Figs!

Fresh figs!  We've been eating fresh figs from our Hardy Chicago Fig tree for the past week or two.  The cool weather of the recent days has meant many more have ripened all at once.  It's done well in this climate, and the figs are delicious.   Soon it will be time to pack it up for the winter - we bundle it with straw and store it in the greenhouse for the cold season.

Lovely fig tree

Our Chicago Hardy Fig is bearing fruit!  We can't believe the gorgeous figs sprouting all over the little lovely tree, and hopefully, if the squirrels don't discover them, we'll be enjoying fresh figs in a few weeks!  This was the tree we bought as a wee seedling from Richters Herbs last spring (it's now about 4 feet tall).

* Note about the fig tree - we wrote about this tree last year and talked about how to care for it during the winter months.  To recap, these trees are not winter hardy outdoors - they lose all they leaves in the fall and need to be brought indoors, in our case into the greenhouse, and covered with a thick layer of straw mulch until spring.  

Transplanting seedlings

We're upto our elbows in seedlings now - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, cukes, basil, marigolds, etc, etc! We counted over 1100 seedlings that are now filling the greenhouse shelves and slats we've set out across the entire raised bed floor area - basically soaking up any sunny space we can squeeze them into. And, more waiting in the house, still under grow lights but ready for transplanting. It was 52C in the greenhouse today, even though it was cool enough outdoors to need a jacket and hat (and they are predicting a light frost tonight). It's amazing how quickly the sun warms the greenhouse and how long the warmth is held - we need to watch that seedlings don't dry out, and remember to open the vents and door during the daytime.

It's been a little crazy around here, trying to get everything transplanted this weekened as we wanted to give the plants at least a week to adjust to their new containers and then some time to harden off before they are sold during our May 22 seedling sale. Luckily, my parents were visiting and so dad was on plant labelling duty while my mom single-handedly transplanted about 500 tomatoes into larger pots! My parents were happy to participate in our farm life - helping feed the hens and collecting the eggs, plus weeding the herb garden and picking fresh salad greens from the coldframe, brought back memories of growing up on a self-sufficient farm in the 1950s for my mom. As it's now May 9, the seedlings have just less than 2 weeks left to grow and prepare for their move to the outdoor gardens around this city! Yes, we'll soon be passing off all these babies we've been tending so carefully since February to their new summer homes...

and, p.s. the fig tree has sprouted it's first fig! Unbelievable! They told us we'd be eating our own figs by the second year.

The fig tree!

No figs...yet

This is our Chicago Hardy Fig which we purchased as a small seedling from Richters Herbs back in early spring. Now it's grown to about 4 feet tall and if we can overwinter it in our greenhouse, they say it will bear figs next season! For size comparison see earlier post photos, and here our daughter stands beside the little tree.

Hardy Chicago Fig Tree arrives!

We received a long-awaited parcel in the mail today...plants from Richters Herbs. It's planting day tomorrow!

Various plants we had ordered from Richters Herbs (www.richters.com - near Goodwood, Ontario), included a wide selection of mints for my new mint tasting garden (apple mint, chocolate mint, ginger mint, and more), alpine strawberries (a ground cover that's going in our front yard and is said to bear the sweetest tiny berries, and be cold weather hardy), intensely fragrant creeping thyme for the front yard, and the most dearly awaited, our new Hardy Chicago Fig tree! We continue to expand our fruit & nut tree selection for this urban homestead, in the hopes that one day we, or future owners, will have an abundant harvest enough to last through the winter months. We have several apples, pears, an Italian blue plum, three cherries, a hazelnut, of course the black walnuts, and now this fig.

When we read about the Hardy Chicago Fig (ficus carica) we knew we needed to plant at least one. The fruits are described as a gorgeous brown-purple with a luscious strawberry-sweet flesh. The thought of eating local figs, let alone growing them in our own yard, was so tantalizing. Eating our own organically grown sun-ripened figs straight off the tree in late summer or savouring carefully dried figs with wine, honey and cheese in the winter, while we cozy up next to the woodstove. Mmmm, what a treat!

The Hardy Chicago Fig is one of the best for flavour and hardiness. It was said to have been brought to Chicago by Sicilians from Mount Etna many years ago, and has been grown in Chicago and elsewhere by dedicated fig fans ever since. Many people assume it can't be grown in North America, but with protection it can grow well as low as Zone 4. It is a perennial in Zones 8-11. It is hardly a tree, and can also be grown easily indoors, in an apartment or house, or in a container outdoors (and either protected for the winter, or taken indoors). We plan to grow ours in a container outside and then take it into the greenhouse over the winter months where it will be more sheltered, but hopefully not die back as much as it would if left outdoors. We have read accounts of fig harvests in the second year, and massive harvests by the fifth or sixth season. These trees can bear abundant fruit for upto 30 years if taken care of properly, so definitely worth the investment. This small 1-year old seedling cost us about $7.

By the way, there is a lot of information on the internet regarding care of the Hardy Chicago Fig (people LOVE this fig tree!). Garden Web also has useful posts on their "Fig Forum" discussion forum (www.gardenweb.com).