I am contemplating planting 2-4 cold hardy figs (possible varieties: Chicago Hardy, Atreano, Ronde De Bordeaux & Malta Black) in my backyard. I have never grown figs before, but love them when ripe off the tree. I am in zone 7a, and am running out of prime sunny spots in my yard. My questions are:
1-How many hours of sun per day do fig trees need? Is it the typical 6-8 hours?
2-Do figs do well in pots?
3-Any other tips?
I’m not sure about your area, but figs fruit just fine with around 5 hours of light here east of the DFW, Texas area(zone 8a).
Figs do amazing in pots. I used to have all my figs(13 of them) in pots and each fruited well. The pot will control the eventual size.
Keep them watered well during summer or they will drop fruit/leaves if your sun is anything like mine. Pots are going to need watered just about every day during peak summer temps. Stay on top of a good fertilizer schedule. I used 10-10-10 Osmocote with good results.
In Delaware, as much sun as possible.
What container size do you recommend? How about soil for the containers?
Also, do you fertilize once a year? In the spring? And how much fertilizer?
On the fig sites some of the users developed very complex feeding schedules and such. I feed mine at least once a month during the growing season. I use Plant -tone, Garden-tone, whatever I have handy. I have used Foliage Pro, and dynamite too All work well. For containers slowly move them up. I plan to stop at 20 -25 gallon and root prone from there. I start them in small pots, once they make it to 5 gallon, I usually go up by 5. So 5 gallon to 10 to 15 etc. These are trees, but can be started and even kept in rather small containers. I make my own soil and probably none of us here use the exact same thing. I make all my potting soils myself.
Here in Michigan I give my figs about 8 hours sun, some get more.
Drew,
Your fig plants look great… Thanks much for the information sharing. As a follow up, why do you start them in small containers and gradually increase the container size, as opposed to starting them in the final size container? Also, do you find the taste, sweetness and ripeness of container grown figs comparable to ground grown ones? Personally, I love them jam ripe, less than that is not worth it for me.
In larger containers the small plants often become too wet, as the soil takes longer to dry. True for any plant. So root rot is of concern. I would not want a super fast draining soil, even though it would be a huge benefit for small plants, once larger I would be worried the plant is not getting enough water. . Figs like to be moist, even watering prevents splitting of figs. Luckily figs are very forgiving and can take a lot of abuse and still produce.
I think in ground produces better figs, but it is possible to produce very good figs from container plants.I don’t really have much of a choice. In ground requires drastic protection here. I may decide to do it for one or two plants, but I could not do it for dozens of plants. An in ground plant that dies to the roots every year in my opinion is not going to produce as tasty of figs compared to a 5 year old container tree.
Yes I like most figs super ripe, It depends on variety some I like early ripe too. In general though I let them hang as long as possible.
You also start plants in smaller pots to encourage them to branch. Lots of plants will grow straight down as deep as they can go before branching. You want them to get to the bottom and fill out the container, then repot.
