If you've followed along with Gandy's Garden in the past, you know Jim Gandy spent a lot of time creating barriers to keep deer from the garden. Deer are abundant around News 19 day and night, and they're bold enough to eat anything. My goal this year was to find a few fruit trees that deer won't bother. I created a section of the garden dedicated to the big experiment.
The deer resistant garden is in it's first phase, and I have a tropical fruiting banana, a pindo palm, and a loquat. These three plants make edible fruit and for the past 2 months haven't been touched by deer.
One week ago, I added a new addition to the deer resistant garden, a fig tree. Most information online claims that deer don't bother figs. It sounded like a fig tree was exactly what our deer resistant garden needed!
Figs and family go hand-in-hand for me. I grew up in New York City which is close to the northern limit for fig trees. Regardless, hundreds of gardeners have gigantic, beautiful figs covering their tiny New York backyards. My grandfather spoke about the fig tree he had in Brooklyn growing up, and I planted several for my parents. During a recent visit, I decided to take one of the smaller fig trees (sorry mom and dad) back home to South Carolina to try out at News 19's Gandy's Garden. Imagine going through airport security with a giant plant. I had many stares, but I felt it was worth the effort.
It turns out, the deer that roam around News 19 love figs! They ate the leaves almost right away, but then left it alone for a few weeks. The leaves started to grow back, but the deer returned and took all the new leaves. They even bit off a piece of the branch. I was shocked! It will take a long time before these deer are granted "fig"giveness.
If I were to speculate why the deer might had decided to chew our fig tree, I'd say the recent drought could be limiting their food source. Nearly 7% of South Carolina is in a "severe drought" and those numbers will likely rise with sunshine and 90-degree heat forecasted into early October.
With this experience I do NOT recommend growing fig trees in deer prone gardens without additional protection. Maybe my luck will turn around in the spring. Stay tuned!