Growing Fig Trees: Avoid These 11 Season-Ending Mistakes

all right fig rowers this is Ross the Fig boss in today's video we're talking about 11 mistakes that fig rowers commonly make and I wanted to share with you guys these 11 mistakes that you can avoid them completely and have a successful fig growing season and I've also by the way created a companion guide to this video here on my blog figoss.com I would highly recommend you guys go to the blog or you know go to the description I'll put a link there and you can see this article that I've written which is in my opinion I put a lot of work into this and I could have even possibly written an entire book with the amount of information that's just in this one article I also created a companion poster to this guide or to this video and you can also check that out on Teespring you can order that have it shipped to your house and hang it on your wall so quite exciting stuff I think this video to be honest with you again is is worth its weight in gold because I've made all the mistakes you know even the experts even the best fig Growers make mistakes and that's how we learn as Growers we make mistakes we figure out how we made the mistake what happened and then we don't repeat that mistake if I'm going to give you guys all the mistakes I've made or that you can make that I foresee you guys can make and you can just then completely avoid all of the mistakes that I've put in that's years of work that you now are benefiting from so I think to be honest this video is great if you love this video and you want to see more content like this hit that subscribe button for me right now hit that like button for me right now I greatly appreciate it so anyway let's get on to some of those mistakes some of them are based on containers I think there's just inherently more problems when we grow fig trees in containers but some of these mistakes can also occur just in general with all the fig trees that we grow rather whether or not they're growing in containers or whether or not they're growing in the ground one of the biggest mistakes with containers is actually not feeding them I feed every single pot of tree I have every year they need a regular fertilization schedule and one of the easiest ways that I do this so like I kind of make it foolproof for myself is I just give them a slow release fertilizer here that's exactly what this is it's just florican you can buy this stuff at Home Depot it's called osmocote it's just those little beads that you guys may have seen it's a well-balanced fertilizer that comes covers all your basic micronutrients and just in general is going to give you a fertilizer over time a light dose of fertilizer every time you water and that way you don't have to really fertilize from that point on you just do one application of that stuff and you're done now everybody has a different fertilizer you know belief if you ask you know 10 fig rowers they're going to tell you that they use 10 different fertilizers I think what's important is that we just use it use something cover all your micronutrients cover all your macronutrients hopefully you have a well-balanced fertilizer the net is blowing in the air there um and so I think that's just the main message the other big thing I find with the containers is that we don't really water them well a lot of people either underwater or over water during the summer when it's 90 degrees outside figs need a lot of water per five gallons of soil they could need about a half a gallon to a full gallon of water every day believe it or not the in-ground figs if they're really well established could actually use about five gallons a day especially if you're growing them for commercial production some trees that are smaller in the ground they only need a gallon and so in general I would highly recommend using mulch especially for your in-ground figs that goes a huge long way especially for you guys in desert-like climates the other thing I would say though with the Potted figs and this is the biggest mistake I see besides not fertilizing them is actually just over watering them now I know I said that when it's 90 they need a lot of water but if it's not warm outside if the figs are just waking up or if they're dormant they don't have a lot of leaves on them you could very easily kill them because they are quite susceptible to root rot vix have a very fibrous root system that goes outwards and so those little roots are very susceptible to fungal problems like root rot so if we over water we create anaerobic conditions in the soil which lead to the proliferation of root rot we kill the roots we killed our tree so that's a big one there one of the other things and we've talked about this kind of to death this spring is actually opening up the canopies of our trees this is definitely a mistake having too dents of a canopy can spell disaster because if the trees are too dense we have too many trees growing close together like I have but if we're not positioning them well or maybe our trees are have too many branches in a very small area we won't see fruits that and so this is probably the biggest reason I get probably a month or two from now when people are like hey Ross I see you're fruiting all of your fig trees they all have fruit on them by the way right now and so people are always like well how is he getting fruit and why am I not my tree is big and beautiful it grows really well Ross why is my fig tree not fruiting the most common reason is a lack of sunlight and it's not just a lack of sunlight where the tree is located but also internally so what I do is I stake every single tree I use limb bending limb spreaders and so I open up the center I try to get all my fig trees the appropriate amount of sunlight because there is that requirement needed to set the fruit buds it is pretty much exclusively with the Sun now obviously we need a healthy tree and so basic requirements like fertilizer and water but beyond that if we have a healthy tree you should be seeing