PlantFiles: Common Fig, Edible Fig, Higo
Ficus carica 'Brown Turkey'

The tag on my plant says this:

Richly flavored fruit has purple tinged, mahogany brown skin. Has few seeds and is best eaten fresh. Tree is cold hardy. Once established, needs only occasional water. Fertilize 1-3 during growing season.


We'll see.

I have my Brown Turkey in a container. For the winter, I moved it into my unheated garage, watering it twice. So far it's doing great this year, growing vigorously, and getting started on its second crop of figs. Big, juicy figs. Yum!

Our 3 planted here near the coast in Delaware have done extremely well. They bore a few figs the first summer planted; several more the 2nd year, and have fruit on seemingly every joint, as I write this in the 3rd summer. They always seem to drop the spring fruits, but then bear heavily in late summer/fall.

I have just moved into a house in AL and this beautiful tree is growing heartily in my backyard. It brings fond memories of my childhood where my grandfather had one in AR. This tree is about 20' tall and just beautiful. I have small fruits appearing for the fall-bearing time but they seem small. I'm not sure how large they should be. I am happy to learn that I should mulch, but can you tell me with what? I love the way this tree looks, it 'feels' cool in the yard and I have seen a variety of songbirds flitting in and out of the dense foilage. I also love the thick furry-feeling leaves. If I can figure out how to harvest the fruit successfully that will be an added bonus!

Not stem hardy most winters, but roots seem very hardy. Can put on 4 feet of growth from roots when stems die back to within a few inches of the ground. Certainly still an option in zones 5 and 6 if you don't mind treating it as a perennial.

Brown Turkey figs make nice trees and are quite popular in here in Alabama. They have no major pest problems. The fruit takes longer to mature than other figs and splits when it rains. I personally think brown turkeys are kind of bland and the skin rough but they are okay.

Every summer as a child when we went to Jackson Mississippi we made turkey fig preserves in August. Now in CT (Litchfield) I've had a turkey fig tree (that I bought at HOME DEPOT!!!) survive through 2 winters. The first year, although well covered, it died off to the ground. The new growth produced figs that never had a chance to mature. 2003 was a cold wet summer in CT.

BUT the tree grew to 4' tall! So I created a frame with PVC to protect it from fall winds until the leaves fell off and then wrapped the whole thing in left over tar paper (from our roof) with a plastic bucket on the top. I heard this is what they do in Italy. I also threw about 2 bales of hay around the base of the wrapped tree.

It worked!!! I have new leaf buds!! It's back in it's frame to help it stay warm since late it's April and I'ts supposed to go down to 32 tonight...but I'm hopeful it will have time to grow figs that have a chance to mature!

I have this fig planted in the city, along a south facing brick wall of my home. We wrap it for the winter in a heavy paper bag filled with leaves. It has made it thru the winters without die back for the last few years and is doing well.

Although I had a lot of success growing them in Louisiana and south Texas, I have not been able to get them to grow in Tennesse Colony, Texas. They do flower.although you will normaly not see the flower, the fruit forms and the flowers are internal of the fruit. There is a small opening at the base of the fruit through which the polinating insects enter. If you slice an unripe fig open, while it still has the opening open you will be able to seee the flowers. although they are small and without petals. just stamens and pistles.

There is a huge Brown Turkey fig tree growing in my 97 year old Aunt's yard in South Georgia. This was originally her Parent's, my Grandparent's, home, and I believe this fig was planted by my Grandmother in the 1950's, as it has always been there during my lifetime. Every summer this ten foot tall tree, probably kept pruned by my Aunt's almost equally ancient yard man, is literally covered in the most delicious, medium sized figs, with a pink-red flesh and a dark purple-brown skin. They can be eaten fresh out of hand, or put up as a "preserve" in canning jars for later use.

I recently bought a small fig tree labeled 'Everbearing,' but the grower said this term is used interchangably by fig nurseries with 'Brown Turkey,' and the few dozen figs I got from this little tree this past Summer were exactly the same as the fruit from my Aunt's 'Brown Turkey' tree.

I also recently purchased a booklet about growing low-chill fruit trees in Florida, where I live in zone 8b, and it says that figs have been grown since Biblical times and will grow all over Florida from the Panhandle to the Keys, and "like limestone soils with a high pH of 7.0 or more" so they do well planted by the foundation of a house, which is usually more alkaline due to the leaching of concrete foundations, walkways, driveways, etc. In more Northern climates figs freeze back to the roots, but resprout vigorously again in the Spring. Older plants are more hardy and can survive 15F degrees or lower.

Figs bear in their first year after planting, and usually produce two crops, in the Summer and in the Fall. My new fig tree had some figs this past Spring and again in July, so I hope it lives up to its 'Everbearing' name. I planted it in a low spot in a perennial bed, surrounded by several types of water loving iris, including Louisiana iris 'Black Gamecock," and planted some sprouting garlic found in a grocery store close by its trunk as an insect repellent. Country folk, who often have their washing machines out in a shed, will usually drain their wash water into a bed of fig trees, as they are heavy feeders, and can handle the heavy phosphates found in detergents and also like a lot of water. Supposedly the only serious pest of figs is nematodes, but heavy mulch helps the tree roots resist them.

I recently attended a plant propagation session, and the speaker used some fig cuttings in his demonstration. He simply put the 6 inch cuttings in a sandy soil in a pot and put them under a mist system located under a protective screening, without even using rooting hormone.

'Brown Turkey' is the most popular fig tree in the South, and the fruit is absolutely delicious.

Figs grow and produce very well here. In the town I grew up in, figs and perssimons were really the only fruit trees around. However, a rust fugus often defoliates the fig trees prematurely. This can be avoided by using a foliar fungicide - but follow the directions closely! Some fungicides rely on toxic metals that can be harmful if ingested.

Michael Dirr in his Manual Of Woody Landscape Plants says that excessive cold will cause injury and it is best grown in Zone 7 and south. Dieback can occur further north but new growth will appear.