Imagine: you are hiking along the foothills of the French Pyrenees in early Autumn, when suddenly, along an old sunny stone wall, you happen upon a strange and ancient shrub, branching this way and that. Upon closer inspection, you spot something familiar. Is that a fig? Purply-brown, with a soft, pink inside, filled with tiny crunchy seeds. Wild figs are so sweet and delicious, they take you by surprise.
Now, imagine growing your own figs in southern Ontario! Impossible? Not according to expert Steven Biggs from Toronto. I have been following Steven for years now, ever since seeing him holding a lush green fig plant in a Toronto Star article from the early 2000s. You may remember the Saturday weekly section from columnist Sonia Day called “The Real Dirt”.
This spurred me into a lifelong pursuit to replicate that moment in southwestern France, all those years ago.
While I am still chasing that experience, I am nursing a gifted Hardy Chicago fig plant. Every Fall, I haul it into the cellar (you would likely do the same, but in your garage), and ignore it until around about now. This fig plant grows in pot size every year, making the weight to carry substantial, but once early September rolls around, it is all worth it.
Some gardeners bury their fig shrubs in a dug trench under leaf and soil piles overwinter, avoiding digging up/repotting, or carting big pots into safety, yet I have found the burial method risky. A very cold winter will send the fig to the compost heap.
If giving a go at fig farming sounds like a fun project this spring, look online (Facebook Marketplace), visit Richters Herbs in Uxbridge (so many more varieties than I imagined https://www.richters.com/product-catalog?query=fig), or contact Steven at https://www.foodgardenlife.com/grow-figs-home.