Should I put Brown Turkey fig outdoors in early spring to give it chill hours?
OK. So I impulsively bought this Brown Turkey fig, and potted it even though I live in the Southern Rockies and the tree has no chance outdoors.
Last year I left it outdoors in late fall until the leaves fell off and it had accumulated some cold hours. No drastic temps though. It began leafing out in January. When I put it outside after frost, the leaves looked kinda sunburned, as if they had adjusted to lower light levels indoors.
This year my plan was to put it out in early spring, blow all the leaves off through the cold, get the chill hours and have leaves that are only used to outdoor light levels. Only now it is beginning to push new growth. It all seems very unfair or something.
Brown Turkey only requires 150 hours of chill. That usually means “zero” in practice. But I don’t really know.
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I have brown turkey in the ground in zone 9a. They get irrigated, but otherwise no protection at all. If we are talking my understanding of chill hours being between 32F and 45F then mine over the years have gotten between 50 and 400 probably. Coldest temps they have seen is probably 25F. They drop their leaves every Winter. They started leafing back out a few weeks ago. They produce huge crops of brebas in early Summer, and a 2nd, lower quality crop in late Summer. D
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Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but since F. carica will fruit in the tropics, it presumably requires no chill hours. Whether or not there’s some difference among cultivars in this regard is beyond my limited knowledge.
If it were mine, I’d just let it continue to grow and then gradually get it used to outdoor light levels (putting the plant out in the shade and only gradually reintroducing to progressively longer periods of full sun) as the spring warms up. And if I didn’t get fruit this year, I’d repeat last year’s procedure—that is, letting it go dormant in fall, which should fulfill any limited chill requirement this cultivar might have. I would think setting it back by exposing it to dormancy-inducing temps in early spring would make it unlikely to ripen fruit this year in any event—or perhaps only very late fruit of lower quality. A very early indoors start ought to give you a leg up in your colder zone; moreover, whether or not it fruits this year could provide a definitive answer on the question of chill hours!