Sunday, September 18, 2011

three little figs

An old cane house perches on the edge of a windswept Haiku pineapple field.   You might not notice it if you happened to drive by. The old house is timeworn but well maintained and boasts a tidy greenhouse and a great old fig tree. A few times a year the woman who lives there sets up a sign by the road and sells banana bread and fig tree starts and other once useful things she no longer needs. I drove by one day, on the advice of a friend, and left with a fig tree of my own.


Do  you recognize these figs? White Kadota and Brown Turkey are kama'aina fig trees, grown here for well over a century. So my tree could be a White Kadota fig.  Or it might be a Brown Turkey fig.  I don't know a fig about fig trees so i'm just guessing. Lucky for me, there's Ken Love.


Ken Love is a farmer who live on the Big Island. He knows a lot about fig trees. He was involved in the 12 Trees demonstration project and was later awarded a three year grant to study the best fig varieties for Hawaii. I'm going to learn from him.


If you can't make it to Haiku you can still grow a fig tree of your own. Plant It Hawaii distributes 3 gallon figs through Lowes, Home Depot, and Kula Ace and Chung's distributes 6 inch figs through Walmart a few times a year. No yard? No worries! Figs are a good choice for a container, too.

(These figs were picked in early July~i'm a little behind...)

4 comments:

Jane said...

Oh beautiful figs!! They don't look similar to the Brown Turkey, White Kadota or Black Jack figs from my trees. But Kihei has a different climate and my Brown Turkey figs are yellow green when they're ripe. They look a little bit like Celeste. Do they have thick or thin skin?

Julie said...

Medium skinned i think Jane but i don't have much to compare them to! You must be getting a nice harvest from three trees. Not a big one for me this year but i'm looking forward to more soon.

Rowena said...

Those figs are gorgeous! I don't know a fig about figs either but we were gifted with what a friend says "are the sweetest dark purple figs you will ever taste in your life." The young plants are only a foot tall (we've got 2 of them!) but we still haven't decided where they'll go in the garden. Too many trees, not enough space!

Julie said...

Seems like all of a sudden figs are everywhere! But maybe it's just me. Can't wait to hear more about yours Rowena.