Picked a bowl of figs today.

[saute86]

I picked a bowl of figs today. They are super sweet this year. My tree is having its best year to date. I been picking 1/2 to a gallon a day this week. I let my neighbor pick all he can reach across the fence. I picked all I could reach with a ladder. Probably still have a gallon on the tree that's ripe I cannot reach. The tree is loaded with green ones still. Tonight I am going dry a load in the dehydrator.

[Redge]

Man those look good, another couple weeks before they are ready here in oklahoma.

[prefers shiners]

those look almost as pretty as your box of sacs...........

[saute86]

Lol.....yea but I can fish year round. I can only get figs for a month. I put a tray in the dehydrator. They were so plump and over ripe I had to invert another tray over them to fit. I will dehydrate them at 135 for 24 hours. I prefer to eat them dried because they take on a candy flavor. I use the vine ripened ones that are about to fall off on their own.

[Tonykarter]

Your picture brings sweet memories rushing back. Grandma would send my cousin and I up to the tops of the tress in Beaumont when we were young and light, 4-10, to get the ones she couldn't reach from the ladder. She had 6-8 BIG fig trees. We'd pick the ones that looked just like that. She would have her paring knife with her in a pocket on her apron and peel about ever third one and toss it back up to us to eat, putting the rest in her apron. When she passed she had a mountain of Mason jar cases stored under her old-timey high beds, all full of homemade preserved fig jelly. We ate fig jelly for years. I miss you Grandma Pate. Still haven't found anyone who could hug me as good as you could. Saute, thank you so much for the memories you brought back. In the same manner that I smell the fragrance of a magnolia blossom from seeing its picture, I look at your fig picture and instantly their taste comes rushing back over more than fifty years. That, and the visage of the top of grandma's head down there as she peeled us a fig.

[saute86]

Sorry I jumped the gun and forgot the pics.

[saute86]

Your welcome. My grand mother is the reason I have the tree. I remember doing the same but I ate every third one I picked. My grand aunt use to make preserves with orange slices in it. Man it was the best.

[Tonykarter]

I've been saying for years that all I need are some stompings to get me started and living here in the Big Thicket they would take off like gang-busters. I'd have some fair sized trees of my own by now if I would have acted then. Charlie, the guy on the Cowboy Chevrolet commercials lives down the street. He's got some figs the size of tennis balls, but they don't taste as good as those in your pics.

[BuckeyeKdog]

Suggestion for a pole picker for those out of reach figs

A lot of sites have instructions for an apple picker made from a 2 liter soda bottle. They really do work, I made one and was able to pick several bushels of apples that I could not reach with a ladder. Earlier this year, I made a new one from a 20 ounce soda bottle for picking cherries and it worked like a champ. I bet you could make one for picking figs and easily pick those that are just out of reach, My cherry pole is on a 10' PVC pole and I could pick a couple gallons in minutes. Sure beats up and down the ladder

[saute86]

My tree is 18 years old and it has been producing more and sweeter figs every year. I have 2 satsumas, 2 kumquats, and a lemon tree the same age. I picked 3 60qt ice chests of satsumas and a 134 lemons last year. Kumquats are best in March when they start to drop. I had 2 apple trees, 2 Japanese plums, 2 blood orange trees, and 2 peach trees lost during rita.