Summary
Description: A very vigorous plant that tends to produce suckers from the base of the trunk. Extra-large, deep black fruit with excellent flavour. Grew poorly in 5-1-1 but loves coconut husk chip soil medium. Very intolerant to cold.
Breba Crop? No
Main crop taste? Delicious! Honey, sweet, figgy, really good.
Main crop appearance? Deep purple to black exterior, dark red interior.
Problems? Cold sensitive. Rust.
Overall plant rating 9.5/10
The Plant
I bought my Black Genoa from Daleys in January 2013, along with my White Adriatic and Brown Turkey.
On arrival the plant looked like it had seen better days.
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| Black Genoa, after re-potting into 5-1-1 a day after receiving from Daley's |
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I had explored the garden web forums for a suitable potting media, and had settled on 5-1-1. After a month however the plant looked worse than when I got it!
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| 28 days later - 3rd March 2013 |
As I was having similar problems with my other trees, I transferred into a coconut husk mix at first opportunity, as soon as it went dormant, and it woke up in the spring of 2013 looking great.
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| 9 October 2013 |
My Black Genoa breaks bud later than almost all my other figs, and is quite easily cold damaged. On October 19 we had a deep frost, and many leaves on my Black Genoa were killed. My other trees were fine.
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| Frost damaged leaves 19 October 2013 |
By December it was though nothing had happened, and Black Genoa was proving itself to be very vigorous, sending out several suckers from the base of the plant.
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| 18 December 2013 |
The Fruit
My Black Genoa began to ripen its first fruit by the end of January. These fruit were deep black, and the largest of all my plants.
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| 29 January 2014 |
I picked this first fruit a little too early in my eagerness. However the taste was still very good to excellent!
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| Could have used a few more days! |
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| Very tasty! |
Perhaps the best thing about the Black Genoa was the size of the later fruit. It produces, by far the largest of all my plants.
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| Ripe this time - Apple for scale! February 22 2014 |
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| Coin for scale |
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| Juicy, delicious! |
Black Genoa continued producing fruit into March
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| 18 March 2014 |
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| More large fruit! |
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| Sticky dark pulp. |
Problems
Apart from its frost and cold sensitivity, Black Genoa was somewhat affected by rust toward the end of the season. Sadly I don't have a picture to show the extent, but will update this year!
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