After returning from 10 days vacation, with some rain and ripeness, a few figs had exploded (esp. Sal's Corleone and Deleon), but I was able to pull and sample three varieties on their first main crop figs.  These are all from 2-4 year old trees.

LARGE fig:  Owensboro (possibly Sal EL)
MEDIUM fig:  Black Bethlehem
TINY fig:  Deleon (normally 4x larger)

I had a larger Deleon fruit that had exploded after the rain we got a day or two prior and you see this one is splitting... I ate both anyway, and they were pretty damned good.  Melon-y sweet light fruity flavor on both Deleon.  The Owensboro was more like berry jam.  The Bethlehem Black reminded had a strawberry-grape sort of flavor to it, it was picked a bit early, I'm hoping for some flavor variance in one that's more ripe.  None were extremely rich, which I like, but they made up for it in complexity of flavor.  My favorite was Owensboro.

I like all three of these figs and look forward to trying more later.  All three trees are good, possible keepers so far.









Bethlehem Black:


Owensboro:


Deleon:

I like the small one

I like them all!   :)  Nice figs to come home to, congratulations!

My Bethlehem Black is a bit lighter but larger than yours. It tastes very good for a young tree. 

Dom, JD's Bethlehem Black I seem to remember was much lighter as well just before it got ripe, but his was in full sun, my fruit is up under the leaves.   JD's thread:  http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/Black-Bethlehem-5895729

I checked Bass' site and notice that he has two different pictures of it, one is very black with skin cracking, the other is more like the one above, lighter, not quite black - reminds me a bit of a really good Celeste on the flavors and somewhat on the shape. 

I picked a "dead ripe" Bethlehem Black this morning, barely noticed it due to the size, which was barely as large as a quarter.  It's a bit darker, and, honestly if it would've sat on the tree another day, it would've begun to rot.  Pics:

Here's of pic of a near ripe fig on tree of B Bethlehem.

I have a feeling it's going to darken up a bit more before ripening.  Yours looks fairly larger than the one I posted just before you, and slighly larger than my one above.  I haven't been taking that great of care of my trees this year (not as great as I could have), which probably speaks to a lot of my smaller fig sizes this year.  I'm going to rebuild my tree farm this winter, root prune, and up-pot as much as humanly possible with hopes of better years next year.  Everything in my collection is exceeding 1"-2" in base trunk caliper and really needs to be in 15gal-25gal pots.

I had it start last year in a Self watering pot and then transferred to a 15 gallon pot in July. The caliper is between 1 and 2" with very nice branching.  I actually had a few at this stage that stayed this color and were very good.  Got the wife's approval on this variety.  She's a stickler with her figs.

Sounds like a good woman ;)

My 23-month-old daughter is my fig litmus.  If she'll eat it, and I like the taste, it's a keeper.  She went nuts for Negronne, Owensboro and Sal's (EL/Gene).  She wasn't so jazzed about Flanders, Sal's (Corleone), Brown Turkey (Monrovia), so those are going or gone.

My 3yr old girl eats any fig. Bad barometer.