First Ripe Fig in 2026: Touring the Fig Tree Forest

All right fig lovers, this is Ross the Fig Boss. Welcome back to another long form video. I love making these long form podcast style videos for you guys. I know that you guys have been learning a ton and that's the goal of what we do here on this channel. You're here and you guys know this to learn something, to learn something about fig trees, but specifically how to grow plants. How do they work? What is the amazing, what's the deal with fig trees and why is it amazing? And that's what I've been doing here in these long form videos. I've been trying to make them obviously not short and sweet, they're longer, but I've been trying to really get into the details of tell you how and why things work, not just here's the information and go do it. We live in a society where you could look up pretty much anything on AI and it could give you a pretty good answer. This stuff on fig trees, believe it or not, is still incorrect. You still need somebody like me and that's my goal. I'm not here to be some kind of social media star. I'm here and I've always been here just trying to educate you guys, to be as transparent, as honest as possible. We don't have all the answers and that's the beauty in doing this fig thing for a decade. What am I doing here? I'm in the Philadelphia area, zone 7A, and I've been really passionate studying fig trees, not just growing them. Over the years now, about a decade, I've become one of the best sources of information on fig trees. I sell fig trees. I have a nursery that specializes in fig trees. We sell them on my website figboss.com. I've trialed over the years 400 to 500 different varieties. We're growing a lot of them here in pots on the patio, but we're also growing a ton in the ground. I've got probably between two properties, at least 150 different varieties in the ground. I've honestly lost count at this point, and we maintain definitely hundreds of potted fig trees. This year I started about 1,400 from cutting. We sold about 850 so far. Thank you to everybody, by the way. If you went and met me at Squares and Fair this past weekend, it's actually August 14th at the time of filming, so I haven't even gone to the event yet. It's tomorrow, but I'll be driving to the shore overnight, and then in the morning I'll be unloading my trees. I actually brought a lot of trees like this that you see. These are trees in 5x12 tree pots, really healthy, happy. I took the biggest ones I had here on the patio that were ready to be sold and to be in people's care. They looked good, blah, blah, blah, blah, different varieties. I tried to have the widest selection available. I'm sure the sale went really well. I know a lot of people are going to be happy with these trees. If you got one and you're in this area of Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore, anywhere in the Northeast, keep them in the pot for the rest of the season. What you're going to do is you're going to take this pot and you're going to put them in winter storage in between Thanksgiving and Christmas time. You'll see in the forecast that we're going to have a temperature that's going to be coming up sometime in that time where the temperatures will be below 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the temperatures are forecasted below 15, I put them into winter storage. They have to be kept above 15 degrees Fahrenheit. This is my winter storage area. We've done a lot of different videos on how to store them properly. I'll put some links in the description. That's the main thing because some people have been asking me, Ross, have you been planting fig trees at this point of the year? As I said, it's August 14th. We only actually have about another two and a half months of no frost. Right now we're still in the summer, but in a month from now, literally a month from now, even though it doesn't work like this on the calendar, but September 15th, we're now in the fall in the Philadelphia area. There's a switch that's flipped. That's how our climate works. We go from winter to summer. We about September 15th, if the weather cooperates like it usually does, we're now in the fall. We get a decent fall period where things are actually relatively dry. We actually can get some good high quality figs if the summer was a little bit too rainy. As I said, it's too late now at this point to plant these fig trees. One in particular I planted, we demonstrated this one in the planting video that we did just about two or three long form videos ago. It was about planting fig trees. I talked about how in that video I planted about 75 or so this year, different varieties. We actually have the plot over here that we looked at in the last one, I believe, where we did a lot of weeding in here and how all these trees have been growing exceptionally well. For some of them that maybe you planted it and it didn't really do what you wanted it to, this is why you don't want to plant them now. Ideally, we want them to continue growing. This is one that we planted. Shout out to Dan Foster. I got this tree from him, Abazia. Mario's number 166. I planted this one. You can see it just continued growing. That's the key. We put it in the ground. Hopefully it doesn't lose any leaves. Hopefully it doesn't yellow. We keep watering it in. We add compost. You can see all the compost I added here to the surface and it just continues growing. But then sometimes you do get some trees like this guy here where I probably planted this too soon or it had maybe a little bit of transplant shock. Now it's continuing growth but this is not going to prepare itself that well for the winter as this tree is. There's a lot of things going on when it comes to these trees getting ready for the winter time. But