My friend has a couple tall fig trees in large containers. For whatever the reason, the original seller trained the trees to be tall. The first scaffold starts at 3’ with the tree topped at 4’. The canopy goes to about 6’. With the pot, the trees go to about 7’. The main trunk is about 1.5" to 2" diameter. The trees are somehow old. Not sure the exact age. They are in good shape.
At about 7’, it is a lot of work to tie them and move to garage for storage.
Here I just wonder if it is worth to re-train the trees, or it is too much work. The first option is to layer at 1.5’ to 2’ above soil level. But it takes time for the large layers to thrive again.
The second option is to top the trees below the first scaffold and re-train new structures. It is not a sure thing that good scaffolds will come out of the top.
The last option is to plant the trees in ground and wrap it every winter. Then they are going to be real trees. We are in zone 6 in NJ. The trees look like a Flanders and a Brooklyn White.
If you enjoy the fig put in in the ground and wrap it. I have my best tasting/ best producers ( for my area) in the ground and go though the wrapping process. I keep many many others potted just for variety and more production. I have topped fig trees with much larger trunk diameters than that ( think 10 years of growth) and had good success with re training the scaffold system. You will loose out a year or two but it will recover quickly. If you decide to put it in the ground, I would still top it, I no longer fight with height or bending to wrap my figs trees in winter.
Dom
It is just a tough decision to make to top large and old trees. Sometimes I feel we could be better off start over again with smaller trees. That is more radical though.
It is a tough decision, I have changed the way I grew my figs many times over the years and had to make these tough decisions. I used to want ascetically pleasing fig trees, but the truth is, now I just want figs. In my climate, similar to yours, I now start scaffolding very low, to reduce height, and I prune to reduce width , I still find that in 5 or so years I need to start scaffolding “over” (or just butcher them )on some vigorous figs. My trees are wonky but they produce well and I protect them over the winter without killing myself.
