Hey everyone,
Life certainly does get busier once you get a real job! I now seem to have time to either take care of figs or read about them, but not both. I had the day off, though, so I thought I would share this with you.
My fig habit started right after graduating from pharmacy school in May, since I needed something to help occupy the time between studying for the licensing exams and applying for a position in a hospital. My first tree was the one labeled as an LSU Purple that is decidedly not a purple fig (btw, the store I got it from said they think it is a Calimyrna, and the nursery it came from said they think it is an LSU Gold. Until I can verify either of those next year, I'm calling it my Peach Martini). My second tree came from Hirt's Garden off of Amazon, advertised as a Genoa Italian Fig Plant in a 6" pot, color option white, and arrived labeled as a White Honey Fig. This is it about a week after arrival, once it had time to perk up a bit, and another picture of it about a month later after outgrowing the first container I put it in.
Around this time there was quite a bit of discussion on the forum about the benefits of pinching, so I decided to hop on the bandwagon. I was totally amazed when, a week later, buds start pushing up from the top 3 nodes.
A month later, those three shoots were going strong. Several lower branches were also getting long and leggy, so I went ahead a pinched them, too.
So now we're nearing the end of September in Atlanta, the tree has doubled in height since I first tried my hand at pinching, it keeps pushing more buds everywhere I pinch it, and finally it decides to put on its first figs. This is one cheeky fig tree!