Dama Negra

Higuera,fig, vijg. Dama Negra.

Planting hole 50x50x50cm. That is 125 liters of hard soil.

(Bosch hammer drill, as engineer Jansen cannot do without)

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll_de_Dama_Negra

Fig pruning

There's a huge and ancient breva fig (and this page) here, that has not been pruned in many many years. We are very happy with this tree because it offers both a lot of shade, and very nice figs twice(!) a year. But, if you do nothing eventually branches will break off, or you may lose the whole tree. And, you need to prune trees like this so they grow new branches, and new branches bear more and better figs. Luckily fig wood is rather soft, so with a pair of pruning shears and a wood saw it is not too hard to do, even for an amateur as engineer Jansen.

More than 20 branches were cut off, and the side shoots collected in a wheelbarrow as kindling. So far two wheelbarrows! Which makes our British neighbour with wood stove very happy.

I've seen pruned figs in the neighbourhood here, and even while I cut off 20 fat branches, I should cut off much more. Well, next year. I don't want to overdo this, as the tree bleeds a little bit (white sap) with some cuts, and there's a limit to what a tree can stand.

Breva and pomegranate cuttings

Breva propagation. (You can never have enough.)

English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breba
Español: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breva

And don’t believe the nonsense of the first crop not being good. They’re delicious.

This tree is my favorite tree, a real bonus to the house.

Fig and orange jam

There are starlings here. And more noisy types. And they all like figs. Lots of figs. More than half of my nice and black figs is already gone! I could "save" just about two kilos..

Cook half an hour with the zest of an orange, the juice, a lime, some extra sugar, a bit of vanilla sugar, pinch of salt (huh?) and a bit of cinnamon. Nice red jam!

Apparently this tree has two fruiting seasons, it is still full of small green figlets. I guess they are ripe in August, like last year, when if was full of fruit, too.

Figs

We always looked for a house with a big old walnut tree. Not many of those here, they don't like dry and hot. But figs do! There is quite a big one here. I noticed it last year August already, with all it's figs dropped off, and unpicked, and a thick sweet scent like Pedro Ximenez, if you get my drift.

Fig season starts NOW. All of a sudden there are a lot of figs, that were really green last week, turning dark! And they are very good. Quite unlike the fresh figs in The Netherlands. I always found them rather mwah, nothing much.

It isn't easy to judge a fig's ripeness, but we'll study it carefully the coming days.

Meanwhile, this is appears to be a special tree, as other figs around here have no ripe fruit at all!