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...)