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The Crazy Fig Tree

Every year it seems to be a big surprise as to what our biggest fig tree is going to do. It’s been several years since it produced a decent crop. This year, it looked like it wasn’t going to do anything. Vince decided to cut a lot of it back but didn’t cut it all the way to the ground. I’m thinking he should have because all the growth seems to be coming from the ground and there are lots of branches that seemed to have growth so he left those but they haven’t done much. Some look totally dead and then at some point, there will be some green leaves, then more dead looking branch on out towards the end.

This is the fig tree that on a good year will give us probably 50 gallons or more of figs.

So far, I can find this one fig on the tree. At this rate, I’m not sure it’s worth the water we’re putting on it. I love figs so I’m really hoping it perks up and produces a good crop but I’m not holding my breath!

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  1. Feed it with some buckets of Miracle Grow blue particle mix and fresh water. (Two large green plastic scoops per 3 gallons of water. Give it 3 of these.) Then do it again in about 3-4 weeks and keep it watered after that…and see what happens.

    • Our trees get plenty of fertilizer. We use the plant spikes mostly. We talked to the guys at the local nursery and they seem to think it’s more of a weather issue with it being in the low 30’s, then within a couple of weeks,being up to 105 for several days. Not much we can do about the weather.

  2. I feel your pain. My husband and I planted a dozen apple trees when we moved onto our country property almost 35 years ago. The deer snacked on them a lot but finally they grew up but never had very many blossoms and rarely up to a dozen apples total. Finally one day 25 years later, my husband took a 2×4 and banged on those trunks. He even pounded in a couple nails in some of them. The very next spring we had tons of blossoms and lots of apples. Since then we pick upwards of 5 TONS of apples each year which we make into cider, wine, pies, sauce, crisp, dried slices, and lots of pie filling for the freezer as well as selling some to the local food cooperative. A dozen apple trees seemed like a good idea 35 years ago when our 5 kids were young but kids grow up and leave home and now we have none in sight to help with the picking.

    • WOW! Maybe I need to take your husband’s approach to my pear trees.

  3. I’m curious why you cut the fig trees back so far each year. My aunt had a fig tree, but she never cut it back and always had lots of figs each year.

    • We only prune back the dead wood. Dead wood doesn’t produce and just inhibits growth.

      There are lots of factors that affect all trees. My grandparents had an ancient fig tree and they never pruned it back and it always produced. We have harsh growing conditions here. The temps in the winter, night lows can go to zero. Summer highs can be 112+ degrees. We don’t get rain much at all during the growing season so all the water comes from a well with high pH water.

      There are quite a few variety of figs too. The Black Mission trees are the ones that seem to grow like crazy and have to be pruned. The Brown Turkey never have to be pruned, or haven’t had to be in the 8 years we’ve had them.

      There are lots of factors to consider. Not all fig trees are the same and definitely, not all growing conditions are the same.

      • We root all our cuttings and since we have 8-9 fig trees, we’ve always given the cuttings away. I have 10 rooting now that we cut from the big tree. We don’t have the water to support the trees we have so as any trees die, we replace them with jujubes which aren’t so affected by bugs and drought.

    • There aren’t many “experts” around here. We’ve talked to Texas A & M and they are pretty sure it’s the pH of the soil.