This season is or has been very weird.

We had an early and warm Spring, which got the trees off to an early start. Then we had 2 weeks in June of barely 60F weather. Most trees started going dormant. Some completely defoliated. Some resumed normal growth, and some have finally started putting on new leaves. Some have had an entire second flush of growth. Some put on figs normally, and some put on figs late, and some just didn't bother trying.

With that introduction:

1) Black Madeira is ripening 4-6 weeks earlier than it has ever done. I thought the first 3-4 might have been from before the 60F weeks, and were ripening on that schedule, but more are ripening, so it may just continue to be early throughout the season.

2) Black Mission NL has had a couple figs ripen early, and the rest appear likely not to ripen for a while, on a delayed schedule. Because of the 60F weeks?

3) Atreano OR, which has been first to ripen last 2 years was slightly later than a couple others, but still On schedule.

4) Vista is loaded (perhaps due to wet winter) and ripening a little early, and is awesome. It is having the best year in a while (not that it is ever "bad").

5) USDA / UC Davis has a late wet Spring, and their crop is reported to be late and light. Will be able to verify in 10 days.

My musings / questions / observations, trying to learn something useful from this weird season.

 1) It would appear that ripening time is somewhat or maybe largely dependent on time from fruit set, more than on temperature of the season, even though best flavor and sugar seems to be dependent on sun and heat at time of ripening. If this is the case, then finding a way to get trees out of dormancy earlier could help push ripening to more favorable, warm, summer weather, increasing chances of ripening fruit and ripening them when weather causes a better quality fruit.

2) If you were to break dormancy in a greenhouse, or indoors, or whatever, you could possibly accelerate the ripening time. However, moving a tree to a cooler outdoor situation too soon could send the tree back to dormancy, or interrupt the cycle of the tree and cause lack of fruiting at all.

3) Trees that had begun to put on seemed less affected by the 60F weeks, than those that had not yet started to set fruit, but not in every case; e.g. Native de Argentile had started setting fruit, and went completely dormant (leafless) without dropping the fruit.

4) Pinching reportedly accelerates fruit setting. If this was combined with early breaking of dormancy might open some nice possibilities for ripening figs in shorter season climates. Maybe by pinching to induce fruiting and not moving to outside before fruit set has taken place, or at least begun might be a useful strategy?