Coming late to the party here… I successfully wrapped figs for around ten years in a row and prevented dieback. There are probably some posts on here somewhere with pictures of my wraps. I used the aluminum insulated bubble wrap attached firmly to the ground on all sides. With thermometers inside it showed 20F warmer inside on the coldest days (the colder it is the wider the gap). This is simply being efficient about trapping the ground heat, no more no less.
One problem with regular non-insulated bubble wrap is it is clear so the sun comes in and bakes things on warm days and plants can wake up too early. The aluminum is doing the opposite, it is reflecting the sun. You are not getting as much sun warmth but in the end thats a good thing.
Anyway our buddy Mr. ChattyG seems to have missed this.
I’m very skeptical of AI, but appreciate that you post the responses. Its like getting an opinion from a “person” that does not “think” at all like I do… provides prospective. Also I find it fascinating.
My understanding is that dry wood chips are roughly half as effective as fiberglass, which is good. Wet materials are much worse. And the ground is an endless source of relative warmth. So if you use dry chips (or similar), the temperature below a 3-4" layer should remain well above 25 F. It would probably help if you cover the mulch with a waterproof material (e.g., black plastic garbage bag) to keep the mulch dry.
have 3 in ground, bush form, that i protected last night from the impending ~-10F temps. did them all slightly different:
pruned back and pinned down, covered with a mound of mulch, bucket on top, mulch around the outside rim of bucket.
pruned back and pinned down, covered with mulch, two layers of cardboard, and then covered with more mulch. currently has an extra bag laying on top of that as well.
pruned back and not pinned back, covered with a mound of mulch, bucket on top, and mulch around the outside rim of bucket.
i wasnt planning on putting mulch around the rim or adding the bag on top of #2 but i bough extra one could probably get away with putting a layer of mulch in and then just topping it with a full, unopened, bag that you can open and disperse the next spring. well see. i only added one temp sensor to the top of the pile of the mulch in the bucket on the left:
You aren’t in Z6. I got -7F last year but a customer of mine had his fig tree wrapped with burlap in a fairly well sheltered spot in Greenwich CT and the tree suffered no damage- he probably got down to 0. Bubble wrap constructions are a PIA for me and I wonder if you checked the inside temps at the coldest point in the day, maybe 7AM before the sun takes affect.
There are so many variables, but I failed to properly test the bubble wrap method because of a brain problem… overlooking something I know quite well- mulch blocks heat coming from the ground and that is what’s necessary to raise the temps in such a structure. I don’t want to bother with bubble wrap structures or wet leaf structures any more if I can get good results with maybe 8 cubic ft. of dirt.
If you guys just mailed it to me, I’d have a dollar by now. Why express your 2 cents on a topic by someone who finds CHAT very useful - to make me feel bad because you do?.. how is that helpful? Don’t click my posts and scroll past my comments is what I keep recommending to people who I really don’t think know how to use this search engine. If you had read the manner in which I’ve used CHAT on this forum over the last couple of months you’d see that your 2 cents isn’t really worth that. Of course humans rationalize what we feel in the first place. .
These topics that I’ve started with a CHAT reference have been enjoyed by many.
You and I Alan have not always agreed on things, but I respect you as an experienced and knowledgeable orchardist and I very much appreciate the insights on a multitude of topics. I did not intend to make you feel bad.
growingfruit.org is not a private website. it is public and results from it can be found on google (unless you are posting to the lounge) I’m merely saying that if someone else were to peruse this forum after being directed here from google, and they see what I see, that you are a knowledgeable and experienced grower who is well respected in this community, they might misinterpret something you posted from CHAT that is incorrect, as your professional opinion, and it could take them down the wrong road (sorry, run on sentence but I’m rushing). people know to take CHAT input with a grain of salt, but they might see a post from you and think it is gospel.
in short, you are a valued source of information, and when you post misinformation that looks a lot like valid information, it could lead people down the wrong path.
so if anything, you shouldn’t feel bad, you should be flattered.
These 2 statements are contradictory. if they are enjoyed by so many, how would you have so many cents from people who dislike the use of CHAT on the forum?
I don’t know why you have this propensity to make things personal though. it’s unbecoming for a mentor here.
Getting back on track of the original topic - I have some in-ground zone 6 figs that I am going to try this method with. I wasn’t going to attempt to wrap them because i didn’t have time, so nothing to loose. This seems easy and quick enough. I will report my results in the spring!
This thread is slowly reinventing a wheel that has been perfected elsewhere. . . .
Specifically: Over the years, this topic has been beaten to death on the Ourfigs forum. Along the way, observations comparable to Scott’s have been reported by many growers. Many of those growers live in Z6; I lived in Z6 until the USDA updated the map! Many of those growers have reported continuous measurements of temperature (and sometimes humidity), sometimes over the entire winter. So there is no doubt that the benefits of a well-constructed cover are real and substantial.
