Steps Towards Successfully Growing Quality Figs in Florida
- Ross the Fig BOSS
- May 28, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 25, 2023
Recently someone contacted me asking for my opinion about varieties and input about growing figs in Florida. I'm going, to be honest, it's a very difficult place to grow figs, and my hat's off to whoever can figure it out and ripen high-quality fruit. Having never grown figs in FL, I don't have any first-hand experience, but I can give you courageous and potentially insane Florida fig growers the tools you need or at least the step in the right direction.
Key Takeaways:
Growing figs in Florida can be difficult due to the high humidity and monsoon season.
To achieve quality figs in Florida, it is important to ripen them before or after the monsoon season.
An experienced grower in Miami was getting reasonable results with in-ground trees planted in 1-2 ft high berms for drainage and higher soil temperatures.
LSU Scott's Black and LSU Purple are varieties that are doing well in Florida. LSU Purple is RKN resistant and a fast grower.
To ripen figs before monsoon season, focus on helping the trees grow quickly in the winter after frost with a very early main crop fig variety that is rust and potentially RKN resistant.
To ripen figs after monsoon season, learn River's pruning or pinching to perfectly time the harvest before frost.
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Here was Ed's question proposed to me:
Hello, I am in South Florida. Many varieties won't do well here. I have several of them lol. I looked up all I could find on YouTube and Figdatabase, but still have no idea if either of these would work here (he's referring to Smith and Azores Dark) where there is usually zero or one light frost, but the rains in August, September and early October can be torrential with 100% humidity.
Have you sold either to another South or Central Florida buyers? Any input is appreciated. Thanks, Ed.