generally, if you plant them too late, they just don't have enough time and that's the main thing. On the last video, we did talk about protecting our crops from squirrels and birds and things. Somebody did mention the bags, the organza bags that I use, which you can see over here on some of these Celeste figs that I'm protecting at the moment, that the squirrels get through these. Yeah, the squirrels actually do get through them pretty religiously. So if you're using those to protect them from squirrels, don't even bother. The squirrels generally don't come up to the patio. They stay amongst these bigger trees and don't really cross a plane. They go out into these trees and eat the pears and whatnot. But they don't even usually come very close to the house, even on the west side of the house. So they know their little area that they live in and stay in. So on the west side of the house, where I've got persimmons and jujubes, I got peaches out there that they do disrupt. That's a lie. So yeah, I guess that is a little bit false. But generally, they're not on this side of the property. And if they are, one of the things you can do, because they need to climb up trees, right? They need to climb up something to then get to the figs. So what I do is I put some chicken wire down. If you guys have groundhogs, best thing is chicken wire. And so my point is, I'm not here trying to protect my stuff from squirrels, if I'm going to be using organza bags. Even nets sometimes might not be enough. They can sometimes get through nets. They can learn. Raccoons are the worst. They're, you know, obviously got thumbs and things. So they're incredibly good at getting the stuff. So it's important if you're going to have squirrels and you have a problem, you know, the squirrels are a big problem. Traps are really the way to go. Somebody mentioned the squirrelinator trap. That seems pretty cool. You can get some that relocate them. You can get some that kill them. You can shoot them. Everybody's different. Some people even eat squirrels. I mean, I'm not, I haven't eaten squirrel myself, but there's a lot of people now I'm in southeast Pennsylvania, which is very different. If you just go 50 miles West or 50 miles Northwest, you're now in a very different place. And some of them people eat squirrel. So shout out to anybody out there who eats squirrel, but everybody has their own little thing of what they like to eat. And I'm not going to fault anybody for doing whatever it is they want to do. And that's, that's part of this. I'll also say this. Some of you guys were a little hung up on protecting strategies. Some people were saying, don't use nets because the bees and things get trapped in the nets. Some people were saying that don't use, don't use this or don't kill animals or don't, don't do the squirrel thing or whatever it is. You're never going to be perfect. Okay. There's never going to be something that's a hundred foolproof, but I promise if you do nothing, you will get nothing. One of the things I, I like to do for, for grapes in particular, it's the most simple thing is to bag them. Now I've already harvested a ton of grapes. I actually have some shorts and things. And some of these grapes guys look incredible, but I have actually been bagging these for a disease called black rot and black rot hits the leaves. This is kind of it right here. And the water hits the, hits the leaf. Then it takes the spores and then hits the fruit. And so you can end up having a lot of fruit that's not good from black rot. And so if you bag them with these wax paper bags, you end up with a perfect cluster of grapes every single time. Nope. That wasn't done very gracefully, but this is a variety called Centennial exceptional grape. This is so sweet. In fact, the bags, what they do is not only they help with the disease, but then they can also help keep the birds and squirrels out because they don't even know that they're here. Even the green grapes, they will know that they're here. It's just the facts. It doesn't matter the color. Some people think, Oh, you know, reflecting things and streamers and things that, you know, have all kinds of stuff to them. Yeah. I mean, that can definitely, uh, that can definitely help, but generally you just don't want them to see them or be able to get to them at all. And so that's enough on protecting them. I know everybody has their own little, their own little thing that they like to do with protecting crops. But some of you guys are just also so, uh, I've realized in the comments, some of you guys were just so depressed almost about, you know, you, you grew this thing and, uh, you didn't protect it or maybe you did protect it and they still got to it anyway. Or maybe you put in all this time and effort, energy and years later. I mean, for me, I've been growing fruit for a, you know, a decade, at least now. And it took me like seven years to get some pawpaw. I planted the pawpaw in the shade back here. And these trees, I think got hit by frost pretty bad, but I, they did have some pawpaw on them. And I'm thinking now at this point, cause I don't see any, I know I saw one, a couple here the last time I was here, but I'm thinking the squirrels are getting these up. Here's one right here. So I'm thinking even the squirrels are getting these. And these are actually like another month away roughly from being ready. So either the frost did it or the squirrels got it regardless. It took me seven years to get it. And if it took me seven years to get a pawpaw and then some squirrel comes in and gets it before I get it. Yeah. I'm going to be really upset, but you have to learn to work with nature and eventually it works out. Okay. That's my point. Don't get depressed. There are strategies. Don't give up. Some of you guys have