Pruning Fig Trees

okay so middle of winter time to get ready for figs yeah time to get ready for figs that's next hello everyone this is Dewayne with edge of nowhere farm and we're coming to here today it's actually the second week of January and we are in the middle of pruning season for Lori and I so real busy time for us as far as coming back through it's the beginning of the year getting ready for the production of this year and that really all starts with now everything that we do now actually gears us towards maximum production here on the farm and of course one of the things that we always are looking at as our figs so I'm gonna link figs here we got a playlist that shows you several different varieties that we have growing here on the farm the first one of the first videos we did was actually on these two brown turkey figs that we have back here so we've already talked about these before but had a lot of requests from you guys as far as hey when do I prune how do I prune you know how much do I cut back you know what is it supposed to look like in the end a lot of questions and we've had some experience with these we've had these in the ground now for four years so this will be the third round of pruning that we've done on these so and we've gotten some amazing production so what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk through first I'm gonna point out some things that I look at first you guys are gonna come along with me so let's take a look okay so first thing we need to look at is we need to look at the tree as a whole so the tree itself it's actually very balanced if you were to look around the tree it's about the same diameter no matter where you're at in the tree height wise it's all about the same height looks like we top out at about 7 feet or so which is really really high when it comes to harvesting which makes it difficult to harvest so we need to look at balance um I've already been doing that since we've got all the leaves on the ground and they're not blocking any of our branching so the next thing I look at is the base so before he wants to squeeze in a little bit we're gonna look at the base so the base of the tree you can see we got a lot of sucker growth out of there which is not necessarily bad per se because all of those are going to be brown turkey figs it's not going to be it's not a grafted tree so it's not an issue with suckers taking away necessarily from the growth but hard to get in there and manage the tree when it comes to again harvest we want to make sure we're trying to ease harvest time as best we can with our figs so I'm gonna start out with actually going through around the bottom and cutting out the bottom now why do I do the bottom first the reason why I do the bottom first fig trees obviously go dormant during the winter time which means what they do is they pull the SAP back down into the trunk and into the roots and that's actually where they hold the SAP and then they push it back out in the spring when it's nice and warm and produce new growth and of course fruit so right now this is the the lowest period of time where you're going to get sapped running from the tree now one of the things with figs is the SAP is very caustic so it can cause allergies and people strong allergies you can get an allergic reaction in your skin Laura and I both have that and it's pretty common to get kind of itchy skin even during and during the summer time even brushing up against the green leaves will do that and of course if you break off one of those leaves you break off a piece of fruit it immediately starts bleeding this latex sticky SAP that just kind of almost pours from the tree during the middle of summer what you'll see as we go through and start pruning is we're not going to have that as we prune because that saps pulled back down into the tree however there still would be a little bit of SAP coming out so I start with the bottom because I don't want the SAP falling down on top of me as I go through and try to finish up pruning so I'll be going through and dealing with the bottom so we'll get that up also we're looking for any branches that are pointing down so for he wants to squeeze these in even closer this guy right here is definitely going to be a goner because he's pointing straight down to the ground he's gonna continue to grow once we get into the spring and this comes back out of dormancy and it's gonna continue to scroll right into the ground we definitely don't want that because we don't want to have fruit on the ground literally growing on the ground so we'll be cleaning that up also any wrenches that are crossing so you can see this branch right here it's not doing it too bad but it's going to so as it continues to grow it's going to cross this is crossing over there that's going to come wrap around this side so we've got several areas where we've got branches that are crossing anytime you have that you have an opportunity for bacteria funguses and that kind of thing to get into the tree and actually damage or kill the tree so wherever we can we want to make sure we're taking away those crossing branches so that's probably about it oh and then overall height so 7 feet when you're trying to get to figs which are making you itchy and it's the middle of summer when they're ripe and it's 120 degrees you know all those things combined makes you not want to go into the middle of the tree to try to get stuff and it also makes you not want to try to reach up here passed a bunch of leaves in order to get to some type of growth or new fig or something up here it's out of reach for me so I need to bring this back down looking at my cuts from last year I can see I have a cut here this is all new growth this year and the way we are brown turkeys are we get a Brea harvest in the spring and we get a main crop in fall but our BRE Ryabkov crop is actually very very good tasty fruit some nice big fruit and then of course we get right into our main crops pretty much all summer with a few exceptions so I'm gonna go ahead and at least get down to here again probably come down a little bit further on some of these branches because I need to bring the tree down so enough of me Ameren on about what are we gonna do let's actually get to pruning [Music] okay so I wanted to take a quick break and show you guys a couple of the details as far as some of this cutting so if Lori wants to kind of finagle our way in let's talk a little bit about this big cut that I just made so right here in the middle of the tree I've still got a nice balanced tree as far as where the growth is this was one of the higher growth it was starting to cross and do some crazy things on me but if we can squeeze in nice and tight for those of you who have fig trees you'll know if you did this during the summertime this would just have white latex all over the place just be pouring down the tree this really gives you a good idea of just how much that SAP pulls into that root in base of the tree trunk so you don't have that also where I'm doing these cuts so as best I can I try to keep the cuts just above the collar so there's kind of a more plumpness right next to the