I’m in Pittsburgh and grow Smith along with a couple dozen others. I generally start shuffling the trees in and out April first and Im getting the first Smith figs at the beginning of August.
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Yes! I’d like to try… I have no idea if it will work either! I have enough outdoor space to try a few things. I’m also going to look at the data from my home weather station and see how many days I get that meet your criteria.
I see in your profile you’re “borderline 7a” - my zone is technically 7a on a map (I’m five miles from 6b) but for the 4 years I’ve lived here we had temps <0 F in winter. I’ve been keeping a chigago hardy, in the ground, alive, wrapped over winter. It was a good learning fig as I tortured it early on and it had a rough start.
My current plan is to look for some of the warmest unused spots (looking where snow melts… which right now is no where… ). I want to try a stepover fig and maybe a fig in a trench. And I want to try the cold frame thing. I’ll be careful to wait till I’m sure it won’t freeze later!
Yeah, I grew figs in the ground for many years, covering them very seriously in winter. But by 2020 my local deer population had expanded to the point where they decided that fig foliage is edible. My in-ground trees were in a location where I couldn’t easily fence them, so I turned exclusively to potted figs. I grow them inside a tall fence.
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