Trying to Grow a Fig Tree

Of my thousands of food photos, this is one of my favorites. It’s of my grandson, Austin, offering me a fig that, he grew in his backyard.

I know it isn’t fig season, but it is planting time. I have long hoped to “sit under [my] own vine and fig tree,” as did the prophet Micah. But so far, I haven’t “fig-ured” out how to grow the fruit tree in these parts.

Not That I Haven’t Tried

My friend Lucy gave me a fledgling fig a few years ago. She even planted it for me. But, alas, it didn’t make it through the winter. When I mentioned that my grandson, Austin, had good luck growing a Chicago Hardy variety in St. Louis, Lucy tried again.

This week in anticipation of Mother’s Day, she replaced the lost fig tree. She planted it near a stone shed, where the tree gets full sun and partial protection during the winter. What’s more, I can keep an eye on it from my kitchen window. Thanks, Lucy and Robert!

“The Little Fig That Could”

My new fig tree has a fine setting overlooking the farm.

I think this variety is just what I need. One nursery called the Chicago Hardy a “fig-yielding machine, that can withstand some of the coldest winters Mother Nature can dish out.” My grandson said his tree dies back to the ground every winter and regrows each spring and that it bore fruit the year after he planted it!

I’m asking everyone who passes by the “The Little Fig That Could” to look at it and whisper: “Grow!”

Even plants need encouragement.