The house that we purchased and moved into last spring came complete with a gorgeous, huge fig tree. It is currently full of gorgeous, huge figs, all rock-hard. It is planted against a south-facing wall, so it gets lots of reflected heat, but of course that is diminishing by the day.
So two questions:
1) Is there anything we can do to encourage at least a few figs to ripen before it is too late and
2) Is there anything worth doing with under-ripe figs?
I found information originally published in the summer 2009 issue of Edible Toronto about ways to increase the chances of figs ripening on the tree in cooler climates. In an article (no longer available online) entitled “Fig Fetishists in Ontario” author Steven Biggs says:
“The real secret to coaxing the fruit to ripen in our climate is to gain a few days of ripening time. Ferreira shows me a couple of trees over which he’s draped clear plastic bags. This creates a warm microclimate around the tree, helping it to come out of dormancy more quickly. Once the current year’s growth is underway and figs are forming, another trick is to break off the tip of the branch, leaving four leaves on the current year’s growth.
What’s Ferreira’s big secret? Extra virgin olive oil. In the first week of September, he looks for figs that don’t seem as if they will ripen before winter, and puts a drop of extra virgin olive oil on the eye. After six or seven days, he repeats the step. While this doesn’t work on all of the fruit, he says, it helps some to ripen.”
Most sources warn against using unripe figs. Not only would they not be tasty, but according to the Purdue University’s New Crop Resource, “the latex of the unripe fruits and of any part of the tree may be severely irritating to the skin […]It is an occupational hazard not only to fig harvesters and packers but also to workers in food industries, and to those who employ the latex to treat skin diseases.”