Wow. Simply wow!

I have over 200 varieties but have only harvested fruit from maybe 30 or 40, I think.  Next year will be big. :)

Hey Harvey,

Nice fig harvest my friend! Hope you continue to have a good season.

Have you been cycling lately? I've made a few trips earlier this month and had a blast. I'll shoot you an email so we can catch up.

All the best,
Charles

Hi Harvey
I'm really enjoying this thread. Keep them comming

Great pics. 

Thank you for the kind comments.  Now, if some blasted critter would leave my Genovese Nero alone!!!

Okay for today, I started off picking fruit at a famous orchard which not my own.  That story will wait until later. :)

Then, I strolled my orchard and, after getting over my loss of a Genovese Nero fig I was expecting to be ripe today or tomorrow, I went and found a ripe Golden Riverside.  This huge fig has been taking forever to ripen.  I could have held on for a couple of more days but I decided not to risk it any further.  It was sweet and, perhaps, had a nutty taste.  Not rich in flavor but still nice, IMO.  It weighed in at 109 grams and this is coming from a tree that is barely over 12" tall (but maybe 18" wide).

 

Pesco d'Oro (formerly MAD002) is a seedling selection by Jon/pitangadiego/Encanto Farms, thus named for tasting similar to a peach.  As previously acknowledged, I'm not one who claims to have a great ability to define subtle flavors and come up with flavor associations, etc.  This was my first fruit from my two trees started in early 2013 and, at first, I dismissed the description of being peach-flavored.  In my final bite I did finally notice that flavor and would describe it as the taste of a yellow cling peach, not one of the fresh market peaches with more acidity which I'm more accustomed to.  It may have been partly due to eating the skin and rind along with the pulp while earlier bites were mostly pulp.  In any event, I enjoyed the flavor, sweetness, and dense texture of the fig and look forward to many more from my trees.  This fig came in at a respectable 60 grams.


 

Up next is my first fruit from a rare Moroccan fig via France called Maroc Noir.  It is a very vigorous grower for me (perhaps the most vigorous of all trees I started in 2013) and has a good deal of fruit on it.  I thought the flavor was somewhat similar to my Black Mission (NL) but slightly different and larger.  I believe it may be sweeter than figs from my Mission as well.  We've had some cooler than normal weather for the past 2-3 weeks so I suspect color could be darker and flavor more intense in hot weather conditions like we normally have.

Hi Harveyc,
Nice Figs ! The big yellow and the last black have beautiful contrast of colors.
For the critters, don't you have an old shirt ? Cut it into pieces of 20cm*20cm and wrap those (not tight better on a loose wrapping way) around the figs after they started the ripening process. 
The figs may take 2 days more, BUT you get the fig ! And they get better with some days more !
Here, after the sparrows did set in during my holidays, I started protecting some figs like that with great success.
Now I'm only getting few figs every week, and so it is more easy for me to protect each fig, and that drove the sparrows away as there was no food for them to want to stay .
Just my 2 cents ...

Wow Harvey, you have so many that I am not familiar with but I have Pesco and Riverside so thanks for posting photos and providing information.

Looks great Harvey!

Do you think that the 'Pesco d'Oro' was caprified?  Or if it needs to be caprified (i.e. common vs Smyrna)? 

Ed, most or all of my figs have been caprified.  I haven't done any testing (wasp exclusion) to know if it requires caprification or not.  Maybe someone else has fruited it already outside of areas with the wasp and can say.

All I can say is WOW,,, and Thanks for Sharing.

Great pictures and information as usual!!

Looking forward to trying Ginos and MBVS off my own trees in a few weeks

Harvey,

These are very nice figs
Well done

Francisco

Wow Harvey , looking great. I think in the future I want to come visit your farm lol

Nelson, drop me a line when you're in the area!  Should really be nice in 1-2 years.

I'm going to be traveling for a few days and harvested some more figs today even though some weren't fully ripe yet.  Also, we've been having cool weather again, days in mid 80s and nights in upper 50s (about 10F below normal).

Figo Preto came from a small tree and this may be the only fruit I get of this variety this year. I'd rate flavor as very good, sweet and rich.  Would have been better if allowed to ripen 1 or 2 more days but still very good and not worth the risk of it being one when I return.

