Fig Miracle?

About ten years ago I bought a stick potted in a gallon of dirt at the farmers market. The farmer told me it was a fig tree and instructed me how to plant it. Before I walked off he said, it may take a couple of years to get figs.

Following his instructions I planted the ball of dirt with the stick in the garden at the end of driveway. It grew, and grew and the first year I had a little bush of a fig tree with beautiful big green hand shaped leaves. No figs. Winter came and the leaves fell off leaving a scraggle of sticks.

The next year the sticks bore more beautiful leaves and stretched further out towards the sun. No figs, but it was only year two.

Year three same deal, but now the fig bush was getting more like a fig tree and I was hopeful. No figs. Russ mentioned that I might need a mate for my tree, but how would I find the right mate?

This yearly watch for figs became futile year after year and I often fought with the ever expanding tree as it expanded out into the driveway. Last fall, tired of the inaptly named fig tree I cut practically all its branch’s off.

This spring they all came back, but surprisingly in an effort to beg me not to be so harsh on it it brought a few figs on it’s upper branches. They are big green figs right now. Russ and I squeezed one today to see if they are close to harvest and they are not. I have no idea why it took this tree ten years to produce and until something ripens I am not sure if the production is edible, but I will give this tree a chance this year. If the figs are good I’m going to cut the branches back again in the fall and hope she rewards me with figs again.

If that farmer who sold me the stick had told me it would take ten years to produce I would not have paid a cent for that stick. Ten years is just too big a gamble.