fruit set assuming you get the light requirement met one of the other things I think and this is a huge mistake that people make is actually pruning too much and so this could be the other reason why you're not seeing fruit set and that if whether it's an in-ground tree whether it's a Potter tree doesn't matter if we are pruning off the apical and lateral buds the higher points on the tree the higher buds these are the buds that are that are in the right hormonal balance they have the ability to fruit much easier if we remove these buds we encourage our fig trees to be in a vegetative state the balance of hormones shifts and so now we shift towards growing and not towards fruiting we want the opposite to occur and the only real way we can help our fig trees fruit better is actually with a lack of pruning by preserving these apical buds which are the highest most growth tip here on the branches and the buds here that are slightly below that that typically are quite protruding and have a lot of energy within them and have that right hormonal balance that we look for so if we're going to be doing a lot of winter burning or if we're going to be doing actually we're not going to be protecting our fig trees in the wintertime as some of you guys probably live in a zone six five seven we need to protect our fig trees in those zones and so if you're not seeing the winter protection what's going to end up happening is they're going to die all the way to the ground or they're going to lose those apical and lateral buds that I mentioned and they're going to have to then re-sprout from a lower height and what ends up inevitably happening is this hormonal imbalance and the fig trees grow too quickly they have a very wide node spacing between the nodes between the leaves and that is a Surefire sign your fig tree is just not gonna fruit so that's a really big mistake there I think people just absolutely love to make one of the other things that happens actually in the spring is late frosts and so if you're trying to get your fig tree off to a nice head start to the season I commend you for that I think it's totally worth it especially if you're using greenhouses I always try to warm up the soil even for these in-ground figs try to plant them actually a bit higher above grade but what can happen is they can wake up a little bit too soon maybe some of you guys in actually in Texas where the weather changes really quite frequently um you know one day it's 80 the next day it's 40 degrees you know those places where you're susceptible to these late frosts you need to protect your figs the trees will Leaf out in the spring and if the temperature is in that Frost is a hard Frost which is somewhere around 25 degrees 28 degrees Fahrenheit you're probably going to lose a lot of this new growth here that you see if you lose and damage this new growth it's interrupting the growing cycle of our fig trees we need them to grow we need them to grow healthy in the beginning of the season because this is where the main crop fruits are formed on that new growth so if they're not growing and they're interrupted in some way the Fig will recover from a lay Frost typically but you're just going to be off to a much worse start to the season and that in short season climates like where I'm at in Philadelphia or places in zone six seven uh and five four even as well where we only have about 150 to 180 frost-free days you're really pushing it there by getting hit by a late frost a light frost something like a kiss of frost it really depends on the duration and the intensity there's a lot of factors that go into a frost and what exactly will take damage but there's a lot of methods for protecting them in the spring things like bagging them putting trash bags around them putting tarps over them you know covering them back up as as if you guys were had them covered already for the winter time there's a lot of things that we can do there one of the other things I think people do a lot with their potted figs actually this is mistake number five is actually they forego the dormancy process all these potted figs we have the ability to move them elsewhere for the winter time now obviously you could dig up your your inground fig but we're not typically crazy I hope none of you guys are crazy enough to do that um so we could actually take this potted fig and put them inside for the winter time maybe like the sun room or maybe I can put it in a sunny window and typically that's just a bad idea I found I've done it I've seen other people do it a lot of people reach out to me and I always get the same mistake that's made from people and that they end up probably killing their tree because in an indoor environment there's a lot of pest pressure that indoor environment things like spider mites scale those things really proliferate and actually destroy our fig trees outside there really is no pest pressure those pests are pretty much under control you may also have fungus gnats too which is another thing that outside we don't really deal with a whole lot but in these indoor environments they proliferate and they really mess with our fig trees not only that but if you bring them inside and treat them like a houseplant um you're they're house plants you know and so if you're not going to take care of a fruiting plant that requires a lot of energy a lot of sunlight a lot of fertilizer you're basically hurting your tree and so now in the beginning of the Season you're actually going to regret it and so by overwintering it inside and never letting it go dormant by continuing the growth of it you could end up actually putting your fig tree backwards rather than forwards I mean the whole idea was to it would be to bring it inside to actually forego the dormancy process to get a bigger and larger tree going into the spring it just doesn't end up working out like that I've seen it time and time again unless you really know what you're doing with indoor house plants and probably you need to have some you know