Hi folks,

I am new to fig growing, I bought my first this year. I bought a couple of small, but very vigorous plants off ebay uk (jurassicplants), one called Portogal and one called Signora. I have them in my polytunnel as the weather here isn't the best.

We have a short season here in NE Scotland, last frosts end of May, sometimes June and first Autumn frosts anytime from end of August. We also get low light levels in winter, midwinter day length is about 6.5 hours. I know of someone growing Brown Turkey locally but haven't found anyone else round here that grows figs.

I am on the look out now for fig cuttings. Reads Nursery has some, but they seem quite expensive, £5 each, or is that about average?

Welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum,I'm a newbie from Birmingham UK,not quite as northern as you but I'm guessing we share some of the same weather conditions.Im afraid that at the moment I don't really have anything to trade but once I have a few more plants and they are a bit older I might be in a position to post a few cutting your way,only got brown Turkey,Jerusalem(no idea what that really is,I'm think is a nursery name dreamt up as 'Jerusalem' in the fig ID section here indicates it's a Smyrna type so why would a nursery be nothing to sell it here??) and an unknown in propagation which looks promising but could just turn out to be another brown Turkey,keeping an eye on the mother tree to see what the figs do over the next month or two).

Reads is good,also try rainsbrook nursery(gb-uk.com or something ,can't remember now),they have a cool collection and many more figs than those listed for sale,they also do cuttings.

£5 may seem steep but considering the fact that each cutting gas the potential to become something that given time and space the nursery could have sold for many times the price(a tree) I don't think it's that bad,just gotta make sure they root or all you have is some expensive dead sticks

Thank you for the welcome! I will investigate Rainsbrook nursery asap. The plants that I bought from Jurassic Plants were around a fiver and they are growing well. They were in 9cm pots but have grown quickly and are branching out well, one even has a fig on it. I think that I might ask the people at Jurassic Plants if they have any other varieties on the sidelines. Hopefully by next year I will be able to take cuttings from them to swap with people here, thank you haslemhulme for your offer.

welcome    it will be fun hearing how you do growing figs in Scotland.   By the way, I didnt know there were figs there.   Keep in touch with your progress.    Lots of fun and info here.

Welcome to wild crazy world of Figs, Good Luck!!!

WELCOME, Doric dragons...Glad to have you here! Never met anyone from Scotland. Wish I could send you some cuttings, but they would have my butt if the "Man" ever caught them! Good Luck this year! : )

Welcome!  A fig tree that produces a good breba crop is probably your best bet.  You can ask Monserrat Pons on Facebook what his best tasting breba is and get Reading or some other nursery to order it for you.

Welcome to the forum!  I'm looking forward to your posts and seeing which fig varieties work best for your area.  :)

What a friendly forum, I am very glad that I joined it. rcantor, thanks for that advice, I am not on Facebook, I will see if he is on Twitter. :)

Welcome to the forum. Are you planning to grow your trees in pots, or will you grow them in ground?

I will be growing in pots in the polytunnel. Once/if I have got to the stage if being able to take cuttings and get more plants to play with, then I will risk a couple in the ground. There are a couple of spots in the garden where it might just work, as long as the plants were wrapped up warm in winter.

Welcome, Doricdragons. You came to the right place :-)

Maybe we should start a topic about how nice this forum is :).Ive been reading around this forum for a while without posting up until now,besides a few negative feelings about suspect eBay dealers(worth a read) this place seems to be all about sharing,I've learnt more from reading this forum than I could have learnt in years of growing and book reading,I'm only starting out but this place has been invaluable,it was figs4fun site which helped me root my first fig cuttings.I won't be contributin as much as some(I have no idea where some people magic up the time and energy) but glad to be part of it,also glad to see some more newbies,at least I'm not the only one here who has to think twice when someone uses VdB or RdB as an acronym for a fig variety lol

Welcome to the forum!

Hi DoricDragon:

Anyway, You may check with this info nursery
http://planetfig.com/cultivars/fcveng8589.html

One of My best friend come from Scotland, he told me how hard to grow anything from NE Scotland, His Mon loves figs, I just give her some ripen figs and she loves it.  I think that "Desert king" and "brown turkey" may grow well in your area.
I live in cool climate and understand how hard to pick the right vareities, Both "Desert king" and "brown turkey"  grow like weed here, too bad, you are too far away from me, I really don't mind to give your some cuttings.
Enclosed fig from a tree that I am going to chop it down due to low breba production, Anyway, it is good fig and super sweet in warmer area, If you live in low heat area, There are lots of vareities waste your time due to low or no ripen fig production.
 

Thank you to everyone for the welcome. It is great to find so many friendly, helpful people. Thank you ricky for your advice, it is much appreciated. I have got a couple of Brown Turkey cuttings and am on the look out for Desert King. I will try Read's nursery.

There are a lot of things that shouldn't grow here but do, so you never know! I have a couple of lemon trees in the (unheated) polytunnel. They get wrapped up in winter and sometimes drop a few leaves but they get fruit.