Our blackjack fig is finally kicking it into production. This is one of the very first fruit trees that we planted when we moved in five years ago and it was nothing but a stick at the time. Now its the size of a small bush, but it actually has handfuls of figs on it.
When I was young my best friend had a mature fig tree in her backyard and we’d spend hours after school sitting on our favorite branches talking about everything that had happened in school that day. There’s something magical about large fig trees, isn’t there? Down the street from our house is the Sonoma Garden Park, a community garden, which we love to stroll through. They have an entire fig grove which they hold lectures in the middle of. It’s amazing.
Last spring our fig tree had a baby. Part of one of it’s drooping branches got buried in the soil and sprouted roots. We clipped off this new sprout and potted it up. It’s even produced a fig! Expert gardeners would call that layering, we call it a miracle.
Some of my favorite things to do with figs are stuff them with goat cheese, wrap in procuitto and put in the oven for a bit to warm it up. Or even better, put them on skewers with thin slices of lemon in between, brush with a mixture of honey and lemon juice and grill. Oh, that’s delectible!
Drooling! Our fig (which we planted as just a wee stick as well!) has just started to produce this year and I am beyond excited about it. I’m going to try both of your favorite fig recipes 🙂 Between my son and I they don’t tend to stick around long enough to actually do anything besides eat them raw! I have a few branches hanging down into the dirt, I’m going to check them for roots.
Your fig recipes sound exquisite but I generally eat the sweet things before I get home from the farmers’ market. I’ve been keeping my eye on the trees at the community garden here though but I suspect I’m not the only one. I love the name of the fig – blackjack.