Hi everyone, just curious what variety you have been most disappointed with and is up for elimination if it does not perform better this year.                      

 Take care
  Pete

Since I don't have BT, I'm fine for now :)

I have two.  My BT and Persian White.

dang.. the picture of persian white looked so good.. i might have to think again.

Pete,

Maybe the Persian White doesn't do good where Dave is? Or maybe it doesn't fit his taste buds?

None of my business but I would take this opportunity to ask for the plant or cuttings and give it a shot.
But offer him something too.

Don't get discouraged dude.

Number 2 and number 6 container on my patio. 
Hmm maybe i should put those next to the gate for you know. ; )

Martin,

Hmmm

Just messing with you Pete.  My two brown turkeys are stayin put and I don't have a Persion White.   Sorry.  Couldn't help myself.  :-)

  

This is an interesting topic though.   Looking forward to people's responses...

Dave,

You pulled a fast one on me too.
Ten fig whip whips to the bottom of each foot.

Martin,
 what variety is number 2 & 6 ?

PHD,

Martin is trying to pull my chain.
He's learning from you know who down in San Diego.

check out the picture bass has on his site. it's just amazing looking fig. i'm sure martin won't approve.

None. They will all be joining the Figs 4 Fun Foundation.

I have a seven+ year old (3 years in a container and 4 years in the ground).  It has never grown a fig.  It was on the block to be cut out at the end of the year.  Today I realized it is a nice vigorous grower so I decided instead of chopping it, use it for grafting fodder.

~james

Martin, what day is your garbage day? I think I will pass by looking for #2 & 6.
No fig tree should go to the compost pile. See you take all the figs you have, any color or taste and you make one heck of a fig preserve jam. Sounds good on paper. LOL :)

Frank Wed morning about 7am.
I wait to see what happens later this season and make up my mind if i give 1 more season.

LOL, I think it's a great question, but if people aren't yet sure about a fig, they may not really want to say lest they get too many requests for it.

BT went bye-bye this year and Italian Honey is soon to follow.  I'll probably trade the IH with someone local instead of trashing it, though.  If anyone local to me has something good to trade for IH, lemme know.  

I had been planning to nuke my very prolific "Improved" Brown Turkey (which tastes delicious, by the way) because for the past few years the fruit has been soured by beetles. This year, however, it's ripening fruit and the beetles haven't appeared yet, so I've given it a temporary stay of execution. I also plan to toss a Giant Amber (prone to souring in my yard), a DIFIC0164-1 that I ordered by mistake from UCD back in 2010 (I read the wrong line on the order form), and a UCR 143-38 (although I'm second guessing because it continues to ripen quite a lot of decent fruit, despite being completely neglected. Who knows what it might do if I started taking care of it?

So far my LSU purple has not been good. There must be more than 1 strain of this fig and I have the bad one. I think I will cut it down this fall and plant Figo
Preta. I have only had one small fig off of my tree, but wow it was good yea!

I have an unknown that didn't have anything last year and so far not one fig this year, breba or main crop. Not sure yet whether to keep it one more year and go through the bother of covering it up for winter again. If I do keep it and nothing grows on it next year than it will definitely be a goner. Can't have none producers taking up valuable space.

I have a black Mission that was doing good but froze off to the ground last year. it emerged full of FMV It is going to the fire barrel just as soon as I have found a suitable replacement. Might go with a Chicago Hardy I have a few in 1 gal pots.....

Marty,

You may regret chopping up your LSU Purple. It is notorious for tasting bland the first couple years then everyone who sticks with it raves about it.  Your in zone 9 too which should be ideal for it.

I had an lsu purple when we lived in Houston and i loved it.  I dont know if it would ever get ripe here outside of a greenhouse.

BT- Not really anything special
Italian Honey/Laturulla- no real fig taste
Texas Everbearing-BT variant
Tashkent- no figs to taste but Bad case of FMV

Dominick, maybe give the Tashkent another year or 2. I have a friend who had the same problem with FMV,I think he might have heavily pruned it and it is now over 5ft tall and produce's good figs. I hope to have an opportunity to try one this summer.

Pete

Zidi, which I got from UCD is now 3 years old and not a hint of a fig yet.
I read  it is a Smyrna type, but because it is a healthy tree with
pretty leaves, I'll give it one more year and hope for an immaculate
capfrication.  Milco also from UCD aborted all its figs at about half size.

Thanks Pete

It grows like a weed. I pinched 2 weeks ago and a few branches are now 2 to 3 inches long already.

Lampsalot, it is correct!  Zidi is a smyrna type.  So, the figs will not ripen without the wasp.  It is one beautiful tree!  It is extremely hardy too! 

Its that time again to decide which varieties have not performed well enough to keep. Which of your varieties are up for elimination this year?

