Apparently, the birds have finally had their fill or moved on.  I was able to get a second decent harvest from my 5 in ground trees.  I still question the tree sold to me as pannache.  There is not a stripe on the entire tree or fruit. The fruit do have a very nice strawberry flavor.

I think I will be removing the Deanna at the end of the season and plant one of the other varieties I have in a pot.  While it has impressive sized fruit and is very prolific the fruit are only good.  It is hard for the Deanna to compete when the other in ground trees I have are amazing.

Trees in the running to replace the Deanna:

Longue D' Aout
CCD Noir
CDD Grise
Maltese Falcon
Black Madera
Red Italian
Vasilika Sika

Which variety do you think I should plant?

Nice figs,thanks for the display.

Panache often reverts to a plain green fig,50% of mine have.Yet I can take a cutting from the revert and
get stippled wood and a stripped fig.Taste is the same,but the eye candy is gone.

Plant the Black Madeira,no contest.

Dear Shawn, nice photo, you are off to a terrific start and apparently have the ruthless tendencies of skilled plant breeders/growers, you move on to something better if something does not meet your goals.

With that in mind, will you elaborate a bit on the Deannna, why you no longer want it..?  it is pretty, large relative to others, and is a variety I am seriously considering.  I will plant in ground in the heavy clay soil here, but elevated to improve drainage.  Is it true birds depredate green figs less than the purple ones?  Are most of the Deanna figs large or are those exceptional ones?  I wish I had a bowl full of those now...they look great.

Can you offer any opinion on its cold hardiness, on its yield, on its resistance to splitting?  Is it open or close eyed?  

I am in zone 8B, it gets down to the high teens each winter for a couple weeks, and the nights are cold but sunny almost every day.  Heaviest rains here are in the summer, right when they are bearing fruit, Mid-July until late September.

tyro, interesting observation about Panache, I too would have thought a mislabel if I did not see the stripes.  I was told that variety really splits and "blows up" if too much rain during fruiting, hence I have ruled it out in Zone 8B.

Thanks for your collective comments, I am learning a lot from others first hand experiences.

Vic
Zone 8B
Hereford, AZ.  USA

Hardy Chicago and Excel and big plans for the future