About three or four years ago I decided that I didn’t want the fig in a large pot where it was. So in a moment of madness, I dug a big hole and dragged, heaved and eventually dropped the fig - pot and all - into the hole and earthed it all back in. But in the process, I hadn’t realised that I’d snapped a major root of the fig tree that had grown through the small drainage hole in the pot and firmly rooted itself into the ground.I thought I’d just leave the fig to see if it would recover, as Mum had had one and it was pretty voracious, hence leaving it in the pot. The roots on Mum’s fig weren’t restricted, and she had to cut hers back more than liberally each year.

However, in the intervening years since the traumatic move, my poor figgy fig wasn’t doing so well. It would manage to squeeze a couple of leaves out on the end of each knarly branch, before producing one single sorry fruit about the size of a large cherry. Then it would give up and drop everything quick sharp.

I was seriously thinking of taking the whole thing out this year and giving up. But as ever, I was being impatient. This year the fig tree has started producing normal sized fruits and leaves. Granted, they’re not huge, but they’re reasonable! And of course it’s great to have another harvestable fruit at the Smallest Smallholding, in addition to the damsons, plums and cherry (and blueberry once I get hold of a couple of extra varieties for cross pollination). So I’m looking forward to harvesting (if the birds don’t get there first) the fruits and doing something interesting with them. Any interesting ideas most welcome!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under fruit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.