I am looking for a variant that produces a breba crop based on the following
criterias -- reliable, hardy to 35*F, productive & tasty. Hence if any collecter
have variant(s) that produces a good breba crop, I would sure like to trial it.
I have or trial the following:

Ariane                     Filacciano                   Firione du Ruvo             
Lamperia                 Latarrula                    Gentile
Gilette                     Osborne Prolific          Granthams Royal
Desert King             Conadria                     Giebhubl(promising)
Morena                    Valliery

My zone is 6/7 in the Pacific North West, southern British Columbia. Winters in
the past 3 years have been mild. 

The above listed variants that are not suitable for my zone are Firione du Ruvo
and Gentile. Gilette produces a reliable & bountiful sugary crop that is not to my liking.

My favorite brebas so far from my varieties are Lampeira, the one from Prusch Park in San Jose. They ripened here in mid-July, and were fabulous. I have no idea how they would do farther north.
I am curious about your Ariane. I saw on Adriano's site that it is from Portugal? I asked Francisco about it, and he does not know a fig by that name. Has it produced for you? Pictures?

Lampeira brebas 7/13/2015

 

Don't have extensive experience with these but I see they are not on your list and seem to produce excellent quality breba/fiorone;

Sucrette (excellent breba but late ripening main)

  

Capelas (starts with a lot of breba but drops most)
 


Sicilian Black (my favourite excellent quality breba but late ripening main) was told that has been grown in ground in Niagara for years.  I am trying this year in ground.
 

I find figs that produce a lot of breba seem to have a late ripening main crop.  For this reason I thin out the brebas on main crop producing figs like the mt. etnas.

I have the mentioned variants for over 9 years. In my zone, the mentioned variants are not in the same league as
my other breba producers. My Sicillian Blk is a JR strain, likely not similar to your strain.

For some strange reasons my Lampeira from Prusch Park kept aborting their brebas. The same happen to my friend's
tree. We both got rid of it. Now I have a Lampeira(Pon's). Unfortunately the only breba it had this season fell off.

This is my breba list:

Definitely want to see more of this thread.

Today I picked my first two breba Marseilles which initially came from edible landscaping. They we're also the first fruits of the fig season. This Marseilles variety is totally different from what is called St Anthony in Italy. The St Anthony I know is a yellow fig. In any case one of the brebas had a high sugar content and was juicy while the other one which was slightly underripe (dry) and needed an extra day or two at least . It had no flavor and no sugar content as if picked from another tree. One or two extra days on the tree would make a huge difference when picking figs. The problem is that birds might beat me to it. Look how dry the fig on the right is compared with the fig on the left. I suspect that if the one on the left was also to be picked in another day or two it would've tasted much sweeter.

I'm keeping an eye on this Nordland Breba. With all the rain we had, it is getting as large as a tennis ball. Ants included.
In case you're wondering about the yellow leafs in the background, they belong to an unknown tree I had that spread its roots through the container into the ground. I tried to put them back in place, by pulling them out and you can see the immediate result. Within day that four year old tree is drying up.

Excel was the best breba I ever had. Unfortunately, my tree died in storage this winter.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to report on my first Nordland Breba. I had to chase a bluejay today, but I was too late!
See before and after:
The third picture is what the bluejays did the following day.

Hi,
I have the usual suspects:
- BrownTurkey
- Longue d'aout -healthy ( some strains are weak ) - first time tasting approaching )
- Dalmatie
One that one could forget : Dorée ( in the Brunswick family )
Waiting for the others like madeleine des deux saisons, Jannot (Desert King alike normally), Osborn prolific  ...

Fascinating thread, Paul!  

You mentioned that Fiorone di Ruvo and Gentile are not suitable for your area.  What is the problem with those two?  Most of the San Pedros seem to take a long time to come into bearing - Gentile (2007) and Grantham's Royal (2010) haven't really started here and Fiorone di Ruvo (2010) bore a decent crop for the first time last year.  One variety that is both productive, good tasting and precocious is Zumwalt.  How about the English Brown Turkey types?  I haven't seen many brebas on mine, but varieties like LaRadek seem to produce good crops in Europe.  

I'm in zone 6a, and most breba forming figs do not produce a "crop", unless you define a crop as a handful of figs.  Are you getting a lot of brebas per tree?  My brebas seem to form - buds are visible early - but don't progress, or abort at some point.  What's going on is a puzzle.  The San Pedros seem more reliable, as are some varieties like Italian Honey.  What do you think the problem is - temperature?  I've noticed that any interruption in growth seems to cause brebas to fall off.  But this could just be the last straw - previously damaged brebas giving up.  But if it is temperature - why am I getting any brebas at all?  Every new layer of bark forms buds.  So a tree that is cut back to ground level will activate buds that have been quiet - for decades sometimes.  The breba buds are usually formed the year before the breba figs appear.  Will removing main crop figs increase the breba crop the following year by allowing the breba buds to absorb all the energy produced?  Or is it the opposite?  I've seen winter pictures of LaRadek loaded with immature main crop figs, but it produces big crops of brebas after cold winter temps.  Do the main crop figs stop developing early enough to allow energy to go to the breba buds?  Do the main crop figs protect the breba buds during the winter?  I'm glad you are trialling breba producers.  Even if we don't figure out what is going on (I don't expect answers to most of this - though I'll appreciate any insights you might have.), we'll have a nice list of go-to figs for breba production!

