It’s November, and my fig tree still has hundreds of hard green figs. Will they be the ones to ripen next spring?
There ought to be a simple answer to your worthwhile question, but according to Ben Pike’s The Fruit Tree Handbook (Green Books, 2011), “It is very easy to become confused by the fruiting cycle of figs, because they carry different generations of fruit on the tree all at the same time. In the British climate [similar to Pacific Northwest], once the ripe fruits have been picked, there will be two types of fruit left on the tree. The larger ones, from about marble size upwards, are fruits produced this season that will not ripen properly. The fruits that will ripen next year are now the size of a pea or even smaller. They can be seen mostly on the final 20-30 cm. (8-12″) of shoots that have grown this year. The larger fruits are likely to split or fall off during the winter. Removing all the fruits larger than a pea in November allows the tree to put its energy into developing small fruits ready for next season. In other words, the fruits need to develop over two seasons in our climate. It is the fruits that would normally develop and ripen over one season in a warmer climate that are removed in order to help the embryonic fruits develop by the following year.”
There is similar information in Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t by Steven Biggs (No Guff Press, 2012). Here is a section of the book which is available online.
Excerpt:
“It will break your heart, but there will be figs that don’t ripen. As you tuck in your trees for the winter, remove any remaining figs that are bigger than the size of a pea.”
You will sometimes see references to the breba crop and the main crop. Breba is an alteration of Old Spanish bebra, meaning twice-bearing, from Latin bifera. In terms of your fig, the breba crop is the first crop which ripens on last season’s wood (the ones that are tiny right now). Steven Biggs says that the breba crop ripens as early as July in his climate (Ontario), and the main crop (figs which form on new growth) ripens in September or October, or sometimes not at all, depending on the weather. While some fig aficionados say the breba crop is inferior, he cherishes it because it may be the only one to ripen in a short-summer climate.
Not all varieties of fig produce a prolific breba crop; some produce only the main crop. The web page of California Rare Fruit Growers discusses this in detail.