Plant · P-423

Fig

Ficus carica

Fig crops reliably wherever winters are too mild for stone and pome fruit, since it needs no winter chill at all to set fruit. A long warm season brings two harvests from one plant - an early crop on last year's wood, then a main crop on new growth - and if a hard freeze kills the top, the plant simply regrows from the base and fruits again. Birds compete hard for the ripening fruit, and both the milky sap and half-ripe fruit are skin irritants that blister in sunlight, so pruning and picking paths are best kept away from where people brush past.