Does anyone have any suggestions for good companion plants for figs? Suggestions for perennial N-fixers, living mulch plants, or anything with known beneficial interactions would be especially appreciated. I know one of my figs is a brown turkey, and I think the other is supposed to be a "Celeste".
Right now, they are heavily mulched with grass clippings, but I'd prefer a mulch that renews itself. The brown turkey is giving me a few ripe figs every day, which is nice, seeing as I didn't think either fig would survive being Katrinaed.
Does anybody else grow figs? TIA
~ True grits, more grits, fish grits and collards. Life is good, where grits are swollar'd.
Posts: 379 | Location: zone 8b, MS | Registered: December 22, 2003
I have a Black Mission fig, which grows in a large cutout in the middle of a brick patio. But the bricks have sand in between them, so the rain can filter down through them. Right now there's a couple of four o'clocks in the cutout, and in the winter there are nasturtiums. Other times it's just the compost mulch. The figs are just finishing up after giving us, family, and neighbors, hundreds of fruits.
According to the Sunset book "How to Grow Fruits, Nuts and Berries", fertilizing isn't always necessary with figs. If you do, make it once a year and don't overdo the nitrogen. I think I may have fertilized once in 17 years, but I always put in a thick compost mulch in the fall. The nasturtiums got in there by themselves one year, and come up way too thickly each fall, right about October. I have to pull out 2/3 of them. And because the tree shades them, they seem to fall prey to those awful black aphids very easily, at which point I take them out. There's usually a couple of months of flowers.
When my kids were little and I had just gotten divorced, I moved into a rented teeny little house in Venice. There was a huge fig tree in the back yard. It was probably as old as the house. We all used to climb it, me too. The sweet scent of the leaves in the summertime was great. And someone had put a swing set under/next to it, and we all used to swing. For many reasons it was a wonderful time in my life, and that scent brings it all back.
