Topic: Figs and Food Unwrapped

[realfood]

Monday's program was misleading as it gave the impression that you needed male figs and tiny wasps to be able to get a crop of figs. The program was set in Turkey, where the farmers were shown hanging up bags of male figs infested with tiny insects.
In Glasgow, there is probably not a male fig within 400 miles, nor the tiny insects, but I still get a good crop of figs on my outdoor fig bush.
Anyone have any idea why the Turks were going to all this trouble??

[alkanet]

yours is probably a Brown Turkey

There are basically three types of edible figs:[9]

    Persistent (or common) figs have all female flowers that do not need pollination for fruiting; the fruit can develop through parthenocarpic means. This is a popular horticulture fig for home gardeners. Dottato (Kadota), Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Brunswick, and Celeste are some representative cultivars.
    Caducous (or Smyrna) figs require cross pollination by the fig wasp with pollen from caprifigs for the fruit to mature. If not pollinated the immature fruits drop. Some cultivars are Smyrne (Lob Incir in Turkey) - (Calimyrna in the Great Central Valley USA), Marabout, Inchàrio, and Zidi.
    Intermediate (or San Pedro) figs set an unpollinated breba crop, but need pollination for the later main crop. Examples are Lampeira, King, and San Pedro.

[Susiebelle]

Wow what knowledgeable guys we have on this site - mine is Brown Turkey and I have fantastic harvests!

[jimc]

Thanks Alkanet for the information. I knew there were fig wasps but they don't occur in Australia. Obviously the varieties I have, including Brown Turkey and Blue Provence plus another unknown variety don't need the wasp because they produce well.
Currently picking about 100 per day off 4 mature trees and 3 younger trees. Very tasty and nice fresh and also flat out drying for later use in the year.

[realfood]

Thanks for the information.

[alkanet]

i don't think i've ever eaten a fresh fig

when are they in season to buy in the shops? and where do the best ones come from?

[galina]

i don't think i've ever eaten a fresh fig

when are they in season to buy in the shops? and where do the best ones come from?

Great info on types of fig. 

They had them in November in our local Lidl, quite large fruits, much larger than I have seen in UK.

[realfood]

Last Autumn, I bought a few figs and did a taste test against my own figs. No contest. Mine were much juicier, sweeter and more tender than the bought ones. The bought ones were unripe in my opinion, and figs do not ripen well once picked.

[Silverleaf]

I really want a fig tree now!

I hear you can grow them from cuttings, so I guess I need to make friends with someone who has one. ;)

[Robert_Brenchley]

Whether you can buy fresh figs probably depends on where you live. You can get them in the Birmingham markets, and I'm sure I've seen them in Asian supermarkets. Homegrown produce usually does taste better. It's fresher.

[saddad]

I agree, my Brown Turkey is delicious in September and October! 

[jimc]

There definitely is nothing like a freshly picked tree ripened fig. I am currently picking about 100 per day and most end up being dehydrated  for my use eating dried figs every day of the year.
My secret is go around the trees every morning and feel all the coloured ones that look ripe. Ripeness equates to a soft "felty" feel of the skin and they usually break from the trunk easily. About half may "bleed" sap but many are dry.
I have to keep my trees covered with fruit fly net to keep off the Queensland fruit fly but they also keep away the birds.

[kGarden]

We stayed in a villa in Portugal many, many years ago, and they had fig trees which the person who looked after the villa harvested, soaked?? in honey and stuffed with an Almond.  I don't remember them being particularly dry, "moist" might be a better word, but they tasted fantastic!

[artichoke]

Birds attacked my figs badly last year, also woodlice burrow into them, so I found it worth twisting a small transparent sandwich bag over each ripening fig. They were starting to change colour, but not yet soft. This took very little time and was really protective. I bought a very cheap roll of these once, far too small for practical sandwiches but the perfect size for figs.

When I was illustrating figs in Oman, they were the type that does need the life cycle of the fig wasp in order to ripen, and I had to show this. In case you are interested, when the male and female wasps hatch inside the fig, the males never grow wings. Their job is to mate with the females inside the fig, and chew a hole at the end of the fig so that the females escape, fly away, and go on to lay eggs in another fig. Meanwhile the trapped males scramble about inside the fig picking up pollen from the male flowers and pollinating the female flowers so that the fig swells and ripens. There are a number of parasitic wasps around as well, though they are no use to the figs.

So when you eat a ripe fig in Oman and other countries, you get a mouthful of insects for added flavour.