Chicago Hardy
Also known as Hardy Chicago, Bensonhurst Purple
The dependable cold-climate fig: dark purple skin, strawberry-red flesh, and a tree that regrows and still fruits after a hard winter.
- Skin
- Purple to deep mahogany
- Flesh
- Strawberry red
- Size
- Small to medium
- Flavour
- Sweet, berry-forward, light tartness at the skin
- Ripening
- Main crop from late summer into autumn
- Best use
- Dark fig jam, fresh eating
Chicago Hardy is the variety most people in the north-eastern United States meet first, and for good reason. The tree tolerates cold better than most common figs and, even when the top growth is killed back, it tends to regrow from the roots and ripen a main crop on the new wood in the same season.
The fruit is small to medium, with skin that darkens from mahogany to deep purple as it ripens and flesh that is strawberry-red at the centre. The flavour is sweet with a clear berry note and a little tartness at the skin. In our Rockaway Park garden it is the backbone of the dark fig jam.
Origin
Reported to have circulated among home growers in the Chicago area and New York; its exact origin is not well documented.
Crops and growth
- Breba crop
- Light or none in most seasons; the main crop is what matters
- Main crop
- Reliable on new growth, which is why it recovers after winter dieback
- Cold tolerance
- High for a common fig
- Growth habit
- Vigorous, bushy; easily kept as a multi-stem shrub