At Last!! A Harvest of Bounty!

Oh my, oh my... it's been a bountiful harvest of figs this year!  Sweet, abundant, and ever yielding. We just keep picking and picking and eating and then picking some more. The fridge is filling up, the freezer is filling, and we're enjoying filling up ourselves!  What not to love?  It's been 3 years of rabbits and snow and one thing after another....but YUM!

YUM!  There's no other way to describe the bounty and edible joy!

Spring 2017

A little die-back, but overall
the bushes are strong!

The summer of 2015 produced a LOT of foliage as the plants rebuilt themselves from the ground. They had very little attention which makes me thing they must have a pretty strong root system by now.  This was confirmed the next summer, 2016, following a bitter cold winter and they had to start from the ground AGAIN because of the die-back. They produced a handful of figs, which I ate one afternoon while they were still warm from the sun.  Very satisfying, but hardly the harvest I look forward to for big batches of fig preserves. Folks, it's been 3 years since there have been enough figs to make the preserves you saw earlier in this blog.

Now, step forward to the spring of 2017!  The winter was mild...actually, there was no winter to speak of if truth be told. The bushes began to bud freakishly early and now I'm seeing full leaves and fruit. There has been a little die-back but not enough to warrant concern. This may be the year I take cuttings to propagate new plants to add to the mix!

The fruit buds are still small as you can see, but they exists and offer promise for the season!  The close up pictures of the buds show 3 figs.  This is happening all up and down the branches, unlike last year when the foliage was green and prolific but the fig buds were sparse.