additional lighting so the other thing I think that happens we this is a classic mistake I do it every year it's pretty unavoidable I would say is sunburn and I'm going to try to find a tree here I'm sure there's some that came out of the greenhouse and have this sunburn um and so essentially the sunburn hits the leaves yes indeed fig trees and plants can get sunburned here's a good example of it right there we also have this Leaf back here and so what this sunburn does is when we transition our plants from a low light environment to a higher light environment the leaves are not adjusted properly to that Trend to that additional light exposure and what happens is the leaves burn and now these leaves actually have and produce I should say lower amounts of photosynthesis lower amounts of energy if the entire tree or a large portion of the tree gets hit really badly by the sunburn well then our season in the springtime is actually going to be affected just like an indoor potted plant that instead of going forward like we would like it's now set back and it's kind of behind where it should be now so this is a common thing that people grow their their house plants or bring their fig trees inside whether or if you're growing them inside a greenhouse that's the classic thing that happens to me every time I take them out of the greenhouse always have to adjust them to the current light levels current conditions so that these trees don't get that sunburn what actually can happen if it's severe enough you can defoliate most if not all of your tree which you know that's a disaster that's exactly what we don't want to do so that's a big mistake let's see here's another one how about harvesting our figs too early I actually have even though it's June 6th I actually have some Bravo that are ripening here in the Philadelphia area and I could very easily pick one but I'm not going to because I know they're not ripe and uh we're going a little bit of a journey here to get to these get to these breva but here's actually a Abreva right here of fatigue de arjunto and so this sativ fig what we're looking for when we Harvest figs is a soft neck we touch the body but the figs ripen from the bottom up so touching the bottom here in the body is not really telling what we need to see is a neck that's very soft and the neck is not the stem right the stem is this light green part here that attaches to the branch I'm sorry the camera just did not want to focus all of a sudden for me so you can see that lighter green part that attaches to the branch that's the stem right above that there is the neck and so this is what we're mainly touching we're not touching this we're not touching this we're touching that neck we're not touching the stem that will determine if the Fig is indeed ripe and ready to be harvested and that is really the only indicator people look at the color people look at the drops of honey that come out of the uh the eye people look at cracking these are all kind of visual indicators that only help you determine uh if the Fig is right but to be honest with you if you can just simply touch the neck that's really all you need now why is this so important well obviously we want to harvest fruits at their Peak ripeness because every day figs in particular are on the tree the better they taste now there does become a point where they spoil so we want to pick them before that happens but typically all the fruits we get at the store are picked way too early and so that's the beauty of growing food at home you can actually Harvest it when it should be harvested apples and and well I should say let's say Stone fruits peaches are a classic example where they're picked hard and then actually allowed to soften during shipment or when they get to the store or when you get them to your house and put them on your counter tomatoes are the same thing they pick them actually green before they actually turn red the figs are picked at 60 or 50 percent ripeness of what they should be when you buy them at the store so that means you're missing 50 to 40 percent ripeness by buying a fig at the store why Rob yourself of that when you're growing your own tree it just doesn't make any sense I see people do it all the time every percentage of ripeness let's say if we go from 60 percent ripe to 70 percent right that is a big difference and then all the way up to 100 percent the longer we let them get there the perfect they are the more incredible the experience is that you're gonna have and it's just pretty much across the board with every fruit that that I've ever grown um one of the other things we can talk about with containers is actually not repotting them into larger containers now I have really small figs that I purposely well I start them from cutting and so they are in small containers to begin with but this seems like a no-brainer and you probably would agree that this is a no-brainer but you wouldn't believe how some people just don't do this they keep their figs in these small one gallon sized pots here this is a pretty small container and you can see it's a small tree as well the Fig will not really get larger it'll get to a certain size which I have some back here that are for currently for sale you can see that's a pretty nice sized tree right there but they won't get much bigger than that if you keep them in that size container you need to put them in at least a three five or seven gallon size pot this is just classic mistake in this one or even this two gallon size here I actually like this two gallon size to get them well rooted out and then plant them in the ground in this size but if you keep them in these one or two gallon pots here you're just not going to see success you're not really going to see good fruit production you may not see any fruits at all you're not going to see good tasting fruits either so why waste your time put it in a larger pot all right what's on the next one here how about um improper winter storage for the container fix or improper even protection