Just yesterday these figs were about half as big and green. Every time they ripen like this on my tree it blows me away.
Now we’re just in a race for them to finish ripening so we can harvest them before the squirrels do…
(also, if anyone has a guess on the variety I’d love to hear it. I even bought and planted the trees and still managed to lose track of the variety 🫣)
We purchased a house in June and found it had 5 fig trees of various sizes. This morning we were noticing the fruit turning purple on one of them. This evening my partner was shooing squirrels away.
Is this a thing? Do squirrels love figs? I’ve only ever eaten a fig newton. When should they be harvested?
We’re still learning ourselves. We had one before these ripen and we picked it the same day it turned purple and we decided that was too soon.
From what I’ve read you want to wait a day or too after they change color and they should go a little limp at the stem and be softer like a ripe avocado.
It’s also going to vary a lot on the variety. They can all ripen to different colors.
Animals do like figs. You want to pick them when they get soft at the top of the fruit just below the stem.
One thing to watch for is some varieties have an ‘eye’ at the base of the fruit (opposite side from the stem) that will open as they ripen. I’ve had bugs get in that way, so you may want to cut them in half before eating to check. The skin is edible and can be shades of green, yellow, or purple when ripe.
This could be a ‘Brown Turkey’ fig. I emphasize “could” because, to my knowledge, there is even less systematic pomology for figs than there is, for example, for apples and pears, and systematically identifying an unknown variety is therefore even more difficult.
This variety is characterized by high winter hardiness and a very bountiful brebas (the first generation of figs of the year) harvest.
To identify the variety more precisely, you might want to look around your area for similar trees whose identities have been confirmed…
Thanks! Brown Turkey was on my short list along with Violette de Bordeaux.
We got zero brebas, but we only got 8 (regular?) figs (7 more than last year so we’re pretty happy)
I think the ripe fruits of Violette de Bordeaux would be even darker than the ones pictured here… on the other hand, the color does vary depending on the degree of ripeness and amount of sunlight.
But it also seems as though “Violette de Bordeaux” is a name used for many different fig varieties… which brings us back to the difficulties of identifying figs. ^^’
Inside them? Swarms of spiders.