The general finding is that an insulating, reflective, airtight cover that is open to the ground and empty except for the tree will capture and retain enough heat to raise the internal temperature 10-20 F compared to outside air.
None of this denies that you can keep a fig tree alive by burying it. Of course you can. That’s just a different way to use the relative warmth of the ground.
Which happens almost daily on this forum- I am constantly repeating information I’ve posted here before. However, I thank you for the clarification- but 10 to 20 degrees is a pitchers ballpark, I mean a pretty big one. 10 degrees might not be adequate protection in a Z6 but 20 would be.
But you are right… the point of this topic is to suggest another method of protecting figs that is not widely covered on other forums or used extensively. The question is, can a fig tree of a certain form produce significant crops on a short tree protected by a mulched pile of dirt.
I thought I would get to try it on an orchard I manage today, but a gate had been installed and no one has given me the code. .
alan you might be interested in looking into japanese fig keeping techniques, so called “step over” pruning. it allows you to protect a lot more of the plant by mounding and therefore allows an earlier and more substantial crop when youre cutting it down every year. Forgive me if we already discussed this in this thread, i just thought it could dovetail nicely with your experiments
A photo below of the technique, its basically an extremely low espallier. Theres an old thread on the forums that talks about it a bit as well.
The variation relates to the methods used and the temperatures experienced:
Temperatures. Given decent insulation, the temperature differential will be greater when the ambient temperature is lower. At one extreme, if the air temperature is 55 F and the ground temperature at a depth of 2’ is 55 F, then the cover will have no impact. If the air temperature is 20 F and the ground temperature is 53 F (which is directionally correct), then the cover might provide a 10 F benefit and the internal temperature might be 30 F. And if the air temperature is -10 F and the ground temperature is 50 F (ditto), then the air cover might provide a 20 F benefit and the internal temperature might be +10 F.
Methods. Given mediocre insulation, the temperature differential will tend to be small. Given excellent insulation (and a decent footprint), the temperature differential could be huge.
The point is that if a grower wants to invest the time and effort into protecting in-ground fig trees in Z6A (-10 F winter lows) using a cover (not a mere wrap!), it can be done.
Right. We know that burying the tree will protect it. Italian and Portuguese immigrants have been doing this for a century. The question is whether the crop will be adequate if the tree is pruned to a stump and then only the stump is buried. I’m interested to know the answer.
I just wanna say… i left an Olympian out in a pot in Colorado z6 for an entire winter. It got down to -15 that winter at the lowest if i recall correctly with usual night time/super cold temperatures nearing the 10-15’s regularly throughout that winter.
No wrapping.
It survived and did great! Until i killed it when I decided to repot it as it was waking up.
Well, as I said the depth of freezing is a particular obsession in the building trade. To them there’s no worry about tree roots dying, but about water pipes underground freezing, and building foundations “heaving” as the ground expands. If you lived further north (I used to be in zone 5) you would be familiar with roads rising unevenly and cracking the pavement. The fear is this effect will go deeper. So 28F is still freezing, and it varies how deep that freezing penetrates. Obviously many plants have roots that will survive, just as many have branches that will survive temps much below zero. But not all plants have the same limits. But, I once wintered an IE fig in a pot with the fence and leaf insulation method. The pot sat on bare rock ledge, but the leaves gave it about a foot of insulation all around to ground level. It got down to -17F air temp that winter. The fig survived,and lost a few branches, but it was very slow to start growth in spring. I believed, as Alan suggests, that the heat from below would keep it from freezing. This seems to have helped. I figured the stone underlying my hill is bedrock, and plenty deep. In other words, the ledge would be conducting warmth upward from a steady source.
It varies, but usually lotus or water lilies, sometimes Colocasia. Some will winter over but the Colocasias I lift and store in a warmer place over winter.
Which is strange because figs don’t tend to die from transplant shock- especially moving them into a larger pot. If it was waking up after that winter, I suspect it looked great but was dead. I noticed this year that tissue still green turned out to be dead as far as the upper part of the tree. I do not believe many species could survive -15 in an uninsulated pot. Roots of peaches are killed at warmer temps than that, like around 5-0 degrees as I recall. A light potting soil only holds so much heat.
People complain about the inaccuracy of AI and yet are completely comfortable with the inaccuracy of their anecdotal conclusions. I am suspicious of both because over the years assumptions I have made turned out to be wrong, assumptions I felt certain about because of what I saw with my own eyes. We blame AI because of flaws in its design but tend to forgive our own brains that generally make conclusions based on limited observations or emotions that we use logic to justify.
This is the best observation in the thread. Of course, people trust their own observations more than the reports of others. But based on our own limited experience, we leap to conclusions that are unjustified by the quality of our own data.
one could probably get away with putting a layer of mulch in and then just topping it with a full, unopened, bag that you can open and disperse the next spring. well see. i only added one temp sensor to the top of the pile of the mulch in the bucket on the left:
