Hey guys I'm finally getting around to posting these pictures. I was away from garden in another city working in hospital for most of fig season. My family was awesome enough to bring me one crop, and then I got to go to the garden after 5 weeks of exile from the garden just a few days ago. I compressed all the images for quick upload/download.
I'm zone 7a I would say in a protected microclimate for hardiness as there are lots of walls around everywhere. I like to let my figs truly ripen for max flavor and am having good luck after a couple tries with organza bags. My goal with most figs is to let them shrivel up to a raisin on the tree whenever possible.
Plant info: Hardy Chicago went in ground last year at about 4 feet tall and put on couple feet of growth this year... he woke up in spring with zero dieback. Since he's one of my earliest cultivars (although not super early), I put him in the most shade and he probably receives only 5-6 hrs of sun a day. I pretty much give all my late cultivars more sun and early cultivars less sun so they all catch up to about to ripen about the same time together. I also have HC under the edge of a little driveway roof so much of the rain is diverted.
Performance: Fantastic. Productive. No splitting, no spoiling. Seem to ripen about 3 at a time. Allows shrivel to raisin effect the best of all my trees I think.
Flavor: Pretty good. Way more consistent and solid than a Brown Turkey in my climate at least--that is for sure. Was better last year and matched the Sal's Gene I had at Gene's old place last year for flavor. This year still good and very reliable, but I wouldn't say it was especially rich like VdB. I did like some of them that were fully ripe but not shrivel to a raisin ripe. But letting these shrivel to a raisin is the default as the tree cooperates so nicely.