Figs are one of our favourite things here at Daley's nursery
and the reason being is there's nothing
better than a freshly picked ripe fig if you've never tried
one you're actually missing out on something that is delicious
they're completely different to the dried figs that you find in little
plastic bags in the supermarket so this is ready to pick and you can see the
skin is starting to crack and it's very soft and delicate and if I break it open
it should be like succulent and sweet you can see it's a little bit moist and
it's just the most luscious sweet and delicious thing in the world nothing
better than eating a fresh fig if you want you can take them into the kitchen
you can dry them you can actually just pop them under the grill with a little
bit of sugar on them to caramelize them you can make jams and preserves there
are so many things you can do with figs in the kitchen but they're also really
beautifully and straight off the tree so here look at this crop beautiful things
so if you want to grow a beautiful fig tree like this in your garden there's a
couple of things that you need so firstly is full Sun and perfect drainage
and your tree can grow four to five meters or like this you can keep this
pruned back you'll see this is about two and a half three meters and that's an
ideal height to keep your fig pruned and that way you can access the fruit it
fruits on its new growth so you can cut it back hard every year they're also a
latexy fruit and tree so when you cut it they have a white sap and you need to
be very careful you don't get that on your skin it can burn so when you're
dealing with Figs it's a good idea to wear a long sleeve shirt just make sure
that you don't get any of that sap on your skin you'll avoid sap burns
they also need protection from birds so we love the fruit birds are going to
love the fruit bats possums they're all going to come in and raid your figs
because look at this beautiful fruit so just net your tree we've got these under
Exclusion netting and that's the best way to protect your fruit from all those
pests that going to want to share your crop
So this particular variety of Fig
is called a black Genoa and it has this lovely dark mooroon flesh with beautiful
red succulent flesh so it's a really sweet delicious fresh fig there are a
few common pests and problems that figs have that they all suffer from so
there's an insect pest called a fig beetle and they tend to skeletonize the
leaves so if you notice that you have little caterpillars lined up in a row
eating your leaves they'll do this and you can see on the reverse of the leaf
there's some of the juvenile insects there so if you get yourself an
insecticide and treat those on small trees they can defoliate it on larger
trees you can just pick them off and drown those in a bucket of water it's
quite a simple way of controlling those if you're organic
don't let them get out of control where possible figs also suffer from fungal
problems so if we have a wet summer here we have terrible problems with our figs
fermenting on the tree a nice dry summer like we've had this year hot dry where
then we get beautiful figs so seasonally you can have great seasons
and you'll have in-different seasons so this year we've got a really good fig
season a beautiful crop on the tree and it's all to do with the weather so a
nice hot summer places like places with a Mediterranean type climate climate we
have a dry summer is really ideally suited to figs. They're a great
deciduous tree you'll get summer shade winter Sun and a beautiful crop of fruit
at the end of summer