I grown Brown Turkey figs and at one point also had Celeste and Chicago Hardy, but lost those two younger trees in a very severe drought year, probably in 2005 or 2006, when the well-drained soil they need apparently drained too well even though I thought I was watering enough to keep them alive. I was gone to wildfires a lot in the spring/summer of 2006 and probably didn't water them as well as they needed in that time frame. It also is possible they actually got too dry in the winter of 2005 when our "winter" fire season started in October 2005 and didn't really end until the next year. Or, if those figs survived those two years, then I lost them in the drought year of 2008. All the drought years run together in my memory as time marches on.

As long as you choose a fig variety that is cold hardy enough for your area and water them well enough to survive the frequent droughts, they grow great here. They do need well-drained soil. They often freeze back to the ground, but will regrow quickly and set fruit the same year. In the years they do not freeze back to the ground, they produce two crops per year. If they freeze back to the ground, they often only produce one crop.

If you have burrowing, root-devouring varmints like gophers and/or voles, figs seem to be their favorite fruit tree here at our place, so I have to plant them in below-ground hardware cloth cages to protect the roots. I learned this the hard way when I went out to the back garden one day and one of the fig trees back there was leaning crazily to one side. The reason it was leaning was because voles had devoured about 90% of its roots in July. I immediately dug it up (the digging was easy since most of the roots were gone and there wasn't much left to dig), potted it up into a molasses feed tub planter filled with a soil-less potting mix, pruned off about 90% of the topgrowth to make up for 90% of the roots being gone, and grew it on for the rest of that growing season in almost full shade. It recovered just fine, but I decided to keep it in the container so I could compare its performance with that of the in-ground fig tree.

The in-ground fig tree is growing in very well-drained sandy-silty soil in an area somewhat exposed to wind. It often (almost always) freezes back to the ground in winter and/or spring, but resprouts and grows quickly. It is a Brown Turkey fig. In the years that it refreezes to the ground, it only produces one crop. The containerized fig also is a Brown Turkey, and it never has frozen back because I have the option of dragging it into the greenhouse during very cold weather so that it doesn't freeze back. I cannot leave it in the greenhouse all winter though because the kinds of figs we grow here do need exposure to some cold weather in order to fruit well. Because it never freezes back, it sets fruit early and produces two crops per year.

People in our climate often have the best success with figs grown on the south side of a building because it gives them a protected microclimate that helps them tolerate some fairly cold weather. I do keep my containerized fig on the southeast side of our detached garage and it is very happy there year-round.

I would like to have more fig trees, but I just never get around to buying and planting more of them. It always is on my To Do list, but I never seem to get it done.

Okiedawn, thank you for all of the good information. I definitely am putting that on my list and also researching what time of year is the best time to plant. My daughter is going to Ministry school in California and has one in her front yard that is huge and I'm so jealous of it!

You're welcome. I'd be jealous of that too. I have relatives in the San Diego area who grow oranges right in their yard and their very mature trees are also huge. I am so envious of people who can grow citrus fruits in their yards!

Figs