Revitalised Fig Tree - How do I ensure it's survival!

Hi All,

Moved house last year, and transported a few trees and plants with us that we wanted to keep. Not the best year to do that, and a Fig that we'd had for about 10 years seemingly didn't survive.

As we bought it around the time our daughter was born, I couldn't dispatch it to the bonfire and popped it in an old pot with a load of horse manure and soil. Lo and behold, some 16 months later it seems to have 'regenerated'!

The old tree is gone, but new shoots have started growing over the last few weeks, so I'm really happy I held on to it! I'm now also nervous about moving and pruning etc., and about the best location for a new home...

Any advice on next steps, please? Am I OK to cut away the old tree, and where would be a good position to replant the new growth?

 

I'd just cut the dead stuff off, for this year and let it get on with it.

Maybe plant out next year if you have a spot for it, or just pot it on a bit next spring if not.

 

Figs are tough! I would cut down the obvious dead bits, and put it in a pot of about the same size with a loam based compost eg John innes no 3. Then stand well back and watch!
If you have room for it in the actual border, be prepared to prune unless you want it to take over.

 

I used to be a bit precocious with mine. Now I hack it at will. It shrugs its shoulders and carriwed on. However, I would point out that I only grow mine in a very large container for the foliage. I don't like figs - horrible seedy things.

 

thanks all and thanks Caroline, will pick up some no.3 this week and give it a go!

 

Figs have big root systems, they want to be in the ground though can tolerate big pots when kept small. They like well draining soil and as much intense sun as you have, and are very drought tolerant. They dont mind running water but hate stagnant water.

For fruit you want new growth for the summer figs and to take every remaining tiny fig in autumn off. Ideally its a meter tall stem with several big side branches at the end for meter long shoots to emerge, and you cut shoots back far for new growth to emerge. But dont do this till its established.

Lots of vids on youtube for a year or two in the future.

 

Our Fig tree (Brown Turkey) is over 25 years old now. To celebrate this it has produced, and continues, a fantastic harvest this year. The photo shows just one collection and today another just like it. Far too many to eat so have had to resort to freezing loads of them. Couldn't bottle/jam them as running out of jars as usual.
Still some for us to eat later on today and then back harvesting tomorrow.
It does have a will of its own. No matter how it is pruned it always wants to grow very high up or the opposite hugging the ground.

 

Lovely. these figs are better than the shop ones in my opinion. with climate change i believe they will become a staple of peoples gardens and park borders! Very versitile, drought tolerant and not invasive due to being sterile.
there is one outside a business park i walk past and pinch fruit from occasionally on my way to work

Jurassic Plants sells i think 8 different types of figs but I dont know how well they produce in the uk.

I keep meaning to try to cook young fig leaves but cant find a time to try it. They taste like coconut but im not sure if you can actually eat.

Drying figs is the traditional way of preserving them. I find cutting them thin then drying fruit in the oven works on grill trays at 70 C.

 

I've just started fig picking from my partner's tree. They are huge and delicious. Unknown variety from Italy. And I have rooted lots of cuttings over the last year so I can plant my own fig grove! I tried making fig jam, fig chutney, fig newton biscuits last year. But I think I'll have to try @Adam I technique to dry them as they take so much room in the freezer.

 

My brown turkey is producing well this year also, I've set up a ladder up through the middle of the tree and I can check each day what is ripe, I'm competing with the blackbirds and the squirrels on this, but as long as I get some I'm not that bothered, got 3 kilos on the freezer now and lots more to come.

The cutting @CarolineL sent me last year is only about a foot high but it has one fig on it, I'm interested as to what another variety rather than brown turkey does in our climate.

Can you believe I'm not a fan of figs, but like lots of plants I enjoy growing them, so give them all away.

 

I have one fig developing on our brown Turkey, which is in a large pot on the patio. Apart from not fruiting heavily, it does seem pretty immune to drought and neglect.
It occurs to me that I have a drying setting on my airfryer. That might be a possible option for preserving some of the glut you are experiencing, if you have an air fryer? Has anyone tried that?