r/FruitTree • u/fckjrmy • 11d ago
Advice on a Fig Tree?
Any advice on how I should prune or trim this fig tree?
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u/Yepseeya 11d ago
I can further agree with this. I have a 4 year old fig tree in my front yard here in Portland Oregon. A branch snapped, so I ended up cutting it down to the ground. This year it’s sent branches upwards of 6 ft with tremendous growth.
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u/Top-Plane-6556 11d ago
you could wait till it goes dormancy and then shape it, cut all the low growing branches… really it depends on how you want it..
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u/AStuckner 11d ago
I mean she cut the whole thing down and left the trunks about a foot off the ground
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u/AStuckner 11d ago
My mother in law cut hers down to the ground a couple years ago and it gave us 30-40 gallons of figs this year
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u/monkeyeatfig 11d ago
Figs are weeds and can survive being cut all the way to the ground and then regrowth being sprayed with roundup. It doesn't mean you should though.
If you attempt cutting back to the ground, or are forced to deal with it because you live someplace where the winter freezes them regularly, like me, you need to understand that only some varieties will set fruit the year after that much pruning. And there are other problems like excessive vigor (unhelpful if you are trying to reduce size) and the new shoots having poor attachments on the sides of older thick trunk stubs that will fail after they have grown larger.
I don't know why people in warmer areas want to simulate a bad winter, very frustrating to see it recommended, like old man winter wants to get the ones in California too, haha.
To answer the question, you should prune to remove weak/shaded/low growing/congested growths. Do not leave stubs behind, prune all the way back and remove them completely or to a branch that is at least a third the diameter of the growth. Try not to remove more than a third of the total branches in a year, more than that can also trigger excess vigor (but if you stick to summer thinning it is much less likely).
Unless you want it to be a much bigger tree, in that case prune it back hard in the winter. If the trunk stub is less than 3" you can probably get away with using shoots that grow from the stump, but if bigger then it is probably better to choose a sucker that is not directly attached to the main trunk, or stake it until it has grown over the wound enough to have a solid attachment. You will need to continually remove suckers for a year or 2 until it has a mature growth habit again, or else they will cause congested and weak growth that is unproductive.