I go through a learning curve re ripening. Typically I pick the first few (or few dozen) figs a little too early. Then I get more confidence (or I just get careless) and I leave the fruit hanging longer. My granddaughters tend to pick too early too.
As a result, I haven't optimized Pastilliere yet. Here's the one I picked today. It looks like it could have used another day. But even so, it showed great promise.
Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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Ugh I cannot get either my unground or potted plant in a 20 gallon pot to hold fruit. The plants are beautiful and they set huge crops all of which drop when marble sized. I probably have had a thousand fruits drop over the years because the trees set multiple crops per year. -
blaze -- See the recent discussion of Pastiliere, especially the comments by venturabananas. Then check whether you have the variety from Paolo Bellini or from Baud. Mine is the former. -
Thanks for the heads up jrdewhirst
I have the baud variety. I will have to try and get the Paulo Bellini variety in the future.
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Again today, my wife accompanied me picking figs, with me on crutches. It's been a few days since I've ben among the trees myself. My sister and granddaughters have picked up the slack in between.
I noticed color on lots of figs on Takoma Violet, with at least one ripe. It's possible that my helpers picked other ripe TV figs in the past few days, but I'm reporting the ripe fig as of today with the first day of color unknown. Table is updated.
This is late for a Mt Etna. This is not a great surprise as TV has tended to be late in past years too, but this year it may also have been delayed by a serious spring root pruning.
I forgot to check the Grise Olivette.Joe, Z6B, RI.Comment
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BlueEagle1967 -- I've grown TV for many years. Once upon a time, it was the object of serious hype -- the biggest claim was that it was the only Mt Etna that produced a serious crop of brebas. I didn't fall for the hype, but I had an opportunity to buy a mature tree from a local grower at a very fair price. I figured, what the hell?
Like you, I've been disappointed. My tree is moderately productive, relatively late-ripening for a Mt Etna, and definitely inferior here to many other similar varieties. I'm very hesitant to judge a variety based on one tree grown here. So I'd be happy to hear other views. But it's not the object of hype anymore, is it? -
Just tried my first Grise Olivette today. Not bad. It was decently sweet and had a subtle flavor to it that was hard to figure out. It seemed to have a very light fruit syrup type of flavor that lingered on the palette. It definitely seems different from any of the other figs I have. I'm sure they will improve in flavor and sweetness over time, especially in better weather conditions. They do seem to hold up pretty well in rainy/humid conditions and the eye stays very tight. No splitting on these so far. My tree is ripening a lot of fruit all at once so I'm pretty confident that it will be able to easily ripen all it's crop before the cold weather comes. Can't wait to try more of these!
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