Another winter of yuck?

Now we're heading into another winter of questionable weather.  These fig plants have been through a LOT over recent years. They rebounded mightily from last year's frozen torture but did not produce fruit....so no figgy pudding this Christmas!

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.

Summer of 2015

Remember how the rabbits took down the figs?  Pitiful. Well, we cut them down to the ground and new growth bounces back triumphantly, as shown in an earlier post. As a another verse to the sad song, last winter the 0 degree temperatures (a unique situation in these parts of Virginia!), the figs went down again. I had not protected them and sure enough, they froze hard and died. So, we cut them down to the ground again.

BUT, they have come back with a vengeance!  Lush and green and beautiful! I certainly intend to burlap them this year!  They look like last year so much, I'm using the same picture!  The rabbits are still happily chewy up other stuff in the garden, so they are still healthy and prospering, but the rabbit fencing works. Can't complain about that.

A Plan

I have a plan. I found rabbit fencing at my local Ace Hardware. It has smaller, horizontal openings at the bottom. Usually this is the area in other fences where rabbits tend to squeeze through and get into areas. I found this out last winter when I begin to obsessively observe the rabbits. There is a little dog yard for my sister's pet, and rabbits would slip into the yard area and when the dog would chase them, they'd make haste and be gone. However, in that fencing, all the openings were vertical rectangles of the same size...kind of the same shape as a rabbit's body when stretched out and running.

I have put up some of this rabbit fencing for the dog yard now and I can see how a rabbit would have a harder time getting in and out. The horizontal openings at the bottom are narrow.

So, the plan is to put a rabbit fence up from one side of the house, across the bed where the figs grow, to the other side of the house to include the dog yard. More on that later once the job is done.

Things are looking up!

It's been a rainy, and productive summer so far. The fig trunks were cut down to the ground on Memorial Day when it became clear nothing was going to grow, even after the pruning. Immediately, sprouts began bursting from the base. I am left to think the root ball is so established that I will one day have figs again! Have a look at this growth since June 1st!

Still hopping around the figgy garden!

Baiting the trap, that's the quest for the days as we move into spring and watch rabbits enjoying the warmer days and lush vegetation in our yard and figgy garden. Chickweed is a favorite, as are dandelions.  Many online sources say to use greens and peanuts as bait. That got us a squirrel. Another sources said to use apples and spray the trap with apple juice....which got us ants and a bunch of rabbits sitting around the trap, twitching their nostrils and staring at the trap.

We've moved the trap around the property, but I think that's done nothing other than confuse everyone. They tend to linger within the blackberry rows. The trap should probably be placed in there, kept there from day to day with fresh bait of chickweed and some apple bits. In addition, I bet the shiny trap metal should be camouflaged so it's not so glaringly a TRAP, you know?  If it's shining, and changing positions, and has ants crawling all over it -- no wonder the rabbits are laughing their behinnees off!