So I’ve heard people talk about fig dieback after really cold winters and I think I’ll have it this year with my Chicago hardy. How do you know how far to cut it back? The tips look dark and dried but the trunk itself might still be okay.
Do I wait and see what happens? Or do I start cutting it back and examining how it looks? Is it possible that only the thin branches will die back or is it typical that the entire tree dies back to ground level?
I take a knife or any rough edge and start at the tip scraping the bark and moving toward the bottom. When you start seeing bright green, you’ve got live wood, and I cut everything above that point. Its actually a little hard to tell if you just cut it back when you are in live wood in when you aren’t- the bark scratch is easier to tell. Also, strange as it sounds, I find it extremely helpful to wet the tree or wait for a rain and then look at it. For some reason it much easier to look and tell whether the bark and tree is alive or not and where. You can see a green sheen on the wet bark that doesn’t show through when dry.
I’ve had large fig trees with some big diameter wood all die all the way to the ground. But more often it just kills all the small stuff and the tips.
Wait and see where it grows back strongly. You can’t tell at this point. Usually half dead branch tips grow but are overtaken by strong growth from less damaged wood down lower. You could leave both strong and weak and see if either bares fruit.
I was surprised last year that some trees woke up. What was “half dead” looked all dead to me early on, woke up slow and late. I left a few suckers just in case the original trunks collapsed, the damaged areas attracted ambrosia beetles but I think I killed them all. The trunks look like they might survive (the buds look better than last year) again but last year’s damage is more apparent now and I will probably prune them this spring to get rid of some of the old growths if the suckers survived.