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lizp

By Lizp

Surrey, United Kingdom

My container grown brown turkey fig is in its second year. It has lots of large leaves but very few fruit none of which have developed properly. Is there any advice to remedy this please ?




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Figs need a large container to succeed well, so make sure yours has plenty of room in which to grow.
The other factor is that figs produce two sets of 'flowers' (so small you can hardly see them) a year, which turn into the embryo fruit. In a warm climate, you therefore get two crops of figs a year, the first from tiny figs which have overwintered on the plant, in June or July, and the second 'main' crop, in the late autumn from new figs formed in summer.
In the UK climate, the second crop rarely ripens, so that is why we are advised to remove all the figs from the plant in the autumn as they will otherwise just frost and rot. The ones which are left on the tree are the tiny figlets, from the size of a small pea or smaller, which survive the winter for the principal temperate crop.
In a cold winter, like the one we have all had, it's likely that most of these would have been destroyed or damaged, which probably explains your problems this year.
In any case, two years is quite young for a fig tree so I would be hopeful of some decent fruit next year if you pay attention to the above.
Incidentally, we have a Brown Turkey and a Blanche d'Argenteuil, a French variety, and the latter outperforms the first very considerably. And it's a cold climate type.

29 Jun, 2010

 

thanks for the encouragement I will remove the tiny fruit buds in the Autumn snd hope for better next summer

29 Jun, 2010

 

No Lizp, LEAVE the tiny fruit buds but remove any larger figs which are still on the tree then. The tiny fruit buds are the ones which will give you the ripe figs next July or August. Sorry if I didn't explain that properly... I tend to write too much and confuse people!

30 Jun, 2010

How do I say thanks?

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