Fig varieties - London, Outdoors

[ChingfordHarry]

Hi

I'm planning some fig grafting for early next year and wondered if anyone has recommendations on varieties that taste good and would do well outside in East London (that's the one in England, not the one in South Africa).

I have a Marseilles Blanc, Madeleine des deux saisons and a Brown Turkey already, and a Brunswick in a neighbour's plot that I can take scions from. I'd be grafting onto the Brown Turkey (simply because it's the biggest and has most available branches). I'd be planning on buying scion wood from gb-online because I've had dealings with them before and had no issues (and they have a choice of > 40 varieties).

Any thoughts? Varieties like Panachee look nice but do they taste good too?

[TrixC]

I’ve not grown Panachee but I think that’s normally recommended for greenhouse growing in the UK. Two I’ve had success with outdoors are Violet de Bordeaux, which is also known as Negronne, and Excel.

[ChingfordHarry]

Thanks for this. Violette de Bordeaux sounds interesting, and you're right about Panachee, but given the summer we're having it might be worth a shot (especially with global warming). Still, I have room for a few to try (and there's no guarantee that my grafting will take - I have ~90% success with apples but have never tried figs before).

on a related note, the Madeleine des deux saisons appears to be something else, originally from a cutting brought back from Italy in the 1970's. Some detective work to do there...

[ChingfordHarry]

I've been trying to find out about "Excel" but unfortunately ~99% of the search hits refer to the popular spreadsheet program... what I have found out is that a parent may be Kadota, which is popular on the other side of the Pond, and that it's a yellow fig that seems to be worth growing.

Any ideas where to find it?