Fig Trees Hardy in the Mid-Atlantic

My Hardy Fig Story 

“You can’t grow figs in Washington, DC, its too cold.”   ( Anonymous and now dead  Washington garden expert, circa 1986.) 

When I was growing up, a fig was the active ingredient in a very mediocre and stale, store bought cookie. There was nothing about that desert item that appealed to me and even as I child I felt that this dead tasting item was not worth the calories. Ignorant as I was, I didn’t even know about dried figs. In high school, I encountered dried figs at the health food store. In their entirety, dried figs were better than the cookie, but, for my money, not better than a raisin. A little hard, a little too sweet, and minus any of the sour element that makes a raisin an interesting food. So, my bad attitude towards a fig persisted.  

However, in College, I tasted a fresh fig for the first time. My friend Linda had a fig tree in her Queens’ backyard, or maybe her adjacent neighbor had one, and while visiting her, she handed me a plate of fresh figs. I ate them, and fell in love. It was light and succulent, sweet and yet flavorful. It really was a sensual experience to eat a handful of figs, the way they tasted, the way the felt. Like the taste of all real fruit, its hard to describe the experience of eating a fresh fig. But, suffice it to say, it was as if my fruit world went from black and white to color.

Being a gardener, I immediately wanted to know who they were grown, where you got them, and all the rest. Linda’s mother, Gloria, explained it to me. She was half Italian and knew the story. The fig trees were brought to New York as cuttings in the hand bags of Italian immigrants and carefully planted in Brooklyn and Queens backyards’. However, New York was really too cold for the Italian fig tree, and, to keep it going, the Italians went to great lengths. Each fall the fig trees were bundled in old carpeting, wrapped in plastic, topped with a bucket, and the whole contraption covered with leaves. Some even bent the fig tree over and covered the poor dear entirely with soil. It was a big garden procedure but a small price to pay for that wonderful fruit. 

After college, I returned to Washington, DC, and to having a garden of my own. First up was getting a fig tree. I reported to all the local gardening centers and was told, time and time again, that it was too cold in DC to grow figs. There were none for sale. I found this odd, because, DC was five hours south of Manhattan were the figs survived just fine…..albeit with some serious coaching on the part of the Italian gardener. Being a crafty garden person, I found a nursery in California that sold fig trees and they sent me two. They died. They did not make it through the winter. I covered them up, put a bucket on top of them, and still there was no joy. 

Now, the next part of the story dates me. But, for the sake of the story, I will be dated. It was about 1986 and I driving around the burnt out neighborhoods of Washington looking for real estate. The city still had not recovered from the 1968 riots and many of the old ethnic neighborhoods were charred. While on a tour of what had been the Italian neighborhood, I spotted a 25 foot tall fig tree. Covered with ripe figs. And I mean covered. Standing on a heap of used hypodermic syringes, mattress springs, and used condoms, I picked two bags full of ripe purple figs. I also dug out some cuttings to be planted in my garden. 

Right then and there I dreamed of having my own 25 foot tall fig tree covered with ripe figs. I imagined spending a summer’s morning collecting big bowls of figs to be eaten and shared with friends. I wanted not one, but, tons of them.  

And that was the beginning of my hardy fig tree collection period.  Once I found the first fig tree, I became obsessed with finding other abandoned fig trees. For years my friends and boyfriend had to tolerate me hitting the breaks, jumping out of the car, and retrieving a cutting of a spotted fig tree. Indeed, I spent many a free morning driving the alleyways looking for long forgotten fig trees. 

Fairly quickly, I had an excellent collection of fig trees. Fig trees collected from abandoned places where no one tended the trees or even collected the fruit. Fig trees had made the passage from Europe in handbags of early immigrants. Fig trees that had survived in Washington for over a 100 years, at first with love and adoration on the part of the Greeks, Italians, or Jews that brought them from the old country, and finally with complete neglect from a burned down fled from neighborhood. I ventured to close by Baltimore, to their little Italy, to find more fig trees. 

Once I had fig fever, I began serious fig collecting. I dreamed of having a fig farm and wanted to try as many varieties as could be found. I contacted the USDA, who have a huge collection of figs in California, and they sent me cuttings to trial. I contacted the “fig nuts” crowd of the North American Fruit Explorers…. let’s just say a group of fig enthusiasts and got even more varieties. When I went to Spain, or Israel, or France, I brought back fig cuttings. At a point, I had over 150 different fig trees growing on my city plot. They all grew and produced fruit. Each had a different leaf and a different fruit. 

I developed quite a collection of fig trees. I learned a lot about propagating fig trees using cuttings, and, getting them to survive and produce fruit. One important thing I learned, early on was that baby fig trees need protection from the winter, for the first couple of years. In this sense, they are hard to establish, but, once they stand man tall, they are hard to kill. Next, they do best when planted near concrete. At first I thought that it was because the concrete of buildings transmitted heat. I have since learned it is that plus concrete leaches lime, and, the fig tree grows in lime rock in the Mediterranean. If you plant a fig tree near some concrete, and keep it covered for the first few winters, you will have figs for the rest of your life. 

In a strange twist of fate, my abandoned, saved fig trees’ were once again abandoned. I moved to England to attend medical school. I left my yard, and my huge fig trees, in the hands of tenants and property management agents. They endured worse then neglect, in some cases out right abuse. I had one whack job CIA agent tenant who thought there were “bad guys” lurking in the fig trees and he cut them all down to the ground. They were not to be suppressed…even by a government agent!  They sprang back up from the roots, and reached back towards the sky.  

After ten years in England, I came back to Washington, and to my great pleasure I still had fig trees. Not 150 different varieties, but, I had fig trees. They had grown and flourished, and welcomed me home with a huge fig banquet. And, in many ways my dream had come true. I had 25 foot fig trees bearing huge crops of figs! 

However, something significant had happened while I was away. On one hand, my fig collection had dwindled. On the other hand, my fig collection had gone through a hardiness trial, and, the winners of the trial were standing. If the fig was not hardy, it died out over the ten years of neglect. If it could take the winters, and the winter thaws, and rain in the summer, it was still there. If it could not take the heat, or the lack of it, so to speak, it died out. 

I was in some ways sad that this enormous collection of figs had disappeared. And, indeed, I thought about recollecting it. Calling the fig club, the Department of agriculture, and getting fig cuttings sent from far and wide. But, then I thought better of that. I had the collection of hardy fig trees, that did their thing, with or without my assistance, and that was really what I wanted. What remained were fig trees that were well and truly hardy. 

And here is the amazing part. Without much exception, the fig trees that made it, the fig trees that were awaiting my return home with branches laden with fruit, were the fig trees that I had collected from the abandoned alley ways of Washington and Baltimore. It started with fig abandoned fig trees, and its stabilized to a collection of hardy fig trees. It may only be twenty different varieties, but, its 20 that can survive, when you have time to fuss with them, and when you don’t have time to fuss with them. 

Before I introduce you to my hardy fig trees, let me say this. Way back when, was actively collecting fig trees, I was obsessed with the names of the fig varieties. I went to the USDA library, pulled turn of the century books with long lists of fig varieties, which included drawings of the leaves, and the fruits, and the like. Here is what I discovered. There are thousands of fig varieties out there. And many countries have the same varieties but, as can be expected, they call them by different names. A green fig I have is called Verte in some parts of France, Verde in Italy, and Fraise(strawberry) in parts of Spain. I have given up the name game. And, instead, they just have numbers. Number 1 through 45. 

I am working on getting photos of my collection organized and then I will make fig cuttings available. If you have any question in particular, feel free to write.