fig trees that haven't fruited. That's something we talked about in the last video. We mentioned basically very quick recap. If you want your fig tree to fruit, you have to protect it. You have to learn how to, how to prune it properly. The main message in that video was hormones. How do I change the hormones in my trees to make sure that they are in the right balance for fruiting? Like all the trees here that I have that I've actually been able to protect this winter. And so if you can protect them, they're incrementally going in the direction every day that goes by towards a balance of hormones that allows them to fruit. It's that simple. But if we have the winter come in here, kill them all the way down to the ground, which all the trees here on this property got killed down to the base, other than the ones I did protect. And so protecting them yields, even if it's just one season of protection can yield very positive results. Here's actually Castle Tracino, one of the best figs. It's one of the best tasting early varieties of figs. This is definitely going to be one that people are going to talk about for a long time. For those of us that live in these cold, cold areas. Oh my God. And here's my first Alex of the year. Oh my God. It's actually ripe. Wow. Okay. So this is, like I said, August 14th. Interestingly, you know, if you look at the trees that I was just getting to this, the trees that I've only done one year of winter protection on and then plop them back up in the spring, like here's all the older wood, right? This is the Southern plot. And you can see the older wood. Here's the new growth of the season. And that's where the figs form. But just usually just one year of winter protection is not enough. Sometimes the balance of hormones to get them into fruiting, you need more time of winter, good winter protection and limited pruning. And you end up getting trees that over time, it usually takes at least one, but usually two seasons of good winter protection and limited pruning. You end up getting good fruit set. This is a Celeste called Texas peach, very easy to get Celeste to fruit. And so depending on the variety, every variety is different. This is another thing I mentioned. Some of you guys out there might have black mission. It's one of the most common figs that you can get and black missions really difficult. So you're going to need two years. It's not just one year of winter protection. You need two years. And if you live in a climate, by the way, I'm in zone seven, a it's really tough throwing figs here about one time every decade, and maybe even some years in between every 10 years, you get something really brutal for these fig trees. It's really important to have the most hardy variety you can possibly find. That's going to survive because the more they survive, the more and easy, the more they fruit and the easier they fruit and the better the fruit quality is. So some varieties, like I said, though, they have this easier time fruiting. This is a Salam PS Centino, really easy to get it to fruit. This is a hunt, really easy to get it to fruit. A lot of the LSU varieties, easy to get them to fruit. Um, Hardy Chicago, Fleuria, Teramo, a lot of the really early ones generally have an easier time fruiting. And a lot of it just comes down to the balance of hormones within them, right? Some of them are a little bit more stubborn like black mission, but here we go. This is Alex and this is the earliest fig for me ripening in the ground this year on both properties. Um, but then again, I, you know, I only protected only so many of them were protected here on this property, but normally in a normal year and probably even with this tree, I would say in a normal year, this is going to ripen around August 10th, right around the same time as Hardy Chicago. That's partly what makes this variety so amazing. And then other varieties that I, that I've been growing for many years, trees that were, you know, trees that actually had survived here and done well for many different seasons, like Rematurinska or Teramo, Campanieri, Morro de Caneva, um, even Ron de Bordeaux. These figs would ripen if I had a really early variety, like let's say Ron de Bordeaux or Morro de Caneva, the first figs of the year would be August 1st. That's about as early as you can get, but they would also produce Brava. So there's many benefits of protecting them. Not only do we get the main crop to ripen earlier, but the Brava production is actually possible. So them ripening in July is an amazing thing. So if the main crops August 1st, the Bravas are around July 1st, July 15th, somewhere in there. So you get a full month in July, depending on the variety you have, of Brava. And you can't get Brava because it ripens on last year's wood. So if you don't protect the one-year-old wood from last year, and it is a variety that does produce Brava, not all of them do, you won't get the, you won't get the Brava. So there are huge advantages to protecting your trees if you live in these colder zones. And a lot of us in zone 7b and lower have this issue with protecting. In zone 8s and higher, if your fig tree isn't fruiting, it's because you're pruning it improperly. You're doing what the winter would be doing here, which is obviously not good. So let's open this, let's eat this fig. I've been talking a lot about this fruit, and I've been trying to promote it, let people, you know, be more aware. I think this probably could use more time because they dry on the tree really good. You can see the ants getting in there. And ants, oh this is another one. Some of you guys are like crazy about ants. Crazy. If you're gonna grow fruit, you're gonna eat ants. If you're gonna grow fruit, you're gonna eat bugs. If you're gonna grow anything and eat