Hello peeps. My mum has a huge fig tree in her garden…it’s very healthy - and yet, it’s NEVER managed to produce a full term fig. So even now in May, it’s full of baby figs, and they’ve already started falling off onto the ground. I can’t understand it, as the tree is amazingly healthy. She’s lived there for 31 years and it’s never managed to produce a full term fruit.
Perhaps it needs a cross pollinator?
I don’t have a fig tree, but I’m sure I’ve read that it can have multiple crops in it’s traditional warmer climate. I believe therefore that sometimes you need to get rid of some of the fruit buds forming at certain times of the year when they will not have time to ripen to allow for a set that will - I’ll try and find out if this is just in my mind!
Ok so found this, was not quite right, and not sure if explains your Mum’s fig tree issue. From the RHS site here :
In Mediterranean areas figs crop twice. Plants cultivated under glass may also produce a second crop in our climate. However, if outdoor grown in the UK and other cool temperate regions they only usually produce one useable crop a year.
In late spring you will notice embryonic pea-like fruits formed the previous year that will swell over the summer months. They are ripe and ready for picking usually in late summer or early autumn.
You can tell when figs are ripe and ready for harvesting by giving them a gentle squeeze to see whether they are soft. Fruit colour changes, splits near the stalk end or a drop of nectar appearing at the bottom of the fruit are other signs that they are ready.
Often, in late summer, a second crop of embryonic fruit appears. Larger, more developed fruits are unlikely to either ripen this late in the season, or to survive until the following year so can be removed. Even if they survive the winter, they seldom ripen.
However, if the smaller pea-sized embryonic figs developing in the leaf axils survive the winter (see above for how to protect figs in winter), they will ripen and be ready for cropping that summer.
It may also be the variety , there are only 2 or 3 that will produce fruit in our climate, Brown Turkey being the most reliable. Other varieties may grow into vigorous healthy trees but will never produce ripe fruit.
I’ve got the PictureThis app on my phone so next week I’ll see if it can identify which variety it is…