This has been a heavy-producing years for my figs, which is the good news. The bad news is, every time I pick one, a swarm of little ants come running out the hole at the bottom! I'm not above opening them up, rinsing the invaders away and eating them, but I'd much rather have the fruit all to myself. I've thought of daubing melted wax on the green figs, but I don't know whether that would work. Any suggestions?

Thanks -- Christine

-- Christine (cytrowbridge@zianet.com), July 17, 2000

Answers

Many figs require a very specialised microscopic wasp to fertilise them. We won't go into what happens to the wasps and their larvae after that, but I did say microscopic, so you never notice them anyway. Anyone who thinks they're 100% vegetarian is fooling themselves. Point is, if you seal the end, those types of figs won't grow.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 17, 2000.

put tree tangle foot [ most garden stores should carry it] on trunk and ants cant cross it to get on to figs.

-- kathy h (saddlebronc@msn.com), July 18, 2000.

Tanglefoot is the answer! It's a sticky paste in a tube. Smear a 1 inch ring around the trunk of the tree to keep the ants from going into the tree. Prune any tree branches that are touching the ground or fence so the ants don't have another path into the tree. I use a garden hose to remove the ants stuck in the tree.

-- Green Jeans (greentmb@hotmail.com), August 07, 2001.

Most the figs produced in the US do not require the wasp for pollinization, since it isn't native here, and it has been imported only into a few areas. Most of the figs are self-pollinating, since all the sexual parts are self contained inside of the fruiting body.

An old trick for ripening figs faster is to put a dab of olive oil at the open end of the fruit -- this may also help exclude the ants, but wrapping the trunk with either duct tape (sticky side out) or Tanglefoot, and proping up any limbs so that they don't touch the ground (treat those with duct tape or Tanglefoot too) should help. I can't take credit for this -- I read it off of a fig site when I was researching growing them in pots.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), August 07, 2001.