Growing Figs in Cleveland
I absolutely love tropical fruits - especially the more exotic ones that you can’t purchase in Cleveland except for maybe a few weeks in the summer. In particular, there are few fruits better than fresh figs or lychees. I think about growing these fabulous tropical trees when I see new varieties of them coming into the market that can be grown in zone 6 or colder. I suppose plant development companies cannot wait for global warming to catch up to us, so they need to create varieties of bananas and figs that will grow here year-round. Is that so horrible? Maybe it would be best to grow figs here rather than buying them from stores that import them from CA or other far away places. After all, isn’t growing locally better for the environment? Could we, in the near future, be growing all sorts of tropical fruits, newly bio-engineered to withstand our winters?
Posted by Cynthia Druckenbrod
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July 1st, 2008 at 6:43 pm
After seeing ‘Brown Turkey’ figs at a local garden center, I checked them out a bit online. One gardener in the Columbus area has successfully maintained that fig for several years in his yard, with no tip dieback–but he does create a chicken wire surround and stuff material inside it to insulate the fig. (Shredded leaves, if I recall correctly.) I am very tempted to give them a try.
That said, I don’t know about bio-engineering plants. I’m all for the (un)natural selection and cultivation of hardier plants for colder zones, but when you start talking about making genetic changes to existing plant materials… there’s just something about it that makes me wince. Maybe I just don’t know enough about it?
August 14th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Ahh, I grew up on the West Side 20-30 years ago, and we had a fig in our backyard. Ours would die back to the ground each winter, but every spring, it would grow back. The figs would ripen late. Sometimes if there was an early frost, we wouldn’t have any. But, they were soooo good. We must have had a fig cultivar which was root hardy down to freezing.