 For me White Genoa: Ripens to late in the season here in North Jersey
            Celeste: Good tasting but the fruits are way to small, there are better varieties worth keeping

  Pete

Brooklyn White gets the hook for me. Morle's Paradiso and Goccia d'oro are on thin ice too.

My Peter's Honey, it just isn't productive enough. That and only about 20% of the figs turn out excellent, the remainder are pretty much inedible crap. I don't think it likes me or Colorado, either way it's moving on. The other is a Celeste I started a couple years ago, I have no patience for a tree that drops 100% of it's tiny figs.

Hi,
NONE. For now I keep them all.
One that behaved like a caprifig on the brebas, just made incredible main crop figs.
One still hasn't showed a fig in 3 years, but will probably do next year.
Ice crystal made 2 fruits - the tree is in place since one year - so I'll give her more time.
Pastiliere, I could only harvest one only fig, birds got one and the others fell off ...  - the tree is in place since one year - so I'll give her more time.
Unknown from the Italian strain I have several trees, maybe I'll replace some in the future for productivity issues, but still not in that process.
The others just perfomed well so no reason to erase one be it Dalmatie, BrownTurkey,Goutte d'or.
"Madeleine des deux saisons" and others are just too young or too new to produce.

I did already discarded this year:
Blue Ischia from,Hirts garden
Black Ischia from Gardenoway
A False Ronde de B,turned out to be Celeste(was sold as Ronde,on Ebay)
Another Celeste,for dropping fruits
Genoa White,Very bad here,will not ripe properly
Kadota,will not ripe properly here
These are good figs in better climates but not here.
The Ischia's all turned to be Celeste and all drop fruits,here.

Herman, My Blue Ischia has not produced anything yet. How old was yours?

It was third Summer,and it was supposed to produce something.
I have a bad filling about .so called tissue culture!

Hi Herman, what was wrong with the Black Ischia from gardenoway? As for me I got rid of a a lot of local unknowns that all turned out to be Brunswicks or kadotas. BC #93 fico picollino turned out to be a Celeste and was discarded.

Up for elimination sounds so final.  I prefer to look at it as put up for trade, giveway or even for sale.

Figs that don't grow or produce well in one area will do fine for someone in the same area with a greenhouse or in some other climate. 
A fig that is not up to one's taste can be fine for someone else's taste.
You may have too many figs to deal with while other are wishing to try more varieties..

Hopefully elimination here means trade, giveway or for sale and this is a great forum to make the required connections:)

Mark Gardenoway Ischia b was Celeste.

Thanks Herman, I must have missed that at the bottom of your post. Celeste must be te universal pass off as something else fig. I've had two this year.

A month or so ago I freecycled two trees: an UNK that turned out to be a Celeste variant (I already am growing Improved Celeste so it seemed redundant) and a Violette de Bordeaux.  The VdB always grew poor in a container for some reason. I then planted it in the ground and it did better but the figs were almost all split and soured under not particularly rainy conditions - very strange.  I replaced with a VdB from an excellent source.

I find that most of the figs I'll be eliminating are honey types. If they are not consistently really sweet or have some other indefinable quality, I'm not keeping them around.

On the chopping block:

Peter's Honey - has been sweet in the past, though the skin is always tough, but this year my two trees (one came as White TX Everbearing from UCD but is identical to Peter's Honey from Burnt Ridge) produced exactly no good figs between them out of 50+ fruits. I'm not sure why, but just okay past performance plus unpredictability = gone.

Mary Lane Seedless - one of my most productive trees, but the fruit has never been any better than blandly sweet for the four season's it has produced fruit for me. I don't think it's going to improve.

Encanto Excel - not the real Excel and a small, thick skinned, blandly sweet fig for me.

Hunt - Michael, I'm bare rooting it and shipping it to you this winter ala Vernino; no need to wait any longer for that crappy, reluctant air layer I set a few months ago. It's productive, but the taste, while better than the above outside of an occasionally good Peter's Honey (but that skin!), leaves me wanting.

Blue Celeste UCD - Celeste with a modifier. A fine fig, but different than Celeste it is not, and I'll be dumping a mess of duplicate Celeste's too.

There are a handful more that get one more season to impress or they'll be added to this list next October.

Conadria -- I don't like the flavor of that variety (it ripened about 15 figs), especially compared to my other varieties.

I also dug up and burned my tc's (Black Mission, LSU Purple, Green Ischia), they're a total waste of time compared to starting with cuttings of fruiting wood.  Cuttings from fruiting wood give me figs from the ground up, right away in year one; tc's give me zero figs even as big 10' wide x 7' tall x 7' deep 2nd year plants.  No reason to be patient waiting/hoping for tc's to produce when I can just start with good cuttings or an airlayer.

