Fig
Ficus carica
Mediterranean tree that keeps good company with lavender and herbs.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Low–moderate
- Soil
- Free-draining, moderately fertile
- Feeding
- Something potassium-rich while it fruits, and no nitrogen.
- USDA zones
- 7a–11b
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Prune in late spring, then pinch the shoot tips out in June.
- Overwintering
- Wrap it in frost cloth in cold areas to carry the embryo figs through.
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 150 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- at the first fall frost
- Apr–May Bud Break
- May–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Aug Fruit Set
- Aug–Oct Harvest
- Oct–Oct Growing
- Oct–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 9 ft 10 in
- In-row spacing
- 8 ft 2 in
- Between rows
- 13 ft 1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow, wide and opportunistic
- Working depth
- 12 in–3 ft
- Can reach
- 6.5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 33–52 ft across, about 3–4× the width of the plant
These roots go looking, and what they find is drains, soakaways, footings, paving and the border next door. Give it real distance from anything you would mind being lifted or blocked: the reach below ground is several times what the crown suggests.
The reach is the fig’s reputation: fifteen metres from the trunk is ordinary on an old tree in open ground, all of it within a couple of spade depths of the surface. The other half of that fact is useful, though. A fig cropping badly is usually a fig with too much root room, which is why they are so often planted in a pit lined with paving slabs, or kept in a large pot, to make the plant fruit instead of grow.
Figures recorded for Fig itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- August–September outdoors in the UK (one crop, from embryo figs formed the previous autumn); warm US zones get a June "breba" crop plus a main late-summer crop. Trees crop in 2–4 years, best with roots restricted.
- What to look for
- The fruit droops on its stalk (hangs down instead of standing out), softens fully, the skin colors and may crack slightly, and a drop of nectar ("a tear") often beads at the eye. A ripe fig detaches with the gentlest lift. Figs do not ripen once picked — a hard fig picked early stays hard.
- How to harvest
- Support the fruit and bend it back off the stalk, or snip with the short stem attached; the milky latex sap can irritate skin, so gloves help. Handle very gently — ripe figs are essentially bags of jam.
- How often
- Check every day or two in the ripening window; fruits ripen one by one over several weeks and are perfect for only a day or so each. In autumn, remove any fig bigger than a pea that hasn't ripened (UK) — only the tiny embryo figs overwinter.
- Storing the crop
- Eat within 1–2 days (fridge, but serve at room temperature). They don't travel or keep — which is why homegrown figs beat any bought one. Excess makes fig jam, or halve and freeze/dry.
- Birds Pigeons strip brassica leaves; other birds take fruit, buds, and seedlings. Netting fixed taut over hoops is the only reliable protection.
- Coral spot Orange-pink pustules on dead or weakened wood that can spread into live branches. Prune out affected wood to a clean cut, leaving no snags or stubs.
- Root & crown rot Root rot in waterlogged soil
Rue, Mint, Strawberries
Good neighbors
A fig isn't a fruit but an inside-out cluster of flowers, pollinated in the wild by tiny wasps.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com