Garden shrubs – Fig

A fig is a tree, no doubt about it, but growing a fig as a shrub is easy – you just keep it in a container which also provides the root restriction necessary to get a balance of healthy growth and abundant fruits. Container growing also allows the fruits to be protected from frost in a cold greenhouse over the winter and moved outside for the summer.

Choose a warm and sunny location for your fig in summer and water containerised plants freely during the growing season. For lots of fruit, you need to feed them more or less weekly. Then in winter you need to bring your containers into a frost-free greenhouse or even a garage or shed, but if that’s not possible, the absolute minimum winter care is to wrap the pot in bubble-wrap and place the whole thing against a sheltered house wall which doesn’t have drips from the roof. Established plants will need re-potting every two or three years as fig roots are extremely strong – so at that time, trim the thicker roots before potting in a slightly larger container.

As far as pruning is concerned, to get the best fruit, aim for three or four branches and in late winter cut back these branches by half to develop a compact framework. Then, in spring, cut out any crossing or frost-damaged shoots and at the same time cut back any over-long and bare branches when necessary to about two inches which will cause new shoots to form. In mid summer you need to pinch out those new shoots at five or six leaves to encourage fruit formation – the crop emerges through the summer from embryo figs formed the previous summer (which is why they need to be protected from frost over winter). Figs are ready for picking when they turn soft, hang down and splits appear near the stalk end of the fruit.

Fig photograph by RichardBH, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

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