Pruning Fig Trees For Dormancy, Winter Storage And Maximum Production – Transcript

00:00Good evening everyone. It's October 24th, and today I wanted to discuss pruning your fig trees for winter dormancy storage and maximizing your main crop harvest next year. For those of you who don't know, I live on the immediate Carolina coast in southeastern North Carolina and I recently realized that my growing season is probably much longer than most people's growing season in the country.

00:28And because of my growing season length, I won't be pruning my fig trees until probably the end of December at or January. And there are many areas of the country that have already seen frost or will be seeing frost shortly. So I wanted to make this video for all of the growers in colder climates out there, so you can have some kind of tutorial for pruning and storing your fig trees over the winter

00:53and not have to wait until the middle of the winter when my trees finally go dormant before it's too late for you. So before I get too far into the details of pruning, I want to make sure that everyone understands this video is going to be about pruning for main crop fig production.

01:10The overwhelming majority of fig growers out there are going to be growing their trees for the main crop figs. And main crop figs only grow on the new wood that the tree puts out during the growing season. So all of that new growth that breaks free in spring and March, April, May, that is the only wood on your trees that will make main crop figs.

01:34The existing hardwood on the trees do not make main crop figs. Now it is true that some varieties of fig trees produce something called a braba crop. Braba figs will form on some varieties of figs on previous years, fruiting wood only.

01:52But we're not going to get into them because not all varieties have braba crops. Braba figs are usually lower quality and many of them fall off. And most growers are just not growing for brabas unless they have really specific needs due to their climate or they want a very specific variety.

02:10So we're only going to focus on main crop figs here and how to prune them because the pruning scheme for a braba crop is a totally different animal. For my second little disclaimer here, I want to make it clear that I won't be pruning my fig trees until the end of December beginning of January.

02:27So because of this, I'm only going to walk you through the whys and the hows. I will not be able to actually show you how to prune the figs. When the winter comes and all of my trees are dormant, I will then do a physical pruning video for more detail. This is just to get the growers in more northern climates and colder climates through the season so they can prepare for the long winter.

02:49My final bit of information here is that as you can see, all of my fig trees are in containers. As it stands, I do not have any in-ground fig trees that I can use as an example. However, it's also important to note that how you prune a container fig tree and how you prune an in-ground fig tree are two very different things.

03:09So I'm going to start this video off with container figs and then move on to in-ground fig trees later because the rules are different and you can do a lot more with in-ground fig trees. The first thing that we want to discuss is why we want to prune fig trees to begin with.

03:25And the reason why we want to prune fig trees is simple. As I mentioned before, main crop figs will only form on the new year's wood that has grown throughout that season. So if you are in a climate that's zone eight or warmer and your fig trees do not die back in the wintertime, fig trees can get very, very, very tall.

03:47And you'll get to the point where you won't be able to reach your figs without a ladder. And if that's the kind of look that you're going for and you want a massive fig tree, that's fine. But if you want to be able to easily harvest them, it's a very good idea to prune your tree down every single year.

04:03That way, you can actually reach the figs that you're trying to harvest. And for those of you that are worried about pruning your fig trees down that much, don't worry about it. Figs are incredibly vigorous growers and for people that grow them in ground successfully in zone sixes and seven, they typically die back to the ground every single year and they'll still come back and grow six, seven, eight, nine, ten feet tall in a single season.

04:29So you can cut your fig trees down very heavily. They are very different than most fruit trees. You can be aggressive with a pruning and that's a good thing. The second thing we want to discuss is when to prune your fig trees. You want to prune your fig trees when they have entered full dormancy.

04:46That is after they have been frosted on, after they have seen a light freeze, after they've dropped all of their leaves and they've been in storage or they've been in the winter conditions for a while and the trees are totally asleep. You don't really want to prune your fig trees when they're actively growing, especially in the spring and summer.

05:06And the reason why is that could potentially slow down your fig production. If you prune them during the production season, pruning them could actually shock the tree and you can lose your fruits. They could drop or they could slow down production and ripening for quite a while as the fig tree tries to recover.

05:26So I recommend that we do this in full dormancy because it has the least negative effect on the tree. Now that we've discussed the why and the when of fig tree pruning, we want to discuss the how. And we're going to start off with how to prune container fig trees.

05:44Now there are two forms that you can grow your fig into. You can grow your figs as a large bush or you can grow them as a large tree. Now if you let a fig tree grow in the wild, they're going to grow in a bush form.

06:01They will naturally make multiple main stems coming out of the roots and they will grow into basically a giant bush-like tree. And if you're growing your fig trees in ground, there can be advantages to that, especially if you're in a colder climate because the bush form of the tree tends to insulate itself and protect the center of the tree.

06:24So if you live in a cold climate, you may see less dieback growing your figs as a bush instead of as a tree. However, if you're growing container figs, like you see here, then you'll be storing your figs most likely in the garage because they won't be susceptible to really cold temperatures.

06:44When it comes to growing a container fig, I only recommend the tree form. And the tree form will be kind of like this, like the cauldron blanc and the orange bucket on the left. You want to prune them as a single main stem that will branch up into a tree as the tree progresses.

07:06And the reason why you want that to be the case is because container fig trees can only deal with the roots that are inside that pot. That little pot full of roots has to feed the entire tree. So you really want to limit the number of main stems on the tree because if you don't, you can wind up having too many fruiting branches and you'll have too many figs on your tree and it'll just slow down the ripening process.

07:32So generally speaking, the smaller the pot, the less fruits you can mature. So maintaining as a single stem is more manageable for the tree and they give you a better chance at ripe fruit. The second reason why you want to grow as a single stem for pots is for storage and for convenience.

07:50Growing these trees as a big bush would make them incredibly difficult to manage. It would make them very heavy. It would make them hard to store. It would really take up a lot more space and there's just no reason to do so. So I only recommend pruning to the tree form when it comes to container fig trees.

08:10And how you prune into a tree form is very simple. This right here, all of my trees are first year trees. This is how they've leafed out naturally from the cutting that was rooted back in the winter time. So none of these have ever been pruned before.

08:26And this tree naturally grew upright as a single stem and that's really great because it'll make pruning easy. So what I'm going to do with all of my trees going into their second season, I'm going to measure somewhere between 12 and 18 inches, that's up to you, 12 to 18 inches above the top of the root ball and I'm going to saw them and leave them as one single stem.

08:55So this is going to be a 12 to 18 inch tall stem. And that is going to be all I'm going to leave to overwinter. And what's going to happen is at all of these different nodes, these different nodes where you see little bumps, they are going to create bugs in the spring and they are going to shoot out on all sides.

09:15And then over the next year, they'll kind of grow into a goblet, sort of like this. And the second year, I'm going to prune that down into three or four individual fingers and that will create a nice, even branching structure.

09:32And here you can actually see an example of this. This is my Violet de Bordeaux fig tree. I purchased this late last summer and this I was able to actually prune over last winter. So I did cut this down into a single 18 inch tall stump.

09:50I made the cut here and all of these new branches that you see, one, two, three, four, five, they all came up like a giant goblet. So now I have that really classic goblet style tree form, which is exactly what I want to do for all of my trees.