it, you're gonna, you're gonna eat bugs. It's just a part of life. I don't, I can't even tell you how many ants I've eaten without even knowing that I ate an ant. It's not, it's not something I'm proud of, but certainly you can't be afraid of them. But if you are afraid of them, what you can do is, you can come over to your trees and wrap tinfoil around the trunks. I do, I've done this for my beehives because ants can get up in your beehives, but you can basically put tinfoil around your trunks. I actually did some tape here. This was actually earlier in the year for plum to curlio to see if it would work. It didn't work, but you put tinfoil around and then you put Tanglefoot, a product I'll put the link in the description, around the tin, on the tinfoil. So there's a line, it doesn't have to be a very thick line, just a line that goes around the tree so that when the ants crawl up the tree to get the figs, they get stuck. Tanglefoot's basically a really sticky rubber substance and it's not gonna harm anything. It's not gonna, you know, do anything terrible. That's the best part about it and it stops those ants from crawling up and kills them and you get ant-free fig trees. So you can do that on pots, you can do that on multiple trunks. That's the main issue with me is I got too many trunks here. Like this hunt is gonna ripen some fruit probably the very end of the season for me, but I got like four or five trunks here that have fruit on them. I'm not gonna wrap every single one of those individually. Now if I had one fig tree, you bet your, bet your butt I am. So all right, this has been, to me again, Alex has been one of them varieties that I've been trying to promote, just like Castle Tracino. I think there's just incredible potential with this. It's early, rain resistant, it actually dries really good on the tree. It's a decent sized fig, it's definitely not like some of the smaller ones I've recommended in the past, but it's definitely on the smaller side. Also, what else, it's really early like we just discussed in the last video. I did not eat this, but we did talk about Smith and about two days later, I think we filmed the other one, the other video, like around August 10th. So around August 12th here, I think it was, it was the 11th I was here, and I got to eat some Smith figs from my potted Smith tree that I've had in a pot for 10 years and have never root burned it. So we talked about that. I mentioned in the video, I think it was like I said I've had the tree for like seven years or something. I went back, looked at the video, and the video that I talked about how we trunk layered that Smith tree, that was 10 years ago, like coming up 10 years ago. So that's amazing that I've had a tree in a pot, a fig tree. They say, people have been telling me this since I started, oh you gotta root burn them every other year, every two to three years, and then people get so crazy about it, and it totally turns them off from growing fig trees in pots, which you should be turned off, I think. They're way better in the ground, but long story short, don't have to do that. And we talked about how changing the hormones in those trees by pruning back this one-year-old wood. So all the wood here that came out this season, if you prune this back by 50% to 75%, shorten this branch by 75%. So leave about 25% of the new growth, you end up rejuvenating the tree and it grows like mad. But it affects the fruiting sometimes on certain trees, because the balance of hormone shifts, right? The more we head back our branches, the more we shorten our branches, the more they grow the next year, and the less they're likely to fruit, the lower the fruit quality is, et cetera, et cetera. I've talked so many times about this. Let's try this Alex first fig of the year. Yeah, this is a really nice fig, guys. When you eat this, I'm sure a lot of you guys are going to want this variety in the future. To me, it's got a really good flavor to it. Immediately, I was getting vibes of blueberry, blackberry, and that's what you get with these purple pulped figs, figs with a purplish pulp to them. It's not necessarily as purple as some other varieties can get, but it's very sweet, got a really nice berry flavor. I know a lot of you guys out there, if you like varieties like Pastelier, Vagabond, Black Celeste, this tastes really similar, but it has this awesome ... How do I put this? Obviously, it's got good fig flavor, but it's more than that. It has this ... Man, the mosquitoes are killing me. I can barely stand over there. I keep walking back and forth, but Moro de Caneva is probably the perfect example of what I'm trying to think about here, in that Moro de Caneva has a ... It's like a slight bitterness to the skin that gives it a good balance, because the fig itself is so sweet, and most figs are very sweet, but if you don't complement that sweetness with some level of acidity or some level of bitterness, you end up getting something that's just too sweet and not really that enjoyable to eat. Figs do a really good job of that, because usually the skin, guys, is very bitter. It's more bitter than you think. If you eat it out by itself, a lot of varieties have some level of bitterness. Maybe it's not a ton, but it's enough to balance out that sweetness and make it not so crazy, and the skin on this tastes just like Moro de Caneva skin. It's got this interesting thing to it that I think is really, really impressive. I'm a huge fan of it, and this, to me, is giving me vibes of that. Now, as it ripens a little bit more and dries on the tree, it'll taste even better and concentrate those blueberry, blackberry flavors even more, but yeah, for my money, just an awesome fig. To me, it's just really special, especially this year, because I'm able to harvest figs