Preventing fig trees from bearing fruit?

Hi all,

I wandered over from Breaktime so be gentle.

We live in a little house in San Diego and we have three fig trees in our back yard. One is quite large and the other two are what I would call medium sized.

Our problem is with the prolific nature of their fruiting. The large tree literally produces thousands and thousands of figs. We are not big fig fans, but we give lots away. The trees make an insane mess. There is a layer of splattered fruit under the trees every morning, even when we pick it up every day, which is difficult. Our dog eats them by the bucketful, but that just generates another thing to clean up. They also attract flies, which are already a nuisance in our neighborhood.

That being said, we love the trees. They shade about a third of our back yard and they are great climbing trees for our three young girls. We're just not sure how much longer we can take the mess. It makes July-October pretty unbearable...

Is there something we can spray them with to keep them from fruiting, similar to olive trees. This is fairly common here in Southern California.

Thanks for your advice,

- Kit Camp