New fig planting method

It could have been dumb luck and to do with the difference in varieties, but last week something amazing went through my mind and after searching on the net couldnt really find real info about it:

Im a passionate fig grower and currently have 4 variaties in my backyard. Most of them grown from cuttings. One of my cuttings got molested by my dog after transplanting into the soil, it was basically forced back to its roots in during summer. It sended up a fresh green shoot that remained at a low height till next season.
Now we are two years later and this particular cutting outgrew the other by double the size, still heading up.

My question/suggestion is

Could hardwood fig cutting beeing slowed down because of beeing… Hardwood? So would it be a good idea in general to forcefully slaying transplantable fig cuttings?


Non “treated” fig cutting 2,5 years old, 1 meter



“Treated” fig 2 years old, 2.20 meter

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Here I find cuttings from older trees(or older branches) do take much longer to graft or root cuttings. Fresher ones always take fast.

there are too many other confounding variables, even if they were all the same variety the location the cutting is taken from on the tree can have a big impact on vigor

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Fig tree growth is highly variable. Don’t read too much into any differences. If you grow multiple trees of the same variety started in the same way, results can vary widely.

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This has definitely been my experience also.

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I do found variable growth in figs that are planted the same way, yet here I can see a big difference in growth ( cuttings come from same part of the stem, same native soil). The one that has been forced to come up with a fresh green shoot, grows up to 4 times as big as the one that is left as a hardwood cutting where new growth has to come from that hardwood. Both cutting where about the thickness of a permanent marker. The “hardwood” cutting has fattened a little. The “treated green shoot” one almost reached the thickness of red bull. Ill make a proper experiment out of it next spring! Gonna take 20 fig cuttings and treat half of them.

I think even on figs there is wood that is more vegetative and wood that is spurry on the same tree, although both will make fruit. The vegetative wood simply puts more energy into new growth than more spurry wood. What is confusing is that both can be first year wood. The botanical explanation of this wood (ha-ha, would) be interesting.

At any rate, perhaps the difference in growth of cuttings lies in this. The question is how to encourage a slow growing cutting to change its focus. If an established tree is girdled by mice or killed by frost, return growth tends to be very vigorous- I think without exception.

I had one such tree get girdled last winter because the mice had finished the bait I had in the bait station under the leaf shelter I made for the tree- new voles once the bait was gone came that completely girdled the tree. I decided to use a single shoot to create a single leader tree which reached 8’ before I topped it. It bore a decent crop of late figs. They are still ripening now, but are very dry.

I repeatedly pinched back competing shoots which stopped growing much and became almost pure spur wood with figs that didn’t ripen until about 2 weeks ago, with many dryig up before that.

I think a singe trunk tree will be easier to wrap for winter.