Temperate Fruit & Orchards > Temperate Fruit Discussion

Fig winter protection

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Plantinyum:
Heres what i did, basically a stirofoam cage, thickness is 5 cm . I covered the bottom part with soil to kinda fix the structure and cover the air leakage spots.
Doesnt look stellar but hopefully does the job and prevent the buds from dying.
The other plant that did not had damage last winter i  left uncovered , its near the house so the additional few degrees that it gets are probably what kept it in a good condition.
Ive also cut an ventilation hole on top, with a lid , but i doubt that this was needed..

Aiptasia904:
I have Chicago hardy and Turkey fig. Both took a little tip damage this past December when we got the week long hard freeze in my area. I pruned off the dead tips a few days ago and they're both doing just fine, growing new nodes and branches lower down on the branch. There are some instances where removing the growing tips on a branch can force them to fruit sooner and just like topping other citrus trees, forces them to branch more into a more bushy pattern. So, losing the tips to a cold snap can have it's silver linings.

Plantinyum:
As an update, the plant in question will come out from winter with all of its tips intact, dunno about bennefits, ive only experienced drawbacks ,with this plant in particular when i have tip die back. Last year the figs on the 2-3 branches that had retained their tip buds grew significantly bigger, started forming earlier and as a result also ripened alot earlier compared to the rest. Those branches had signifficantly shorter internodes, visibly thicker stems and bigger leaves. It was very interesting to observe the differences between those branches and the rest , which were sprouts from latent buds along the stem, the difference was just night and day. I am fine with the plant not making alot of twiggery at this point, it is awready quite dense in there and i will have to prune some of the weaker branches this spring.

Did i need the styrofoam winter protection? I dont really know, the winter was very mild, i have another fig inground 2 meters from this one and it is totally fine, all buds green and ready for spring, but againg last winter the other one also didnt had any damage, whereas the one in questio,with the winter protection, had almost all of its tips burned.....

Daintree:
I like your styrofoam fig house! Is the soil enough to anchor it during a wind, or is it also tied down in some way?

Carolyn

bussone:
I've got what's nominally a Brown Turkey -- it was sold as that anyway, even if I'm not totally convinced it actually is...

It died back to the ground in its first two winters. Then I started wrapping it in burlap with a plastic sheet outside that and some loose straw insulation inside. That worked through winter of 2021-2022, when it had gotten tall enough that the tips were outside the wrapper. It came through that winter fine.



This past year, it had gotten to 12-15 ft tall, so fully wrapping was no longer possible. I still burlapped and plasticed it to 5-6 ft and added straw, mostly as wind protection for the roots. It was a mild winter and it has sailed through just fine. I suspect at this point it's big enough that it could manage without any protection.

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