John, I agree with you on the Desert King; having grown several ‘other’s’ I’ve settled on ‘Desert King’ and ‘Brown Turkey’ as the safest bets for tasty figs and consistent production.

You say: “You could always graft desert king onto your Oregon Prolific…” – Have you grafted figs? I haven’t … maybe I should try, if just for the fun of it. But with 15 years of fig experience, I’d be leery to rely on that graft, due to their ‘rejuvenating growth habit.’ It’s taken nearly all-those-years for me to figure out how to maintain them. Perhaps it’s my method of allowing them to ‘clump,’ or send up multiple trunks - as opposed to treating them as a single-trunk ‘tree’ - that concerns me with the grafting advice.

A longtime friend and successful fig grower suggested I let them ‘clump,’ to keep from losing the entire ‘tree’ to an extremely cold winter – which I had, several times -- and was nearly ready to give up on figs! It’s worked great; as the largest limbs/trunks will grow and produce for around 5 years, I’ll allow a successive number of replacement limbs/trunks to develop and replace those too high to pick or prune. If I were to graft another variety to any of those limbs/trunks, it would only be a matter of time before that limb needed removing, or broke of its own weight and age.

Since figs grow easy from cuttings, perhaps starting, or planting another variety very near one another would work? They don’t need pollination (isn’t that wonderful!), and if you decided you liked one variety better than another, simply allow more of ‘those’ shoots (…limbs/trunks) to develop.

So, a question – and a suggestion <!-- s --><img decoding="async" src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->