Hello! I am brand new to the forum.

I live in the Philadelphia suburbs and have a few fig trees in half barrels and one in the ground. The one in the ground is a Celeste, it is about 4 years old and now at about 8 feet. It produces plenty of brebas, but then they always seem to drop off before they get larger and ripen. Does anyone know if there is some sort of soil amendment that I should be using or something similar? I am getting frustrated and I would like to avoid the same thing happening this year.

Thanks!

As I understand it, Celeste is partially self-fertile meaning that while it does not strictly need to be pollinated, it will abort many fruits if left unpollinated. You'll get fruit but just not as many as you would with a variety that is fully self-fertile. 

But I have a similar situation with my Hollier where most of the brebas just die whereas the main crop is pretty reliable. I'm not sure if it's quirk of the variety or a response to a less than ideal climate. Hmm.

That's all the insight I have. Good luck.

I Live close to you and have the same problem with Celeste.
A partial fertile cultivar will drop fruits,in climate that are ,not ideal and this is the case ,in our location.
People in other states with better climate have no problem like this.
My advice:Get Improved Celeste(ORN),if you really want a Celeste type or get other cultivar like Takoma Violet,Malta Black,Saint Anthony, Adriatic jh,and you will not have that problem any more.

Here in Hawaii, my two regular Celeste trees dropped all but 2 figs, out of around 300 fruits.

Figgysid1:If I was you,in your heavenly climate,i would dig them out and use for firewood.!

Thanks for the replies! My ground space is limited, so I am trying to judge if I should get rid of the Celeste and start all over again with a different variety. My varieties that are in barrels are Violette de Bordeaux, Desert King and Atreano. I also just recently bought a Gino's Black but haven't received it yet. I really want a Ronde de Bordeaux too. I bought the Celeste because I thought it was hardy enough to be in the ground in this area. Now I am thinking I was wrong...

Since it is already 8 feet tall, you might want to take advantage of that developed root system and top graft a more suitable cultivar. If you are limited on space, graft on several varieties.

Louisiana it give and gives. Never drops fruit. Everyone and there grandma has celeste here. If you see i fig tree 80% chance its a celeste
Makes sense its a climate issue. My white ischia drops breba every year. Its 8 years old. Maybe this year. Lol.

I had two Celestes, one always dropped its fruit while the other one was a super early producer in pot and always ripened its fruit. So there are definitely a few strains of Celeste.
I also have the improved Celeste which produces larger figs than Celeste. I prefer the later over the regular Celeste.