from an in-ground tree. It's just as simple as that. You know, it's such a sad year, because all my trees died at the ground, and yeah, some of them are coming back, and like this Ronde Bordeaux we've looked at, they're fruiting from dieback. Not always the most reliable thing. You really need an older tree. Specific varieties do it more than others, but it's just not the same. Having figs that ripen from in-ground trees is just not the same as the ones that ripen in potted trees. They're just better, and I really was kind of down on this year from the frost that we've had between the frost, between the cold that we had this winter, two different events, once in a decade type stuff, and it just really made this year kind of a bummer, but to get fruit like that, to me, man, that is, it really means something. So yeah, I don't, I don't know how else to put it, but I would encourage you guys to put these trees in the ground, and all we got to do now with most of these here is give them one more year, or two more years of winter protection on this side, but some of them here, like this one, this is a Pernette Noir. You can see some fruit development on the new growth, but here's the older wood, same thing. Just got to give this one more year of winter protection, and that thing will be in business. The Alex tree we just harvested fruit from is one of them fig varieties that will fruit seemingly no matter what, and I have a bunch of trees now in the ground. Trying to swat so many flies, it's unreal. I can't even believe it. What is going on back here? I am so confused, but long story short, the the fruits, it's just one of them varieties that will fruit no matter what, and I really enjoy that. So let's look at some of these in-ground fig trees that we have that we just planted and show you guys how they're doing. Again, the goal is to keep them growing. We want them to be happy and healthy. If they have any fruit on them, we're trying to remove most of them because if they're not growing, there's one of two reasons why that could be happening. One, we didn't transplant them properly. They have maybe some transplant shock. Maybe they weren't healthy prior to planting, or maybe they weren't ready to be planted prior to planting. So some varieties, you know, or some trees, I should say, you do it too early and you kind of regret it, and that's what this one is here. This guy didn't like being planted, and he kind of suffered after planting, but it looks like to me he is starting to grow here at the very top, and that's a good sign of some sort of recovery. But ideally, you want to plant them. They're healthy before they go in. Once they're healthy, they go in, then you continue watering them, feed them with compost, different things, and they just keep growing like nothing happened. Shouldn't be any transplant shock. They shouldn't lose many leaves. They shouldn't turn yellow, and if they're still not growing after that, you have no transplant shock. Everything's fine. The tree looks okay. Well, it probably could just be a lack of water, and so you got to get that water on. The other reason is just too many fruits. These young trees, we talked about it in the last one. These young trees, even though they are just planted, I just rooted these from cutting not that long ago. They can, in fact, fruit at this stage, at this really young age, and that will be enough to slow down their growth. Because think about it, that energy requirement needs to be fulfilled for that fruit set, right? So all these figs on these trees are taking away energy from the tree that has to be directed there. The leaves produce energy, so if you don't have enough leaves for the fruits that the tree is trying to produce, which happens all the time on these young ones, especially if you just repot them or if you just plant them, that can kind of stunt them for a small period of time, and you end up getting this problem. So you got to remove figs. I like to keep one of them on the tree if I can, but most of the time I'm removing all of them. I don't even care. And even this fig here might not even ripen in time, so there's really little point. But you do want to keep, if it's a new variety to you, you might want to keep one on there just to be able to identify it. That can be really helpful. Now we did mention in the last, one of the last videos we did, we talked about these trees here, how we had just up potted them, just put them here, just put them on irrigation, and we had to move a lot of trees around, make space, the patio became unwalkable, and I said these trees will look like these trees in about a month. Well we're not, these are a month ahead no matter what we do, looking at them right now, but these are on their way. You can see that they are growing, they are looking good, they're finally adjusting themselves. And I need to go through here, like this variety here is really crazy. This is Verdino from Belfior Nursery in Italy. So we need to remove the figs on this because this is just going to take up way too much of that energy like I said. And then once they get to the right size, like this one's pretty close, this is a Dominica tree, one of the other varieties I've been promoting a lot lately. Once it gets a little bit bigger we can remove the tip and as we talked about in the other video, we're going to be, that's how we train them, sorry. So in the video we did about caring for young fig trees, we talked a lot about training them and how to get this scaffold development right. As they grow from a single stem, they grow up, we top them, we get the scaffolds to form. This is one here in particular, we did this too this year, this is the Ficus Palmata Hybrid DFIC0023 and that exactly happened. Not only did we get the scaffolds to form