trunk here I try to make it so that it's just as it starts to taper in into the branch itself so if I was to show another branch to you like this branch here you can see there's a kind of a wide part here and then it starts to narrow I would make that cut essentially right here so as I'm doing the cuts this is where I'm cutting allows them to heal over really well and not damage the trunk of the tree so that I wanted to show you I even it's already dry which is what you're looking for when you're doing pruning so great part about wintertime pruning on fig trees here in Arizona they dry nice and fast heal over really well next thing I'm gonna do to that you guys are going to see be seen here as I'm inside the middle of the tree I'm going to be taking out all the growth that's here right in the middle of the tree not completely but a lot of this inward growth I'm going to take out obviously we want to do the bulk of our harvesting on the outside of the tree so we'll be looking at that but I also am going to be doing something here with this tree that we were usually doing with our peach trees which I really like because we still get fruit that's gonna grow on the inside here I'm actually going to create a little pathway probably on this side because this is north facing I don't want to make it south facing because I don't want too much of that Sun to be coming into the tree and into the trunk itself but I am going to make a small pathway essentially between these two branches so I can come in from the north side and we can do some harvesting from the inside of the tree without having to try to reach across and do all this great stuffs I'm gonna make this little pathway to you guys we'll see that as we move forward [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so now you can kind of see the final product so that's where what we took so if you do a glimpse back in a fast-forward you'll see how much we really took this down and that is the aftermath Laurie actually pointed something now it kind of does look like antlers on the ground the way they're kind of shaped but one thing about this we're gonna do a couple things with what we have sitting here first thing is I'm gonna link a video here where Laurie and I talked a little bit about doing fig cuttings now our summertime fig cuttings we get about a 25 to 50 percent take rate in the summertime so far we've had a hundred percent in the winter time so our second chance to try our hand at cuttings and rooting out cuttings so we're gonna take some of these that are about a half an inch or so thick maybe half an inch to an inch thick and see if we can make a few extra trees and bring them with us to the new property so we're gonna be doing that we the slight selecting some specific sticks that are nice and straight for that the rest of this though is kind of going to the chipper and be fed back to the trees so let's do that real quick okay so we're done so that is basically it so you literally got walked through step by step how we do a fig tree this is the biggest fig tree we've actually pruned so far but essentially it's fully grown hit four years in right at four years in it's pretty much a fully grown fig tree you can see behind me what we have left over a couple things you saw us do towards the in there of course was woodchips we're big fans they use in permaculture wherever we possibly can one of those basic things would be replenishing those things and putting them back into the soil which is what we're doing with these and reusing them so putting them back back into that system so obviously a tree has nice deep wide roots it's constantly mining minerals which is why figs are fantastic and high potassium fruits it's getting those different minerals from the soil and you know what you got those branches and stems some of those were a pretty good size we're able to get through this little chipper but we're able to basically take those things that have been pulling nutrients feeding the figs now what we're doing is we're actually putting those right back into the soil and onto the top is the best way to do that so you saw that one other thing I want to mention but while we wrap up is what we're focusing on when it comes to our pruning now as you guys may or may not know we're going to be moving on to a six acre new piece of flat desert land and starting over probably a little crazy but we're excited about it but one of the things that I'm keeping in mind as I'm going through and I'm pruning this year is I need to go through and prune for production because we should still be here at least for the beginning of our fig production but also for aesthetics because I don't know who's gonna wind up with this property I want to make sure that the trees look really nice as well so I probably would have actually taken this down another foot or so because I know how much growth it's going to put on and how much production it's going to give us but at the same time I wanted to get a nice balanced tree have a nice big bushy tree once we get into the fall just a beautiful looking tree as well it's still counting and looking forward to that amazing production that we get year after year on our fig trees so just one I thank you guys for joining us today you know a little longer episode but we had a lot of questions on how you actually go through and prune a mature fig tree wanted to make sure we showed you as much as we possibly could so hopefully we satisfied all those questions we've been getting with today's episode glad you were here you know if you haven't done so already hey subscribe to our Channel you know we cover a lot of things here on the channel obviously fruit-trees is a big part of that here but you know moving onto the new property we've got a lot of livestock we're taking raw desert land to farm would love it if you would join us and subscribe to the channel and hey you know what if you haven't seen us on Instagram and Facebook hey follow us over there there's a lot of things that we post on Instagram and Facebook that we don't discuss or show you here on YouTube we'll love to see you guys there and if you have any questions or comments a leave in the comment section down below like I always say Lori and I really enjoy interacting with you guys this is a great format to do that so just want to thank you for joining us today and remind you if we can farm on the edge of nowhere so can you that's where today comes into play that's way too long shorten that up shrine that up doing it stuarti and it's been a little bit a little bit of a longer I'm stand yeah let's do that again we just want to thank you for joining us to a dinner [Music]

Channel: Edge of Nowhere Farm

Views: 109,073

Rating: 4.8575468 out of 5

Keywords: fig, fig tree, prune, pruning, pruning fig, prune fig, prune fig tree, az fig, desert fig, pruning fruit trees, fruit tree, farm, farming, fruit farm, az fruit tree, az fruit farm, homestead, homesteading, desert farming, edge of nowhere farm, eon farm, duane hebert, lori hebert, wittmann farm, wittmann az, urban fruit tree, az pruning

Id: iI5x2Ui4J88

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2019