2022 In-Ground Fig Tree Potential

All right everybody, this is Ross the Fig Boss. Today we're going to talk about my in-ground fig trees, give you guys a little bit of an update. We're going to look at various different plantings I have. There's well over a hundred trees I have planted here in the Philadelphia area. This is the west side of the property that actually does the best. This gets the most amount of light, it gets the most amount of heat, and typically I actually get the best fruit set and the best fruit quality on this side of the yard. We also have another western planting that we're going to look at which is by the greenhouse. That one doesn't do nearly as well because of the soil, but also because of the planting over there gets less light than it does at this planting here that we're going to look at first. We also have a southern exposure which has about 60 or so trees in it. That one actually over time now is becoming quite shady. We even have planted a new planting that we planted this fall. We have one on the east side of the property and that one is for relatively new varieties. Varieties I really like don't necessarily care too much about the fruit quality or actually getting fruits. I'm more concerned about getting myself cuttings and plants from those particular trees. Getting those trees established to eventually move them or make copies of them so that when I move to a future property that's all set up for those really special varieties. We have a planting also on the north side of the property which is really meant as a hardiness experiment. Those get plenty of light during the day or at least an adequate amount of light but they're not protected throughout the winter time. The soil over there is also quite dry and because it is quite dry they do tend to have a greater level of hardiness than the rest of the trees in this entire property because the soil moisture is just too too wet throughout the summer and the trees continue to grow all year and don't lignify in time in preparation for the winter. This winter we had a six degree low. We also had some nights somewhere around the 14 to 12 degree range that came in the in the early spring when things kind of really started to thaw. Here in the yard where the the ground started to thaw the trees started to thaw. We had some warm days that told these trees and gave them the signal that hey maybe you should you know maybe not hunker down as much. Spring is coming and shortly after that we had very cold nights that I think was very abrupt and intense for those trees. All the trees that we have planted here actually on the property in the Philadelphia area were not protected at all this winter and it was really due to the fact of just pure and utter laziness slash just extremely busy time for my in my life at that period of my of my life. So we did not actually protect any of them and we did a giant hardiness experiment in that sense and we talked about in a video a few weeks ago talking about these in-ground figs and talking about which ones really were the hardiest, which ones have survived and done really well at a six degree low and I was pretty impressed by some of the results. Clearly the trees against the house have done the best with that extra heat that the house provides especially on this west side of the property where the sun sets in the west, heats up during the day and then that heat is I think better released at night for a longer period of time versus the southern exposure which got absolutely massacred. The other reason is I think the soil moisture is a little bit better here. The trees in the north side of the property did the best. Those of course had the drier soil with no added protection from the house but those did really well because they lignified very well. So we updated you guys on that. I want to talk more about some of the trees that made it. We're starting right here because the trees right in the southwest corner of the house are probably going to be my best performers. Why? They have the best exposure. They get the most light. They get the most heat and also they've done really well this winter in terms of their survival. This little ruby here is quite established. This guy had very minimal amounts of damage. It is a fig that is related to hardy chicago. It tastes just like hardy chicago but it's more figgy in my mind. A much more figgier version of hardy chicago. It's producing some good bravas so that's good. Last year I think it put out 10 or 12 maybe 14 bravas. This year I'm not seeing as many but it doesn't matter to me because this tree is going to produce a lot of main crop that'll probably ripen by the first of august somewhere around there and that's really impressive to have good quality fruits early in the season. That's a really big plus. The tree is putting out nice growth and it's branching out really nicely. It's putting out a lot of branches now rather than fewer amounts of branches so I expect a lot of these branches here I may come in here and thin a little bit. I definitely will come in here and thin a little bit but I would expect this tree to put out probably close to 150 to 200 fruits believe it or not. This is the second winter in a row that it has survived the winter. It is a dwarfing tree or dwarf fig variety believe it or not so this is actually maybe the third winter it survived. I'm not entirely sure but this is I guess a really good example of what can happen when you have a fig tree that survives the winter. We'll look at the different ways I'm planting these trees but this is typically actually not how I'm growing the figs here on the property and although I should be I should be having a tree like this or like many of my other fruiting plants in the yard that do survive the winter they do get to a larger size they do actually perform something like a tree rather than what some of these figs I have over here they perform something more like like a quick growing sugar cane or something like it's just really strange how those are so wildly different than this standard way of growing figs. So this is going to really perform well the figs are a lot smaller and that's why I would probably guess 150 to 200. They are a smaller variety it does set a lot of fruits in a very close spacing and I would think that's actually not a terrible estimate. Last year I probably got a hundred so we're looking at well into the hundreds now I think. This next one here is a Morro de Caneva this one's called Fico Seco. We actually have a nice Braba here and it's leafing out quite nice. I cut a lot of these trees by the way this is the only real example this little ruby of a tree that has many branches many trunks from the base to form a bush. All the other trees I had intended to leave one branch that was typically a single stem whip and leave that branch and then bend this