SEASONED fig farmer Rod Dalton says he made the switch from "thirsty” avocados to the forbidden fruit after a tip-off from a friend.

It was the early 2000s and the Grantham Orchards owner was predominately growing stone fruit as well as avocados and a few oranges. During the drive out to his orchard, Mr Dalton reminisced how he and his mate, John Bishop, would go on flying fox shooting expeditions.

"We used to have a lot of trouble with flying foxes on stone fruit,” Mr Dalton said.

"John, who was also a farmer, would come over regularly and we would shoot flying foxes for a couple of hours of a night.

"He said to me once 'Mate you should look at figs'... at the time I was struggling with avocados. Theywere a great crop to grow, but not here, it's a bit too cold and they need a lot of water and our water supply wasn't good enough to grow avos long term.”

Mr Dalton said making the switch was a good decision, and he now grows somewhere between 1500 to 2000 fig trees in amongst his early peaches and nectarines and persimmons on his 20 hectaresof orchard.

"I've been growing them for about 14 years now,” Mr Dalton said.

"Figs yield well and the market is generally fairly good.”

He revealed that an advantage of figs were they could be grown from a simple cutting.

"We can produce our own trees with this process,” he said.

"Fig trees are deciduous, so in the winter they go dormant. So you can take a cutting, put them in a pot and you will grow a new tree.

"And probably within 12 months you will get fruit and within probably two years you pretty well get a full crop.”

Mr Dalton explained the trees stop producing fruit when the first winter frost comes.

"The frost burns the leaves,” he said.

In summer, harvest time gets busy at Grantham Orchards, with fruit pickers working six days a week to ensure the sweetest, most juicy figs end up on the shelves.

"We pick that often to get the quality we want to produce,” he said.

"We want the fruit to be on the point of ready to eat.

"Sometimes when I see them in the supermarkets they are picked way too early and you know if people try and eat them they won't have the flavour.”

"We will harvest from Christmas time, and we are still harvesting now and it's mid-May.”

The trick to growing figs, Mr Dalton revealed, was to keep them growing.

"We cut our trees back in winter time in winter time and then in spring when they start to shoot, we keep them growing them,” he said.

"Because every time they put our a leaf they put out a fruit.

"In the year they will produce a branch that's two to three metres long and every time it puts a leaf out when it grows.

"For a fig flower to become fruit, depending on the time of year, takes about 10 to 12 weeks.”

Mr Dalton offered some advice when purchasing figs.

"People need to ensure they are getting good quality by choosing a fig with morecolour, so they will be sweet and juicy. If they get them and they are dry and soapy, they've been picked too green,” he said.