I have a new phenomenon on my Celeste this year. It's full of breba. They started appearing after the main crop but some are catching up in size to the main crop. It is continuing to put on breba. I've never seen this on this on this tree before. This is a tree that didn't want to produce figs for it first three or four years. It would only put on a few very small figs which would get eaten by the birds. They were about nickle size and the whole tree maybe had 25 on it. The tree was 8' tall by 8' wide. I pruned off every branch on it down to the 4 major branches which I couldn't cut with my loping shears. I was planning to use a chain saw on the rest and take it out completely. Something came up and I didn't get to cut it down. It regrew and acted the same. I pruned it back a second time and again was going to take it out but hurricane Gustav made me put it off again as I had a roof to replace. Once again it grew back as beautiful as ever but this time it put on a lot of very good figs. Boy am I glad that nature intervened. It is loaded with figs this year as you can see in the pictures but the breba's have me stumped. Perhaps it the continued cold weather late into Spring even after the main crop showed up.
"gene"


 

Nature really did step in to save that Fig tree! That's interesting how things like that happen isn't it?
Thanks for sharing..love the pics!

Glad it decided to give you figs, Gene!  Amazing how it suddenly grew so many.

Makes me wonder if the little bud that turns into a fig is actually undifferentiated tissue and what makes to decide to grow as fig, rather than as stem. Any answers out there?

Guess you showed it who's boss!

I have seen brebas on Celeste, but never in enough quantity to come close to "full of".

I was looking at my 2 Celeste today and they have maybe 6 breba between them.

I will be watching it closely to see how they pan out as to weather the breba fully ripen, taste good, and repeat the performance next year. I might have almost destroyed a unique tree.
"gene"

There's always something Mother Nature can do to make the day more interesting. That's one of the great things about growing plants.
Gene please keep us informed. thx.

Yesterday my brother dropped in for a visit. We walked around the yard talking as I pointed out different figs and vegetables. When we got to my Celeste with the breba, I start showing him the breba and telling him about them. All of a sudden I came upon a ripe breba. When I say ripe, I mean hang man ripe plus at least a day. Excited, I forgot to take a picture of it hanging but caught myself before I ate it. As you can see in the picture it wasn't large and had a very long stem. The taste was excellent, sweet and figgy just like a Celeste should be. I shared it with my brother and he agreed with me about it being very good. We searched and searched but found no more.

I can't wait mine still look to be a ways off yet.

goss

My Celeste is really weird with brebas. It puts out a whole bunch of brebas, but most of them don't develop. This year, I plucked off over a dozen shriveled brebas that would have fallen off eventually. But there are three big brebas that turned dark green and look quite healthy. That's about as good as I could expect with this tree.