How to Grow Figs
Figs are a delicious fruit that are super easy to grow. Figs are hard to find fresh, expensive and unique, so growing your own is lots of fun. Figs taste a little like grapes, but are a little earthier and very soft. Their bushes make gorgeous landscape plants. We have one in our front yard and we get compliments on it all the time. Everyone is shocked to know it grows food.
Growing figs is simple if you have the right climate. They have very few pests. The bush dies back every year here in zone 7, but grows back bigger each time.
Step one is to find a good fig bush. Stark brothers is a good place to get quality plants.
Step 2 is to find a good spot to plant it that gets at least 8 hours of full sun per day.
Step 3, dig a hole twice the size of the root system or pot it's already in.
Step 4, back fill enough dirt to hold the fig bush at the same level in the soil it was in the container.
Step 5. Make sure the bush gets an inch of water per week for the first few months until it's well established.
It takes a few years for fruit plants to bear fruit, so hang in there. The second year after we planted ours it started to bear fruit and bears more with every passing year. If you want to find a good fig variety or more details on how to grow and maintain figs, check out the blog post below.
Now that our fig bush is established (we've had it 8 years), we get pounds and pounds of delicious fresh figs throughout the growing season. We love them, they are delicious fresh, cooked and even dried. Dehydrated figs are my favorite way to eat them. They are like a big yummy raisin!
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Nice, we have a fig tree in our backyard... it's pretty large and I saw ONE fig on it the other day.. but not much else. The previous owners of our house planted it and we didn't realize it was there until we saw the fruit... the closest I've come to eating one of these thing is Fig newtons.. I may try the real thing but I'm not very brave when it comes to eating new things..
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We had poor production for a few years until a friend, a great gardener, suggested top-dressing with a good amount of composted cow manure every year. He didn’t feel that there was a particular time to do this. We’ve done it a couple of times and, lo and behold, FIGS!!!
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Awesome, you must have needed more nutrients. We dump some compost on ours once every few years, but don't do it regularly.
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