How to Prune Your Fig Tree

Figs are enormously vigorous, which is why you frequently see advice to grow them in a pot, or to restrict their roots if you plant them in the ground. From personal experience, they do well under either treatment. In both cases, however, pruning is essential not only to keep their size under control but also to encourage fruiting. Figs only carry fruit on the growth made in the previous 12 months. Cutting out older wood encourages the production of new wood this year which will carry figs next summer. That is the background. And if you are thinking about growing a fig, then take a look at Brown Turkey - the best all-round garden fig at www.ashridgetr... - and if you are short of space, why not try Little Miss Figgy at www.ashridgetr... which, even when left alone, barely touches 2 metres.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I’m Andi from Ashridge Nurseries. It's early spring. It's a sort of sunny, cloudy day, but it’s a lovely day. I'm going to tackle this very large Brown Turkey fig tree. We've got fruit that would come for this year, but it's all got a little bit out of hand, so it's going to need quite a strong and hard cut back. It's not going to be a quick job and there's going to be some big cuts.
I've got a pruning saw and some loppers and my secateurs. I'll start by losing all this wispy stuff. And then we'll get rid of some of the crossing branches, and then we’ll probably reduce the height because it's way too high as well for this space. So it's going to be a fairly half an hour job, really, so I'm just going to crack on and we'll see what happens.
You can see at the bottom here, we've had a lot of sort of pruning and pruning back, which obviously encourages new shoots. We don't really want any of this, so I’m just going to quickly come through here and snip all this out.
Not sure how my secateurs are going to take to this over this thick wood, but they’re nice and sharp, so that was easy enough. So I'm just going to work through here very quickly and tidy it up. You see here again, some of the old cuts were done a bit longer than I'd like, so we'll just tidy, tidy. When the wood gets too thick, I’ll get the loppers out.
Again, If you keep your cutting tools nice and sharp, you'll find this is an easier job. Let's see what's left. So I've left this one because I think we're going to leave that for a future stem. I've got this stem, which comes up and then across and away, so he has to go and will be a difficult extraction because it's quite congested in here, and that actually you can see that that’s actually rooted down there, so, again, not ideal for the foundation of the wall.
So that's our very first cut and it was fairly obvious It needed to go. I can see I've got one coming up and across, so that also needs to go, then that should theoretically just pull out. So this is a really awkward cane. It's debatable on how much I can get to that. I should be able to get to it with saw. Pruning saws are very dangerous tools. If you get that across your skin, it will really open you up. So let's just make sure I’m going to cut the right one. That can go first because that gives me some access and that's right in there as well.
We'll actually come out that way. And this is why a pruning saw is such a useful tool because even though that's so congested in there, I can get in.
That comes out of there nicely and immediately that opens the centre of the plant. I'm done with the saw, so I like to put it away and I’ve just got to decide where I want to go next. He's pretty unpleasant. So the first part of this is literally just losing that congestion and opening the plant's up. We have this very awkward stumpy bit here that has nice new growth at the centre, so I'm just going to tidy that and then remove these
That can go. Now I'm just making very limited decisions about - do I like a branch or don't I. This one here crosses completely, I'm actually going to remove it all again from right down the base, and my pruning saw should just slip into that gap nicely
We’re going to just face up some of these now. So we stopped this growth coming forward. If we look at this side as well now, you can see that the centre is coming quite nice, it's less congested, but we’ve got a bit of madness going on over here, and I'm just going to have a look and see what I think wants to go
There is dead in here as well, which needs to go. That's coming off of there, so we can lose that. Luckily figs are very, very soft wood, so they're always an easy prune. Now we're going to look at just reducing this side down again. We have leaf nodes all the way up or branching nodes
Read the rest of the transcript here: www.ashridgetr...

[@teddyboy252]

Good work

[@AshridgeTrees]

Thanks

[@barryjanis]

When I prune my in ground fig trees , I cut them 3 - 4 ft from the ground. The finished tree
resembles a bowl with a hollow center for good air flow. I don't use a ladder to harvest the fruit. I let my trees get wider but not taller each year, also remove the thin sucker shoots in the center. good luck !

[@AshridgeTrees]

Thanks - I agree completely. It is just that most gardeners are a bit nervous about such savagery....

[@tufluxed3293]

Awesome video

[@Kelsdoggy]

This was great. Any updates from on it?

[@nickjames2594]

Nice work

[@AshridgeTrees]

Thanks. Hope our videos help

[@ranoli2000]

nice going

[@AshridgeTrees]

Thanks!

[@AshridgeTrees]

You can buy excellent quality fig trees from our Somerset nursry: www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/fruit-trees/fig-medlar-quince-trees

[@chonapineda6465]

IT’S TOO CLOSE TO THE WALL,’GLAD THAT D INVASIVE ROOTS DIDN’T AFFECT D WALL…

[@AshridgeTrees]

Thanks for the thought, but in this case the fig is planted in a sunken "box" made of paving slabs and lined with root control fabric so the roots cannot escape. The fig would be several times the size (it is over 25 years old) and have ruined the wall by now if it was not restricted like this.