but a lot of fruit down here formed. And this is, I'm showing you this one because it's a really quick variety, super quick grower. And then what we did was, because this new scaffold's formed, I only got two, hopefully I'm getting three or four, that's the main goal. But if one of the scaffolds or two of the scaffolds is just further ahead in development than the other scaffolds, you can go ahead and pinch them again. And that's what we did here. And now we're getting fruits, look at the double dots in there, figs are forming and new branches are forming. So we've got a very good structure forming in the first year that a lot of people are just afraid to do. We got another fig over here, this one's not quite ready just yet, but this is a fig called Lunget from a grower named Leopoldo. Now I think this is awfully similar to Salam Piescentino, a lot of you guys know about that variety, very similar to Vertolino as I've discussed in the past, they have very similar flavor. But just to finish my thought on this really quickly is that, like I said, we're getting the development formed this year, and that's going to lead to a really high fruit quality next year. The better the structure is, and the less pruning we have to do, as I mentioned earlier, the better the fruits will taste, the easier they're going to fruit next year. So we're removing the scaffolds or the tips again on these scaffolds to then form potentially either more scaffolds, like it's okay if it branches off into this V, but I want like three or four. And those new branches, if this turns into two and this turns into two, then that's the four permanent branches that I want. And then from there, all the new growth that comes from those four branches, no matter how long it is, no matter what it looks like, I don't care. We're just going to, you know, those are the fruiting branches that we can regularly control and maintain. So the rest of it's permanent. I'm trying to get in there because I see a branch that I would like to pinch. So here's a branch right here, and you can see a single stem grown up really nicely, huge leaves. It's towering above the other trees. We know there's lots of sunlight. We removed the tip. So that's exactly what we've been doing in the other videos. And it's well on its way next year now to producing high quality fruit. Now, some of these videos, guys, I know I've been preaching about some of this stuff now on repeat, but this is what we're doing at this length, at this part of the year. This is just the goal and what's been going on and what we've been talking about. But very soon we're going to have like figs to actually eat. And a lot of these videos will be about, I would imagine, be about harvesting, talking about varieties, etc, etc. And it will be less about growing them and more about eating and harvesting and things like that. If there is something you guys want me to cover when it comes to growing them, things we haven't talked about, I know I have a couple ideas on the back burner, but if there's something you guys want me to cover, let me know. So we're waiting. We're unfortunately, I don't really have many figs. This is like three figs today or two figs I harvested so far and that's it. And so I'm evaluating these fruits. They're not for me to bring for someone else to eat. I need to evaluate these, the excess of what I have above and beyond what I can evaluate. Well, then, yeah, I can bring those and hopefully bring those to the Althouse Arboretum. So if you didn't see me at Squares and Fair in Summers Point, New Jersey, come visit me at the Althouse Arboretum. Say hi. There's plenty of fig trees I'll have for sale. It's going to be a great event. I know you guys love the Squares and Fair. So again, put that stuff down in the comments for me. Let everybody know how it went. And also, once that date rolls around, which is August 29th, right? I think that one's from 10 to 4, something like that. I can't remember if it's 10 to 4. 10 to 4 seems like a long time. Is it 10 to 3? Regardless, I'll have the information in the description. But the main thing what I'm getting at is that I'll have way more figs at that time. And hopefully, I'll have enough to bring. There's only really been a handful of varieties that have ripened for me thus far. And a lot of that has to do with the frost, the late frost that we had that delays the figs by at least two weeks. The winter cold killed a lot of the trees to the ground. That is a huge delay in the production. And so we would normally at this time be swimming in figs. I mean, I'd be out here with a whole bowl, picking lots and lots of different varieties, tasting them, comparing them. And that's some of the stuff I want to bring you guys around and do. We just can't do it yet. So we got to be patient. And that's part of life. That's part of nature. That's part of doing this. The same thing with the critters and things, the birds, the squirrels, ants. If you want to do this, this is what, unfortunately, you have to put up with. You trees don't fruit in two seconds. You have to wait a couple of years. All right, let's try this. This is, again, Longet from Leopoldo. Leopoldo is in the Milan area. And he's got this one here that my friend Mattia has been growing that I was really impressed with. Although now that I've been growing it and eating a lot of the fruits, I do think it's so similar to Salam P. santino. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting to have them side by side, but I just truly believe that this is awfully similar to it. It's a really good fig. Very sticky. Love the skin. Awfully sweet. Great performing variety. We know it's really rain resistant. And that was something that Mattia had told me. It's just unbelievable rain resistance, drying capabilities, all that, everything you'd ever want, basically, in a fig for humid climates. But his are rather red on the inside. And so Vertolino and Salam, even though I do think they are similar, they probably taste quite different, especially if they're pollinated. So, you know, for me in here, when they're not pollinated, that's kind of the vibes I get. Something like this. They'll get a little bit more red on the inside. And I'm hoping the in-ground trees, as time goes on, they're going to be better and better and better. And that's something I had experienced many years ago with Vertolino is they kind of reminded me of the golden alms. Maybe not necessarily as strong of a berry flavor, but amazing thick texture. They dry well on the tree. It's an incredible fruit. Can't wait. I know more and more people have it. I actually have a crazy amount of trees of those. Between the two, or really between the three varieties, even this one, I have a lot of them now in the ground getting established. And we should get some really good fruit set to continue to evaluate and see how they get better with time. This is really good. More and more people are catching on to this. Man, that one's really sweet. So it's a difference there, right? That one didn't have the bitter skin component. And that interesting flavor note that Alex had, or Morriday Caneva has, or even to me, it's definitely a higher, slightly better eating experience. But as I've talked to you guys before many times, what's the best tasting fig? Because some of you guys out there might be wondering, what is the variety I should be growing? Well, first and foremost, I have published a PDF, an ebook on choosing a fig variety. So it's on my website, figboss.com. Really easy to find. Just go to the store page at the top and you'll see my ebook. It guides you through the entire process of choosing a fig variety. So you don't have to be left in the dark. You don't need to get a recommendation. You can approach this thing on your own if you wanted. Now, if you still want a recommendation from me, sure. I'd be happy to give you guys one. Just send me a message and whatnot. I do it all the time for people. But that's what the book is for. It's only $7.50 and it's all the stuff I've learned into choosing a fig variety. So the main things are here. We want the best fig that performs the best. And why do we want varieties that perform well is because you'll see as the season goes on, I can't wait to show you guys one of these videos where half the figs on the tree are spoiled, rotten, fermented, fruit flies are attacking them. It's just terrible. Whatever it is that's going on. And that's the reality of growing figs in humid climates. And for most of us, believe it or not, in the country, we live in just enough humidity and rain that we get that can destroy our figs. The rain is the number one enemy beyond the cold. The cold winter weather can damage the branches, obviously. But once we protect them, we learn how grow these figs properly, rain is the number one enemy of fruit quality. So we just have to get really good at choosing varieties that are rain resistant. I mean, it's really at least half the country lives somewhere humid. And so for fig trees at least. So we have to choose varieties that perform the best. And the one that performs the best is the one that generally tastes the best. So keep that in mind. That's what I've been preaching for years. And I will continue to preach. What else? So if you lived in a desert-like climate, well, you don't have to necessarily worry about performance as much. Performance is going to come naturally to you because you live somewhere dry. The dry weather and the heat is what increases fruit quality. The better the figs intensify on the tree, the less water they have within them, the better they're going to taste. And I know some people like to, we talked about how to pick a fig, like when to pick a fig, if it's ripe, if it's not ripe. We talked about how you grab the neck of the fruit to see if it's soft. The one over here that I was looking at was not ready and I didn't pick it. But generally what we would like to do is we would like to get these figs to a point where, see, this is definitely not, definitely not ripe. The neck is just very hard still. Even though the fig is drooping, that's the only thing you need to pay attention to. All the other indicators of cracking and honey coming from the eye, don't listen to these people. They don't know what they're talking about. And no matter where you live, the neck is the only determining thing as to whether or not the fig is ripe. The visual indicators of things like honey dripping from the eye, cracking, the fig drooping, color changes, whatever, those are only visual indicators to help you approach the fig to let you know, hey, look, maybe we should check this out. Then when you get there, you squeeze the neck and you see if it's ripe. That's it. If it's ripe, you pick it. If it's not, you don't pick it. And eventually you realize, you learn how to do it. So the longer they ripen on the tree, guys, the better generally they're going to taste. They're going to intensify because think about it. Water is inside of all of our fruits, but the more we dry them, the less water there is, the more intense that flavor can potentially be. Same thing with sugar, right? When you have dried fruits, there's less water. So they seem sweeter, right? So they're going to have roughly the same levels of maybe polyphenols or antioxidants and amazing flavor compounds, but you're going to have less water. So it's more intense. And so if it's super humid outside, where's the water going to go? It's not going to evaporate. It's just going to spoil and mold and ferment. So some varieties, no matter what