Hi James,

The rains here have made a mess of my Celeste crop so far. Bloated, thin-skinned, and souring, and a few edible with a watered down taste. Even had one LSU Gold that split before it was completely ripe, so I picked it. GOOD.
Hopefully the rains are gone here for a few days and we'll have better conditions. My two older trees (Celeste) still have a heavy crop of immature figs and I'm hoping that drier weather and some heat will make them better.

Is crying allowed? Those pic are heartbreaking/

How about covering tree with heavy, clear plastic during heavy rains? Sun would come through but not rain. Just a thought. Maybe an A frame kinda cover. Out here in northern California, it pretty much never rains even one day between May and October, which is the entire fig season, so split figs just don't happen out here. Some of those figs look like the man eating plant in the movie "Little shop of horrors"("Feed me!!"). Sorry for your loss. I'd be miserable of that happened to my figs. FF

Fortunately, the rain was early enough in the season that only a few trees had figs ripening. My assessment:

Celeste: My in ground tree has as many unripened figs on it now as was lost due to the rains. I think as the area dries out, those should be fine. The two large ones in containers dropped (most) all of their fruit, but I am not sure if that is due to the rain or because I moved them last in December.

Kadota was the hardest hit crop in terms of percentage loss. When I left Houston 4 weeks ago, it was loaded with tight clusters of fruit. Last week there was only one fruit on the tree, and it was suffering from something resembling Blossom End Rot on tomatoes. Most of the tree had defoliated as well.

Black Jack: There were several fruit that had slit and fallen before the figs had started drooping or even softening. They were the first to split and were gone before it was dry enough to get the camera out.

Atreano: No ripe fruit, yet, but still had one split. There were about a dozen fruit on the tree when I was taking pics on Sunday, however, the tree is completely void of leaves. The tree has started producing new leaves, but I don't know what effect defoliation/refoliation (is that a word) will have on fruit production.

Genoa dropped most of its fruit and leaves, but was regrowing.

Figfarmer, the Celeste tree in my backyard is normally a closed eye fig. I don't think they split due to the amount of moisture that fell on them as much as the amount of water that was soaked through the roots. Houston had sustained some heavy rains for some period before I got there. The fruit at that time (about a dozen) were still very good (not great). The last week of rain really did it in.

Overall, I don't think the year is ruined. I might, however, not make it back to Houston before fig season is over. I tend to agree with Glenn. The season in the south is long, and some heat as well as drier weather will benefit the later ripening figs (so no crying, yet). I think that he, Yadda, and Mountainman (probably some others in TX, OK and KS) who will be able to better report on how the trees recover after such heavy rains early in the season.

~james

Well, I thought (hoped) that we were in for drier weather here in northern Louisiana. Needless to say, I was wrong. While we did have a few days with no rain, we've had showers most days and woke up this morning with heavy rains that have continued so far, and are forecast to continue for several days.
If we don't flood, I may have enough small figs to have some good ones later in the year.
I think this is the wettest I have ever seen it here during the "dog days" of summer.