I think next year I will try to thin/ position shoots better, early.
Not sure you can make sense of it in the pics still ?
Like the second to last photo.
That plant comes up out of the ground in the "middle "and is laying flat in two directions.
Also the pic with the blue bucket / milk crate, shows the overall height , the bucket is sitting on the ground same height as where Figs are planted.
So really short .
Down where the ground heat is !
Oh , I also got a barrel full â + of cuttings ,
Hoping to make use of them,
looks like a winter project .
There are no extra points for how good it looks, just how well it works. That said, I think you have a great system going and Iâll continue to follow it with interest. Please show pictures of them growing throughout the year!
They look pretty enough to me! As they grow older and thicker theyâll just naturally become more picturesque. And as Jason said, functionalityâs the thing anyway.
WOW! Is 3-5ft common with figs? Iâm impressed!
Thatâs about normal for first year plants, maybe a little smaller than normal because there wasnât much rain this summer but I didnât want them to get big so didnât water after August.
Do you mean you will be moving them at some point? Will this spacing with good pruning capable of giving decent fruits?
They are seedlings, planted 6â apart with 8â between rows, it is just for 3 years to select plants, not a permanent planting. They will be solid hedges with hardly any room between rows in 2 years.
I see! how would you design a SHD fig orchard otherwise please. Iâm trying to use up the space as much as possible while maintaining good quality fruits.
That is a really tough question⌠And Iâm not really sure since Iâve never tried it. My compost socks are super high density, but are basically container plants which are dwarfed. And Iâm still figuring that out. They are spaced about every 3 ft. with 6 ft. between rows, but in ground that would be unmanageable because even after total dieback most varieties regrow to 8 ft.
Unpruned/minimally pruned trees with more branches generally end up more productive here, because they ripen more figs in a shorter window. And tend to be better quality and larger. But protecting unpruned trees is difficult, and they seem to split more. Growing figs has basically been a learn as I go experience.
The orchard I planted is spaced 8 ft. between trees and 16/14 ft. between rows. They are planted through ground cover, the section that has 16 ft. between rows has 6 ft. wide ground cover and the 14 ft. has 4ft. (the fields were already defined by drive rows) so there is 10 ft. of turf to mow between them, which is one pass with the tractor (which doesnât fit between rows that survived winter) or 2 with the riding mower. 8ft. is plenty of space when they die back, but trees that have survived 2 or more years need thinning to keep them from getting crowded⌠But there is no guarantee of winter survival, even with protection, so planting at greater distances means there will not be hardly any harvest after a bad winter.
The Etna types have done the best overall, others just donât set figs after dying back, or ripen too late, or have problems with splitting and bugs.
I have a question on training the stepover figs. I have one tree that I just started training this year. I currently have the main scaffolds pretty much set, but Iâm having trouble getting fruiting branches everywhere I want them. I had previously notched the bark above every bud I wanted to grow, but only some did. Iâve just notched again to see if it will work this time. My question is, should I keep fussing over forcing the correct buds? Or should I just trust that this will all sort itself out over the next few years?
I believe you will have plenty of shoots form in the future.
This year mine have a over abundance of up right shoots ,
I meant to thin them out early , but life got in the way .
Too many I believe , still hopping to thin.
I think you will have enough.
Just having that low scaffold , to cover easily is the key.shoots will comeâŚ
once the rootsystem grows a little larger, youâll have plenty of vigor, and the fig will start to grow shoots out of nowhere all over. If your branches are properly horizontally, youâll get a decently even spread. If they are bent downwards in an arc, youâll get most shoots on the top of the arc.
btw these are not truly âstep overâ since when they grow you can no longer step over them. (you can with for example an apple trained this way)
But it is really useful. Especially if your after breba crops. Makes renewing fruiting wood simple.
If also seen pictures of these low growing horizontal frameworks planted in ditches that where filled in with soil over winter. And dug up during spring. As frost protection.
Yes, you get new shoot growth popping out all over from the growth rings along the horizontal cordons-no special treatment needed. After a couple years you need to be vigilant about thinning shoots in spring and early summer or it gets too crowded
I know that Chicago Hardy and Brown Turkey would probably be good canidates for this method, but what other figs would be good?
Howâd they do this year? You know, I was just recently hacking at, bending and covering my messy, overgrown bushes, and I thought, âMan, I sure wish these things were easier to cover! I wonder how @Hillbillyhortâs stepover figs are doing?â
@JeremiahT
The overwintering part , covering the pruned low cordon with a double layer of 70 weight remay has been easy and effective.
No winter damage.
As I noted above , I should have thinned more.
I think the up rights are too many this year.
Very vigorous growth as well .most uprights went 8-12 feet tall !
From the cordon .
Too tall. Topped some at ~ 7 ft. Mid summer.
Many unripened figs left on the upper sections
Picked many gallons of figs , so a success.
Need to cut off uprights and cover in the next week or soâŚ
Hope to do a better job of shoot thinning + pinching next year.
Excellent! Thanks for the update! Am definitely going to finally try this next year.
Yep, figs do tend to creep up on you with spring/summer growth. Some of mine got way out of hand this season! Looks like the Japanese growers in the photo in your first post had those bearing laterals/uprights thinned pretty severely. Lots of great air flow, sun penetration thereâexcellent for ripening and discouraging fungi and SWDs and AFFs!
I have plans to trial this next year too.
Has anyone tried step over figs in zones 5b or colder?