is going on, they have a really good ability just to dry on the tree and continue that ripening process of losing the water and intensifying the flavor. And those are the best ones for about half the people in the country, at least. So that's what we look for here. And for those people, like I said, in the drier places, this already happens for you naturally. Even the figs that don't dry on the tree well, it's already kind of happening without you even doing anything. And then at that point, it's just what fig tastes the best. That's it. It's not about which one performs the best because they're all going to perform well in a desert-like climate. Some people get this, they ask me this question, Ross, I live in California. I live in Arizona. What's the best fig variety for me? Or they'll say, they won't say that. They'll say, which ones will do well here? That's the question they ask. They all do well. All of them, assuming they don't need pollination. They're all going to do well. There's nothing about your climate. Yeah. Okay. So there is one thing that you have to pay attention to, which is just, it's going to be so blisteringly hot that sometimes some varieties will ripen too quickly on the tree and they kind of just melt in the heat. That can be a thing. So some people have said like, I know my friend Brian Melton at Pro Fig, he's in California in Fresno. He grows figs now for a living. Like me though, he started out as just a hobbyist and studying these varieties. But basically he came to the conclusion that, you know what, you probably want a thicker skin that's going to help them hold up to the heat a little bit better. But I think one of the major things also is we talk about hang time, right? So when the figs on the tree are hard and green like this, they're basically indestructible to rain and heat and other problems, right? Here's actually a Smith fig that's starting to swell. Is this Smith? Oh no. This is English Brown Turkey. I think this is Susser George from my friend Big Bill in Lancaster. He really seems to like these English Brown Turkey figs. So I wanted to grow one that he thought was really good. And yeah, so long story short, this fig here is a little bit susceptible to rain damage now at this point. Especially the open eye you can see there. Some rain can definitely get in there. But the skin itself generally is still really hard and tough like these green figs, but it's getting bigger. It's getting more sugar content. The sap flow in this fig is returning back into the stem of the tree or into the branches of the tree. So all this stuff's happening here in the final ripening stage of this fruit. And in about four to five days, maybe six days, depending on the weather, this will be ready to be picked. So that's the thing, right? How long does it take to go from this green and hard stage when it starts to look like this to where it's now finally ripe? Or should I say, when it starts to look like this to when it's finally ripe, how many days is that? And that's what I've called the hang time. This is a term used in other fruits as well. But in figs, that's how I define it. And I've also called it the susceptibility window, okay? Now here, the average that that usually takes is about six to seven days or so, depending on the time of the year. Believe it or not, in like October, when it gets really cold outside, especially the nighttime temperatures, that can take from six to seven days, can go up to 10 to 12, even longer days. So the weather is really dependent on that. And because you guys out there who live in this super hot climate, the heat ripens these figs so quickly. I mean, so quickly. So instead of six or seven days here, you're looking at maybe one, two, or three days. And that's kind of the problem, is that some varieties will ripen too quickly. Some varieties don't like that, and they don't really fully develop their flavors. Maybe they have a really tough, hard skin to them. I mean, that's kind of the main thing there, is that you really want a fig variety in these warmer places like Arizona and Texas and California. You want varieties that ripen a bit slower. They have a longer hang time. And so that's the total opposite as it is here. And that could theoretically lead to a better quality more consistently. But generally the best tasting figs, like Black Madeira, Cold Doms, and the Adriatic figs, they're all amazing for your climate. And that's what you should stick with. Those are the best ones that are easily commonly found. They're going to be around forever because they're amazing when it comes to eating them. And I grow them here, and I love eating them here too. But there's nothing like figs in California or even in these hot, dry places. They just are better. And so we can't really compete, but we enjoy them. And that's the difference. That's how we have to think about it, depending on where we live. So I want to thank you guys for watching this. And for everybody out there that got to the end, I hope you learned something. I hope that some of you guys out there are understanding this content is meant to be long and educational and teach you guys all these little things. And I hope this will become something that people want to watch, almost like sitting down and watching a TV series in a way, or going through a podcast season, a season of a show. And so I've even created on YouTube, instead of a playlist, it's called a show. And these videos are now in that show. I'll put a link in the description if I remember. Thank you guys again. Hope to see everybody at the Alt House Arboretum. And probably after the Arboretum, I will be selling fig trees again on the blog. So just the end of this month. We're not that far away. Thank you guys. Catch you later. Be good, everybody.