Fig Tree (Ficus carica) LONGUE D'AOÛT

Common Fig - Variety 'Longue d'Août'

'Longue d'Août' is an extremely valuable, productive, and robust variety that has earned the popular nickname "Banana Fig" worldwide. It perfectly combines the exotic appearance of huge, elongated fruits with high toughness and weather resistance. It is a rewarding tree, particularly suited to warm wine-growing regions, where thanks to its genetic vigor, it produces a rich harvest of sweet figs until late autumn.

Common Fig (Ficus carica) 'Longue d'Août'

This is an old French variety, historically highly valued for its reliability and vitality. It is also known worldwide by the synonyms Banane or Jérusalem.

Main advantages of the variety:

• Unique fruit shape: Exotic, elongated shape of summer fruits weighing up to 180 g.
• Gourmet taste: Specific, honey-sweet flavor with a subtle banana undertone.
• Moisture resistance: High resistance of fruits to cracking and rotting during rainy weather.
• Excellent cold hardiness: Mature wood reliably withstands frosts down to -17 °C.
• Rich harvest: Very numerous and flavor-concentrated autumn crop.
• Self-fertility and vitality: The variety is parthenocarpic and overall very vigorous.

Detailed variety description: Plant

• Growth: Spreading and somewhat more vigorous. At maturity, it reaches a height of about 2.5 – 3 meters.
• Shaping: Depending on the chosen spring pruning, it can be very successfully grown as a compact tree with a trunk, but also as a wide, spreading, and heavily fruiting bush.

Fruits and flavor profile

• Culinary secret: The variety bears fruit twice a year and offers two visually and dimensionally different waves of harvest. Its specific feature is the banana tone when fully ripe.
• 1st crop (Summer / Breba): Ripens during July on last year's wood. The fruits are extremely large (120 – 180 g) and significantly elongated (resembling a banana). The green-yellow to brownish skin hides a light red, very juicy, and honey-sweet flesh with a captivating banana undertone.
• 2nd crop (Main autumn): Ripens from mid-August to September (in warm years until the end of October) on new shoots. The fruits are smaller (60 – 80 g), have a rounder shape, and darker skin color. This wave is usually significantly richer and very concentrated in flavor.

Growing characteristics and agrotechnics

• Pollination: The variety is parthenocarpic (self-fertile) and belongs to the Adriatic botanical group. Fruits develop without the need for pollination by the fig wasp.
• Resistance and requirements:
  • Moisture resistance: A huge advantage of the variety. Ripe figs do not crack and do not suffer from premature flesh rot even during prolonged rainy periods.
  • Cold hardiness and planting: Excellent (down to -17 °C). Plant 2 to 3-year-old trees in the open ground. In cooler locations, protect the trunk and crown with fleece until the trunk reaches a thickness of 6 – 7 cm.
• Agrotechnics and pruning (Tip for a richer harvest): Responds excellently to summer pruning. If you shorten the new green shoots to the 4th or 5th leaf in June, you will slow down wood growth and force the tree to direct energy into faster ripening of the autumn fruit wave.

Disadvantages of the variety:

• Pruning requirements: Vigorous and spreading growth requires regular pruning (especially in summer) to keep the tree in shape and promote the harvest.
• Later ripening: The autumn crop may ripen too late (October) in cooler areas (outside wine-growing zones) when the first frosts are already a threat.