from the cold I know we mentioned with additional pruning too much pruning just like the cold in the wintertime can cause pruning I mean that's basically the same thing is that the branches will die back and so it's as if we did winter pruning anyway the trees don't know the difference between if I took my pruning shears sniffed off the branches versus the cold killing those buds that we mentioned the apical and lateral buds so we need to store them properly especially the container figs here if we live in a cold place we need to protect them properly if we live in a cold place and so there's just a lot of things I think people do wrong I have a whole guide on the blog guys if you're interested about both of these topics protecting in-ground figs so storing potted fix for the winter time I think the biggest mistake I see is people either don't protect them when they should if you're going to get down to five degrees Fahrenheit in the winter time you should protect your fig tree if you're getting less than five degrees Fahrenheit you should protect your fig tree if your container figs are getting below 15 degrees Fahrenheit you need to move it somewhere to keep it there all winter time so it's above 15 degrees Fahrenheit now where do you put it exactly in your house well I think your basement is the classic mistake I always see so don't make that mistake a warm unheated an unheated basement is warm and so what ends up happening with the Fig is if they're not kept between 15 degrees Fahrenheit and about 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit all winter and consistently cooler I mean rather you'd rather have them at 30 than 40 you know so the warmer they get the quicker they wake up and the quicker they're going to wake up you're going to end up having figs that wake up in February or January and then they're in this dark room a garage a shed well typically this happens in a basement and then you don't know what to do you can't put them outside it's too cold you're so far away from your last frost which we also talked about um so we talked about training we talked about watering we talked about pruning we talked about fertilizing we talked about dormancy sunburn we talked about harvesting repotting figs winter storage and late Frost the last tip here is actually choosing the wrong variety and so all these figs that you see behind me here on the patio in the ground as well they're all different varieties you know I'm not I'm not growing all these varieties for no reason you know they all taste different they all have very different qualities to them there's a Gala apple taste the same as a granny smith apple no so not all figs taste the same not only that but figs are very highly subjected to The Climate that they're growing in in their final ripening stage so although um you know I have figs ripening right now that we looked at the hatib de argentio we looked at I have some Smith Bravo that are ripening those figs right now are highly subjected to the weather around us so if it rains and in the beginning of this video it actually was raining a little bit but if it rains a lot the figs are going to soak up that water well some varieties will soak up that water other others will actually shed the water quite well and so they'll actually lose quality they'll absorb the water the bricks will be lowered so the sugar content's lower they're going to ferment easier they're going to spoil easier they're going to mold easier you're just going to have worse tasting fruit so there's some varieties that are actually way more better suited to be grown in human places some varieties are way more heartier than others so if I'm in a cold place I want a hearty variety some figs will ripen very early some figs will ripen very late and so maybe if I'm in a zone four I want the earliest fig I can get something like rendez Bordeaux or Celeste if I'm in a you know climate like Florida maybe I want a really late fig so that I can avoid the monsoon season and that's a possibility you know if I'm in a climate like California I want to have a fig that's in a really warm part of California where the temperatures are 100 while the figs are ripening and they're getting soft and they're swelling and they're changing color in that final ripening stage like I said the weather dramatically impacts the quality of that fruit right in that moment so if the weather is 100 degrees I need a fig that's going to be able to withstand 100 degrees and not melt some figs actually just literally melt on the tree it feels like when it's that warm so these are careful considerations and why I'm actually growing hundreds of varieties here in the Philadelphia area to find really what are the best varieties for this location and this climate and that way I can recommend them to you guys as well so choosing the right varieties critical I would don't hesitate to ask me if you're interested you want to figure out what what figures should grow for your location you can always ask your friends you can find neighbors whatever's doing well for them is also a good idea and uh in general the guys those are the tips I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you don't make the same mistakes that I've mentioned you can avoid them check out the blog hit that subscribe button guys for me hit that like button for me and we'll see you for the next one take care everyone

Channel: Ross Raddi

Views: 196,284

Keywords: gardens, gardening, vegetable garden, growing fruit, garden, orchard, fruit tree, growing, lemon tree, fig tree, growing tomatoes, plants, propagation, farm, pruning, pruning fruit trees, garden tour, plant tour, plant a tree, plant a seed, greenhouse, backyard orchard, landscaping, soil, grow, nursery, backyard garden, seed starting, tree, air layering, rooting, cutting, container, potted, compost, garden pests, companion plants, crops, fertilizer, organic gardening, mulch, perennial, transplanting

Id: N4Wfi_SQFyE

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023