Fig Tree Planting Demonstration

All right everybody this is Ross the Fig Boss. Today we're going to be planting some fig trees in the ground. I have about 10 trees or so I would like to get in the ground today. It is September 17th. We have officially now in this climate entered into our fall weather and so because of this fall weather it's now basically in the 80s during the day. It's getting colder at night as well. It's starting to be in the 50s and things are getting cool rather quickly. This is a tree here that I just planted and this is a variety called Risulet which believe it or not is not a very healthy tree. So what I need to do after planting this in the ground is actually do some rejuvenation pruning and I would highly recommend that after planting our figs which I'm going to demonstrate for you guys now is that we do some really hard pruning. Now this pruning isn't going to take place right away. We're still in the active growing season so we want to maximize that photosynthesis. We have to wait until a couple frosts come in. These trees start to go dormant and my plan and the reason why I've planted this tree on an angle I'd like to discuss with you guys is because we're actually going to make a cut right here come dormancy. So all this top growth is going to go away and so we're not going to have this problem here with actually this tree right next to it in such close proximity and also it's not really going to be on much of an angle in the future. You know I only planted it on an angle right now because my plan with all these trees and what we have to do when planting figs in the fall is to protect them. Here in a zone 7a, really zone 7s, 6s and 5s, even 4s if you're doing this, you're going to plant in the fall. It's not really the most recommended thing. You have to really make sure that you're protecting them especially as somebody who's new to this has never planted trees or protected fig trees for very long. This is an absolutely critical thing and so I've planted it on an angle because now what I'm going to do is this is going to come off everything up here and then down here about a foot of growth which by the way this shoot right here looks rather healthy and then this shoot right here I'm hoping is going to come out as well and maybe also some others down here at the bottom and towards the base is that I'm going to bury this. I'm going to bend this over a little further and then cover it with wood chips and so then I'm going to in the spring when this gets through the winter time we'll plop this back up. I'll straighten this trunk out a little bit and even so if I don't really straighten this out a ton, the tree because of the sunlight is going to kind of straighten itself out. It's not really up to me necessarily. What we're really hoping for is some growth from kind of below the soil that we have buried. So some nodes that we have buried below the soil we're hoping that we get some really nice healthy growth from down here that inevitably will be where the growth kind of comes from in the future but the key at least for now is to protect that base and to bend over these branches to get them through the winter time rather easily. Of course we could wrap the tree as well we could plant it up straight and wrap it and that would be a nice solution as well but this is my easy little fix. Now what we've also done by planting this on an angle is we've kind of gotten away with a little bit of planting this above grade somewhat. I've also been able to by planting it on an angle is bury some of the the stem here of the trunk and this is a critical piece. You're planting a fig tree in the ground. The more of the stem that you can bury below the soil the better chances you have of the future of really never killing your tree and then also we have a nice little chance of you know not we're not really going to also we're going to root itself out excuse me we're going to have the ability to form roots along the trunk or whatever it is that we bury and it's kind of like planting a tomato plant or a pepper plant in that way. So that's the finished product right here. Let me show you now how it's done in real time. I've already got myself a little bit of a hole. We're going to make this a bit deeper. Right now I'm planting a three gallon size pot behind me. It's called Rissoulette. I'm sorry it's called Castle Tracino is the variety. So you know with anything like it's not really much different when planting a fig tree. You know we're the same rules still apply when we're planting a fig tree is that right the hole should be wide enough the hole should be deep enough. You know I think one of the major things that I like to recommend is actually the planning depth and so we did a video maybe that's coming out soon but there's different considerations to consider different pieces of information to consider when planting these figs in the ground and a lot of that revolves around actually the planning depth and how that relates to wherever you guys live and so for me I think planting them higher above grade is definitely the way to go. The reason for that is that in the spring by the way I'm turning the pot upside down not pulling on the trunk this tree is not as established as I'd like it to be. Now the thing about this trunk here on this tree is that it's still rather pliable. I could very easily bend this down come fall so I'm not really concerned about planting this one here on an angle but again back to the planning depth really quickly is that that's just a critical thing. I like to plant them higher above grade. I've seen people also have good success planting them below grade. Definitely in drier climates you can very easily plant your tree really deep. You could grow your fig tree out to a five foot tall width and then having that width plant dig a hole that's five feet in depth and then plant the tree at the bottom of the hole and then the whip will stick up out of the soil at the top there above grade and that way you'll have yourself a fig tree that is planted very deeply and has better access to water and soil moisture that way and also a little bit cooler temperatures for people in these dry really hot climates that can be really critical. Now the opposite is what we want here in this climate. We want less water typically and we want warmer temperatures so by planting above grade we're mimicking something like you would see in a container and so that's kind of what we're trying to achieve here with a lot of our trees. Now one of the things that's really critical you'll see me do right now is I'm just trying to really smash down the soil compact it around the tree. We dug a hole that was obviously wider than the width of the root ball and something really critical is to make sure that the root ball has good contact with the surrounding soil and if you don't compact that soil around it you're just not going to see good contact. Now the last thing here left to do we could even use our foot a little bit to press down on this which I know some people have different preferences and I really like to compact the soil now. We want to water this in and we also want to mulch this and if we do those two things we're going to have really good success with this tree going forward. You can see obviously there's still some fruit on this and that's fine but if we were really trying to get our tree established as much as possible it's probably best to remove most of these fruits if we're planting them in the fall so that the energy can be focused on root development there but that's it that's the finished product. Here's some mulch actually right here that I've moved away I need to get that on without a doubt. We'll probably cut some of this comfrey like I have behind me we'll throw this over top and again mulch and water this is the critical time. Here's the tag make sure I don't lose that put it underneath that rock so I know what it is that I'm growing. Same thing over here and then we're done. So that's kind of it we're gonna prune most of these trees down to a much smaller height so your rejuvenation prune them. We've planted them a little bit above grade nowhere near as much as I would have liked to but they're gonna get established rather quickly and so that's the name of the game. Thanks for watching this one here on planting figs we will see you guys soon all right take care catch you guys for the next one.