Celebrate Figginess!

Day 309: Celebrate the figginess! The first two didn't even make it into the house. I ate them while I was standing next to the tree, pinching others which weren't quite ripe yet. There are lots! And by "lots," I mean at least two dozen which will come to full maturity, the first real crop my Desert King has produced. Pruning note: these grew exclusively on last year's wood. I had thought this variety produced on new wood, but every fig is on year-old twigs. That means when I prune it to keep figs within easy reach, I should leave some current growth (i.e., this year's new wood) because it will bear fruit next year. Pruning is a fine science; not all plants can be pruned the same way (and I have to admit I have never mastered the fine art of grape pruning). In any event, I won't prune this year because the tree is only about six feet tall. Maybe next year, I'll have enough to make fig butter. These, I'm just going to eat fresh off the tree.

First Figs

Day 316: Another horticultural success! I probably should have given them a few more days on the tree to reach peak sweetness, but I've had my mouth set for figs for weeks as I have watched these mature into plump fruit. There are still three or four more to come, but one of them doesn't look like it's swelling, and then there are two which came on later that I know won't fully develop before first frost. Nevertheless, I now have high hopes for future figginess from this tree since it seems to have reached the tipping point between "ornamental" and "bearing." My next project is to coax the Medlar tree into producing enough fruit for jelly. It's coming along nicely, and I doubt it will take as long as the fig to give me a crop.

Kiwi Flowers

Day 269: I have yet to get a kiwi off my hardy, self-fertile vine, but the first few time it bloomed, it did so before the pollinators had arrived. Last year, it appeared to have set fruit, but then we were hit with a protracted spell of triple-digit temperatures and every berry in my garden dropped. That included not only the young, developing kiwis, but the mature gooseberries and red currants as well. I salvaged the jam fruits, carefully picking each one out of the bark mulch, but the kiwis were a total loss. Not a single berry remained. The vine seems to have learned a lesson as it's settled in, and is behaving accordingly by flowering slightly later when the pollinators are active. If our cooler, more normal weather holds, I might just see some fruit this year. In other news, though, the eight or nine figs I thought might provide a late-summer snack have disappeared. Because they have gone missing overnight and there is no evidence of them on the ground beneath the tree, I suspect a raccoon has been active.

Figs For Winter

Day 298: My first attempt at fig jam was, if not exactly a total failure, definitely not what I had intended. I had studied a variety of recipes and, being lazy, opted to go with one which used commercial pectin. Even though I measured the amounts of figs and sugar carefully, I wound up with a product only slightly thicker than syrup as a result of the proportions not being correct for the ripeness of the figs. This is a fairly common occurrence when using pectin to set jams made with apricots, peaches, figs or other low-acid fruit. After giving the jam 48 hours to set, I decided to remake it using the old-fashioned reduction method, i.e., boiling it down. However, I had at least another gallon of ripe, fresh figs in the refrigerator which needed immediate processing, so I decided to dehydrate them. I blanched them first to soften the skins, then cut them in half. They filled all eight trays of my 50-year old Harvest Maid dehydrator to capacity! At 135 degrees (the recommended temperature), they took a little over 50 hours to dry to a chewy state. Because they still contain some moisture, I've packed them in containers to be frozen for enjoying this coming winter. Meanwhile, I turned a third of the failed jam into a delicious thick and spreadable fig butter, supplemented with frozen figs from last year's harvest.

Figgerin' It Out

Day 294: I think I've got it figgered out. Some of them will be eaten out of the hand. Some will be turned into jam, and others will be reduced to fig leather, and some may even be dried. Along with raspberries, I'm of the mind that figs are something you can never have too many of, although you might be inclined to consume too many when they come on with a flourish. These came from a friend's tree, along with enough frozen ones to fill a large cooler. The variety is Desert King, hardy here in the Pacific Northwest, and obviously quite productive, given the proper care. My own four-foot tree has yet to produce a single fig, so I am grateful for being allowed a share of Karen's harvest. Her tree is about 25 years old, fifteen feet tall and at least that wide. We barely put a dent in the number of figs on its boughs. Cooler weather is coming, so Thursday and Friday are allotted for figgering how best to preserve them, given the current shortage of canning lids in stores.

Update 8/4: Although it may firm up over the next few days, I don't think I got a good set on my first batch of jam. Consequently, the remainder of the fresh figs are now in the dehydrator, eight full trays. The frozen figs can wait for cooler weather.

The Way I Figgered It

Day 300: The way I had it figgered, I could get five in a jar because they'd get squishy during the five-minute simmer required for the hot-pack method. Raw, three was the best I could do. I'd originally guessed at 60 for ten pints, but when I saw them on the tree, I realized they were a little bigger in real life than in my memory. I came home with 66 (a nearly full two-gallon pail!) and after processing, I had twelve pints of figs to tuck away for winter. That gives me one jar per week for the official three-month season.

Why go to all this work when I could have dried them much more easily? Because I love canned figs. Forty years ago, you could buy them in stores under the S&W brand name. They came in glass jars. They became harder and harder to find until finally disappearing from the shelves, and I swore that if I ever had a chance, I'd can my own. I am grateful to the friends in Olympia who allowed me to harvest enough from their tree (Desert King) to see me through the winter. My own tree (four years old, and a start from theirs) has not yet produced a fig although each year, it's putting on more leaves and branches. Maybe some day!