Did you Z6 in-ground fig growers wrap / insulate your figs yet?
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I just did mine a few days ago. I’m not that experienced though, so far I’ve failed to keep the top of the plant alive the last 2 years.
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What varieties are you wrapping? Do you utilize the standard burlap and tarp wrappings?
That is very discouraging.
I’m going with potted figs as a plan B and lotto tickets as plan C. (For a bigger property and fig greenhouse.)
I’m old and don’t travel anymore, so hopefully I can take care of the pots if the inground figs don’t work out. 3 out of 6 of the inground figs were destroyed by small animals this season. So, I only will winterize 3 of them.
This is first time winterizing them for me. Using burlap and giant black pots over them. If it does not work, then that is all I’m willing to do for them and will put all efforts in the pots.
Pots will be 10 - 15 gallons and buried partially in the ground. Then winterized in garage and moved periodically outdoors if it is somewhat mild. I’m ordering a few large dormant figs now to see how I do with the winter garage thing. I’m way behind with figs, so need to speed up the learning process. I could never do potted figs as I’d be gone for 10 - 15 days and the potted figs would be a mess in the heat un-watered.
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Just common figs inground. Brown Turkey and VdB. Animals destroyed Chicago Hardy and Olympia.
Using burlap and a giant black plastic pot. No brick wall. I picked up lots of used burlap for free from Rural King. Maybe a 3-foot-tall stack of it. They were throwing it out. Smelled of strong burlap smell, so washed it all in the driveway. Smells about 85% - 90% better. It is recycled cacao bean sacks from Ghana.
If it does not work for winterizing figs then will trash it and have more room in my small shed.
What I had tried last year was to cover them in burlap and some straw, then put a bucket over them (they are very small, maybe 8 inches tall). All 4 died to ground over winter, but 2 came back up from the roots this year. This time I tried bending them down to the ground, then several layers of cardboard, a small amount of burlap, a bunch of straw, then a concrete blanket, then some mulch on top of that. I think if this doesn’t work I cant pull it off. Unless I lose to something other than the cold I guess. Mine are Chicago Hardy and another unknown fig I was sent that clearly is not the Peter’s Honey fig it was supposed to be.
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I am not sure but the strong smelling burlap might have hidden the smell of your figs to animals that eat them.
I have heard that wrapping the trunks in aluminum foil inside your wrappings may help deter animals from debarking your trees.
Since you have pretty heavy animal pressure, do you grow anything for them to eat instead of your fruit plants, like a trap crop?
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I don’t exactly wrap my figs… I tie branches close to each other, surround them with a fence and fill the fence with leaves keeping a baited poison rodent station at the base. This needs to be done before temps fall into single digits, but I do it around now when temps haven’t fallen below 20F. You lose your breba crop when you do it this way, but that crop is not really very useful here- a few foamy, subpar figs.
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I’m putting mine in the garage today as some cold nights are coming. I have a couple in ground but I just let them die to the roots.
Man I got some great figs this year. One new seedling produced green fleshed figs. They are sweet but otherwise tasteless. I probably will cull the plant, I’ll give it one more season. I need to get rid of a few dozen. I have way too many. Also this year Col de Dam Noir fruited. The figs were both large and medium in size. The flesh was such a dark red it’s almost black.
Tremendous flavor. Violette de Sollies also fruited for the first time. Wow the figs are huge and the flavor is spectacular. Great fig but not that easy to grow. It took a few years to fruit.
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You can get more figs from trees killed to the ground by raising the ground with a wheelbarrow of soil or compost before winter. They produce earlier in the season from already established wood than what the roots generate… as you probably know.
I can only eat so many figs so spread of harvest is important. In spite of my tip, having a couple trees killed to the ground while protecting others can be an asset via late ripening figs. I have one killed to the ground but with the ground raised about 8" that suppled me with good figs until Nov.
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This thread reminded me about my in ground fig experiment. Ive had good success burying it rather than wrapping it, though I forgot to do anything last year and it had to reparout from the roots. You can see the figlets in some of my pictures, nothing managed to ripen this year.
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That’s a good idea about the soil Alan. I bury them in leaves but soil is even better.
I got all my figs in the garage today. That wind is cold today!
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I tried bending a fig branch and it broke off at the base. It was not dead either. Guess you have to work slow over rime to get them down to the ground.
Yes, have had lots of mislabeled fruit trees over the years. Usually from big box stores. Coop is pretty good with getting what they say it is.
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Impressive collection! Where do you keep the pots during growing season? Are they in 1 local or all around the house?
Is 8" normally what you do for height rise?
A trick you can do for sweetness is to slice the fig in half and sprinkle with some sugar. But if you got lots of figs, you don’t need to be a scrounger like us fig-poor growers that covet every fig we can find.
All over in front and back.
I keep many in the driveway. At peak I had about 130 plants. I think I’m down to about 70 now.
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I just took that out of my head. You can raise it as high as you want… the point is to save some above ground tree so you don’t have to wait so long for a killed to the ground fig to form fruit. In my zone, sometimes the figs don’t ripen when killed down to the roots.
Incidentally, trees growing in the ground are generally more productive than potted trees- not that it matters if you grow as many potted trees as Drew. He also does a great job of managing them… most of the potted trees I see don’t get watered or fertilized enough. In ground growing is more generous when involving that kind of neglect.
This is my first go at wrapping a fig tree. Last year this Chicago hardy was small enough to bend and bury. I pruned it back to 3 ft, tied the shoots together, packed leaves around the base, wrapped in burlap, wrapped in a tarp, and topped with a planter. Bring it on, old man winter.
I am in zone 7b southern TN and I usually cut my CH fig back to short stumps and protect those over winter… and do that first week of December.
We have had 3 or 4 light frosts (28F-32F) and all leaves have dropped. One more in the forecast this week.
Its about time here.
PS a bale of straw has a R factor of 30+.
A wide base in contact with the heat source (the ground) helps too.
TNHunter
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