So interesting to see the comments in this thread!  Two of them that some of you have on the chopping block are excellent here.  (Whether they're really identical fig varieties is another question, what with multiple sources, etc.).  And of course taste is subjective as well.  But overall it just highlights the notion that location matters:  how well a fig turns out in my locale may be very very different from how it will do at your locale.  For example, Conadria here is excellent.  (Whether mine is really the same as yours James, I don't know.  And maybe if you tasted the ones grown here, you wouldn't like them simply because our tastes are different, or maybe you'd find them appealing because they turn out differently when grown here compared with Kansas).  But I can tell you that here, Conadria has been excellent.  I've got a third year tree in a pot (about 2.5 years old now), and it produced at least 50 ripe figs this year.  They were sweet, juicy, mildly crunchy (seeds), and had great flavor.  They're also rather large, which is nice.  Most have been 50 - 60 grams each, and at least one of them was between 75 and 80 grams.  It's my son's favorite variety (or so he states).  Not smack-you-in-the-face sweet, but very appealing.  Though not my favorite (I'm partial to Aubique Petite and Hardy Chicago, and a few others), it is nonetheless an excellent fig.  I picked three more of them just today, and can't wait to go eat them.  I'd rate it 8 out of 10 overall.  Similarly, Peter's Honey is on the chopping block for some of you, and it's a great fig here.  A real keeper.  (Again, all the caveats about who knows if it's really identical to the ones that you guys have).  Though some of the figs spoil on the tree (they hold on to the wood really tightly, and if you let them get overripe, they tend to spoil rather than dry like most other varieties do here), my potted tree produced easily 100 figs, of which I'd estimate 50 - 70 of them have been excellent honey figs.  The skin is a bit tough (moreso on the main crop than on the breba), but with a beautiful and very ripe honey flavored center, it's easy for me to overlook the tough skin.  Definitely a keeper in my location.

My LSU purple has been very bland.  But it's also just a third year tree.  I was tempted to put it on the chopping block, but then I saw comments from others on the forum saying that this one takes a few years to improve, but that the wait is worth it.  So I'll give it another year and see.  But the few figs I've had from that tree were among the blandest and least flavorful figs I've ever eaten.  They looked nice enough, but that's about the only good thing I can say about them.  Still, I'll give it another year and see if it really is worth waiting.

I will be getting rid of some trees.  I'll post about what I'll do for disposing of them later in another thread (i.e. in case any of you wants them or cuttings from them, please don't PM me or bombard me with emails now... I'll post something about how to get them after I've taken care of the people I promised cuttings to).  They're Kathleen's Black (reputed to be a very good variety in some climates, but doesn't seem to like my cool weather), Turkmenistan (same story... just doesn't do well here, but reputedly makes very nice figs elsewhere... it also makes some of the largest leaves I've seen on a fig tree... around 18" across), and Jurupa (same story... I heard that this one does very well where there's real heat).  I suspect all three of those will do much better in warmer climes, but they don't seem suited to cold climate fig growing.

Mike   central NY state, zone 5a

@rafaelissimmo: I also have La Goccia D'Oro from Joe Morle for 3 years and have not eaten one fig. It has one more year. Have you had the same issue?
 
 Pete

I had an Italian 258 that tasted like crap, but because it is "rare" I sold it on eBay for a zillion dollars, hahahaha

Seriously, though... all of you Yankees, Canadians and Westerners whose poor little figgies need more heat, let me know before you trash 'em... they may actually like Floridas stifling heat, humidity, bugs, reptiles, etc etc etc

Black mission may get another year.  Its two years in the ground, one in a pot and nary a fig.  Its a beautiful tree, but I cannot eat beautiful, and my trees gotta produce to justify garden space... Maybe she's just unhappy down here...

In short, none.  Only have 3 total with 2 varieties (one is an air layer from the other...you know...for kicks I guess).  Gotta say that between the LSU purple and Chicago hardy, the CH has more figginess, while the LSU purple has much better sweetness, but both are far from their potential.  The CH is only a 2nd year plant, so it better get better with age if it wants to live on, as it was pretty bland.  As for the LSU, it was pretty good last year (as a 3rd year tree).  This year was its 4th year, and its main ripening time was filled with a ton of rain, causing most of the figs to be bland and watery.  I had some late figs though that I let get nice and droopy and they were excellent.   Amazingly, it's still producing tiny little figs even now in zone 8a.  I keep picking them off though, really hoping it saves that energy so its poised for a massive growth spurt.  Also excited for my first ever UCD shipment this spring, although I regret some of my decisions already.  Alas, there is always the following year.

PHD

In its first year the Goccia produced about ten figs and I had high hopes for this year, but I think I burned the roots by imprudently applying too much granular limestone, not really sure what went wrong but the tree became quite unhealthy. I am heavily pruning it and will give it one more year. It did grow rather well in its first year.