Fig school
Everything about figs, from stick to fruit.
Eleven short lessons on a plant that has been confusing people for eleven thousand years. What a fig is, why some need a wasp, which ones don’t, and how to turn a cutting into a tree. No exam. One quiz, optional.
Did you know
A fig isn't a fruit. It's hundreds of tiny flowers that bloomed inside a closed room.
The lessons
In order, if you like order. Any order works.
- 012 min
What is a fig, actually?
It isn't a fruit. It's a party of flowers that closed the door behind them.
Read the lesson - 023 min
The four kinds of fig
Common, Smyrna, San Pedro, caprifig — sorted by one question: does it need a wasp?
Read the lesson - 034 min
The fig wasp: a love story two millimetres long
She has one job, one door, and no way back out. It's been working for 60 million years.
Read the lesson - 042 min
Caprifigs: the fig you don't eat
The goat fig. Three crops a year, none of them for you, all of them for the wasp.
Read the lesson - 052 min
Breba and main crop
Two harvests, one tree, and the pruning mistake that quietly deletes the first one.
Read the lesson - 063 min
Choosing a variety
How to read a variety page like a grower, and match a fig to the place you actually live.
Read the lesson - 072 min
The fig variety chart
Forty-odd varieties, their type, and whether they carry a breba crop — filter it, search it, argue with it.
Read the lesson - 083 min
Rooting fig cuttings
From a stick to a tree in six weeks. The only way to fail is to be too kind to it.
Read the lesson - 093 min
Air layering
Grow a rooted tree without ever cutting the branch off. The tree does the hard part.
Read the lesson - 103 min
Growing, ripening and harvest
Sun, restraint, and the art of picking a fig at the exact moment it gives up.
Read the lesson - 113 min
The fig glossary
Every strange word a fig person says, in one place. Ostiole is the one you'll use to show off.
Read the lesson
Test yourself
Seven questions, no stakes
One per big idea. Get one wrong and the answer tells you which lesson to blame.
Question 1 of 7
Botanically, a fig is…
Homework: grow one.
Every variety we sell is a common fig — no wasp, no fuss, any state.