Genovese Nero has had a lot of discussion lately and this has been a frustrating variety for me.  I have three nice trees of this variety in the ground and it produced a nice fig for me in a pot last year.  My first fig of Genovese Nero ripened last week.  I assessed it one day and figured it would be ready in 1 or 2 days.  I went back the next day and it was GONE!  I'm quite certain it wasn't a bird bit some sort of animal that bit it completely off.  Two days ago I placed "footies" (small nylon socks) over several of these figs that were darkening and hoped that would be adequate.  I was again thinking that one of them would be ripe in 1 or 2 days.  I went back yesterday and the footie was laying about 4' away with just small fragments of the fig left!  I now have declared war.  I placed some window screen material around some branches with near-ripe figs, stapling the ends together to hold them in place.  I also set out two traps to try to catch whatever it is that has been eating them (guessing opossum, raccoon, or rabbit).  I'm using "live" traps so that I won't cause harm to a cat or something that may wander into the trap.  Anything else will end up buried.

When placing the screen material in place I knocked off one fig, almost as bad of a feeling as having these varmints rip me off.  There was one fig that was 1 or 2 days from being ready so I went ahead and picked it.  Flavor was good, but not sweet enough yet.  Big fig with great potential.  I have a lot more figs of this variety and am sure I should get some riper fruits within a week unless some animal comes through and rips my trees out of the ground.  This variety is a strong grower for me.
 

I picked a couple more Italian 376 today and am intrigued by this fig.  First photo was taken with my phone.  I noticed that there are just a few more large main crop figs left with other figs on secondary growth this year being much smaller.  In addition, these two figs had very hard/strong stems.  I could not break the stem, period.  I pulled hard enough on one that it the stem came along with a small chunk of bark from the branch.  I don't recall having this experience with a fig before.  Flavor was still good but probably would have been better without the current cooler weather.




 

UCR 184-15 ("Strawberry Teardrop") is one of my older trees and not being protected by the bird scare device purchased from birdguard.com a month ago, so most of these figs are being eaten up by birds when the get close to being fully ripened.  I've had some ripe ones where the birds left enough for me to enjoy part of a fig.  I will probably protect some figs with the screen material I bought today.  I thought this fig was close enough to being ripe to justify picking.  Flavor was okay, but not anywhere nearly as good as the fully ripe ones.  I took several of these very ripe ones to last year's Fig Fiesta and they were really enjoyed and this is a very good fig and potential for being huge.  My tree has growth of about 6' already this year, growing vigorously, and about 12' tall.  It produces hundreds of figs.  My figs are mostly caprified so that probably increases size.

 

Tonight I tasted my first Bourjasotte Grise of the year.  Taste was very rich with fairly high acidity.  I just received my new refractometer today and this fig had a brix score of 23.  This is higher than I expected because of the acidic flavor balance.  Excellent fig!

 

Nice fig thread, keep it going ... , specially them fig pics.

Impressive! Keep sharing pics and updates! With regard to your pests....do any forum members know your address? I'm sure they know how to fake squirrels, birds, etc picking figs! :)

Harvey, with regard to your Nero, it sounds like it's just starting to ripen. Mine,in NJ, is a gorgeous plant with very nice figs but is still showing no real signs of ripening. Roughly how long from the appearance of figs to ripening? How fast do they ripen once they start to turn color? Pic of my Nero attached. I figure I have about another 4'weeks left so I have my fingers crossed.

I didn't keep track of the time, but mine also took a long time to ripen but now I'm getting a lot of them.  I have others that behave similar to me....waiting forever for Abebereira, it seems.

Harvey,
Nice figs.
Thank you for sharing these beauties and their very professional pictures

Francisco

Nice B. Gris, Harvey. I've had two off of my small 2nd year tree. The first I picked with great anticipation about a week ago, took pictures and was prepared to share here, but the fig was fairly dry inside and not that tasty, maybe a 5/10. I picked the 2nd a couple of days later and earlier than I normally would have, but I didn't want to chance it drying out too. It was juicier and tasted better, about a 6.5/10, and delivered a promise of something much better in the future. I've got three more figs on the tree that I expect will ripen in a few more weeks. It might just be my experience, but this tree for me is likely one that doesn't show how good it will be until it has some years behind it.

Didn't you start your tree last year too? Your growing conditions are much more favorable than mine and your tree is in the ground, but shoot, I want what you got now, not next year or the year after.