Paul
Your Elana. Good breba when it has it.
I guess you sent it to the fig heaven.

Gentile + F.D Ruvo = POOR taste in my zone.

Best tasting breba variant is Granthams Royal. It fits into the category of reliability and productive. Any thing that
equals or better than Desert King in my zone is what I am looking for. Apart from Latarrula, Osborne Prolific, Gilette
that have done well for brebas are 4 other variants Ariane, Falicciano, Giebhubl and Morena. Taste wise of these 4 variants
is not as good as Desert King ---- may be this year they will improve. There is another variant that produces a decent 
breba crop -- a no name fig from Greece with blood red interior. I have a small plant but getting to sample this fig is 
difficult as this place plant is located in a church and accessible to anyone. I have seen the interior of the partially eaten
fig.

I used to have a Laradek but no more now -- died.

Elana -- winter killed. I have a small replacement tree since last year.



 

Thanks Stephen, I have to look into it or set up nets early in the season.

Anyone have experience with Kadota brebas?? The main crop ripens late for me here so I wasn't too excited about the prospects of it this year but it has 6 or 7 brebas nicely developing on it which was a surprise to me.

Kadota -- a common fig variant sold in nurseries here. Too late for my zone.

Olympian Breba were surprisingly good. Not a ton of them though.

Hi Guys, I like this topic !

I am looking for good breba producers too, and testing some of the same varieties. I have rooted a bunch of varieties this spring, so thank to all figlovers who helped me with cuttings.

Paully, your experiences and recommendations seem to fit well with my growing conditions, so thanks for the info you post here.

Ross, your variety list is impressing and interesting, looking forward to hearing more about your ex      periences in coming years.

I belive the capability to yield brebas is inherent in the variety, but also I would like to understand if we as growers can do something to increase the crop of brebas. (pruning, pinching, fertilizer, soiltype and so on)

Just want to show you this Photo of a fig tree that I spotted. We could call it "Pomlenakke", sorry I didn't rotate it....

 

The reason this tree caught my eyes, was that it had formed up to 9 brebas on a branch ! - and there  were many branches withy 7-9 fruits, much better yield than what I see in my own garden. I talked to the owner, and he did not know anything about it, but kindly sold me a Little plant he rooted from it. Normally I presume any fig tree in Denmark is an English Brown Turkey, because most trees in fact are. But now the question is: Is this a garden variety English Brown Turkey, that just carry a lot of brebas because of some cultural or localization factors I don't understand, or is it an new variety, a sport or something. It will be fun to follow this specimen. lets call it "Pomlenakke unk. BT" untill we know more.

I will definitely visit the tree later in summer, to see the ripening fruits and get some more Photos, this time with my camera so hopefully with better quality than this cell phone Photo.


Michael

Great topic, Paully22! I too am interested in knowing which varieties have the best brebas.

My Kadota had brebas forming in March but i dont have any ripe figs yet.

Michael, that is an amazing tree!

Michael that is exactly the kind of production I would love to see from a breba producing tree :)  Very nice! I wonder though if that tree had a nice micro-climate with that brick wall acting as a heat-sink. Keep us posted on how yours does.

Tyler

Hi Tyler, and anyone interested in highly productive breba varieties.

In my quest for record breaking breba crop, I just found a branch on another EBT-type tree, with a bumper crop of 13 brebas on one branch ! It was again on a branch that grew close to a building, and with a very long growth from last year. So I am thinking; The more growth you can push the fig to this season, more nodes and the more brebas you will have next year. 13 will be hard to top, and as the figs ripen over several weeks, I have my doubts if all 13 will ripen before fall. I will try to check, and report back.

Funny enough this observation goes directly against conventional fig-cultivation-knowhow, as many texts state that you have to force a figtree to compact growth, to promote fruiting. I am starting to think that the opposite is the case under some circumstances.

Michael,

Very interesting information indeed.... Its really amazing and possibly something to take into consideration in the planning out of a garden landscape that brick walls such as those part of building seem to create such significant micro climates around them. I have seen in a number of times with the most clear example I can think of being a Hachiya persimmon tree that my dad had planted in Flushing NY. Normally a Hachiya would be expected to be a prolific producer in Flushing which is a zone 7 environment at best but my dad had his tree planted in between his brick house and his neighbors  brick house which were angled toward each other in the homes rear forming a triangular garden patch with a southern exposure between them of ~ 50 ft at its widest portion. His Hachiya thus benefited from the micro climate created between the trees from the radiant heat and grew in excess of 20 ft tall and quite massive in main trunk as well as branches. That tree produced HUGE numbers of VERY large Hachiya fruit every year... more than several hundreds for sure. No way would that tree have been as prolific and productive without those walls because the winters we had through those years were significant in both snowfall and cold temperatures.

I guess  that in combination with a strong Breba producing cultivar and a growth profile such as you describe make for a perfect storm to produce very nice yields of Breba figs....

I am wondering if / how a brick clam shell construct could be built to semi surround favored strong cultivars planted in ground with proper sun exposures to provide both early and late season extensions, winter protection as well as a superior radiant heat source for ripening the varieties that especially can benefit from such conditions...

T