branch over to the ground and then protect it and enable it really to survive the winter. That never happened but I still have some remnants of these single stem whips essentially one single trunk that came up last year and they're leafing out from this single stem trunk and it's going to be very interesting to observe how the trees grow like this and like this Ronde Bordeaux here from this growth that survived the winter because this little ruby is going to leaf out in many different points as you can kind of tell many different growth points on this tree and it's going to grow rather slowly it's not going to it's going to kind of fill itself in rather than having these long lanky arms it probably will have smaller leaves to it more numerous branches more numerous fruits and that's typically the the nature of these figs actually when they behave actually in the way that they should but when you have them in such a vigorous state like these two trees here and typically what I'll do with a lot of the other trees that we'll look at here on the west side is they get pruned to 6 to 12 inches and then I only allow actually four of the fruiting branches to remain and those four fruiting branches come up and they grow believe it or not to 13 feet sometimes and it can really take up this whole space it looks like a giant jungle by the end of the season and even really by the summer it looks like a jungle so what I have to do is actually come in here and thin out a lot of these shoots down here at the base and leave only four because I have them planted so close together these trees are planted two foot on center there's a tree right there a tree right there a tree right there a tree right there and then a tree right there and that's all in one row that's five trees planted within 10 feet in a 10 foot long row so we have to space them or we have to excuse me thin out the shoots and allow only four fruiting branches but this year and what my intention was was to grow them out as this whip and then see how they respond the following season are they going to grow something like this this little ruby where we have a lot of different shoots that don't necessarily get as long and not as long as lanky and they put out a lot of fruits that way also similar to this texas ba1 which was a rather interesting phenomenon this year where this guy had survived the winter for two seasons in a row he did have some damage on the back end of the tree but this is related to smith this is basically smith and people say that smith is not very hardy I mean that if that isn't a smith leaf I don't know what is but anyway so that's that was interesting but you can see how this tree is growing right is that it's putting out a lot of shoots kind of like how you would see your potted trees grow which is normal and typical but that's not what I've been seeing with these other in-ground trees cutting them and pruning them in this way and limiting only four fruiting branches with so much water and so much nutrients in the soil it's just crazy how they take off so that'll be an interesting little phenomenon let's talk more about the varieties again here's ronde bordeaux we did I think protect this single tree and this single branch I had a bunch of tarps on top of this so this here survived and there's many fruiting branches in here that are trying to come up from the roots or from a lower point of the tree this stuff here on this branch that's much older see that gray wood I imagine will probably maybe slow down its growth I hope it's going to slow down its growth and produce more in this area so we'll see I'll probably limit this section of the tree to maybe three fruiting branches and then leave this and see what this does maybe I'll stake it over here or something same thing with this morro de caneva this has about eight new shoots on it including this nice brava which is very interesting because I haven't seen a brava yet on morro de caneva I know it produces brava but has not been a thing I've been accustomed to yet but again I'll let this thing grow and just see what what happens for a number of these trees that did indeed survive another tree that did well actually this winter is the jh adriatic this is a really hardy green ice shia type so it's got you know strawberry uh red dark pulp to it almost raspberry in flavor very intense with the green skin similar shape to a lot of these figs here is something interesting this is lsu huye didn't protect it the main shoot right here that I left this single stem whip part of it survived actually part of it took damage it looked like but it is leafing out from this main shoot what is interesting though is that some suckers that were left behind as the tree continually suckers these trees love the sucker and I typically air layer a lot of them this one actually over here has a brava on it how crazy is that so that is wild and I would think these suckers believe it or not they don't lignify very well they don't grow they grow very quickly they don't lignify but somehow they made it throughout this winter and it's really crazy without a doubt I think the lsu varieties a lot of them because of the celeste parentage that they have are actually really quite hardy tiger lsu holier or huye and lsu purple are all really great choices for colder places lsu tiger is really just celeste but like double the size here we have a new one actually to me I wish I got some fruit off of this it's called cementito rosso last year I had plenty of fruits but then I planted it in the ground and it just didn't get enough water and because it didn't get enough water we um you know we had some problems actually keeping those fruits and ripening those fruits a lot of them dropped so I know this one's common and actually it did actually ripen of one single fruit at the end of the year but you know it would be nice actually now that it's hopefully dug itself in and it's going to grow well it had it took no damage this winter so that's really really impressive and hopeful that we have something very interesting to share with you guys upcoming I don't know what it is I know that it's obviously hardy it's going to do well in this climate that's why I planted it in the ground it has a great shape to it here's another morro de caneva this is an arena and you can see this main stem this main whip that we saved it did survive the winter and here's a lot of fruiting branches from that whip same thing over here with safrari it's going to be interesting to to see here's a lsu tiger so a number of things number of these varieties worked out really well here's actually down here a campanile but it did not survive up until this point in the front of the house however there is a quite large and really well lignified campanile out there that has done exceptionally well so it's weird you know some of these trees live it depends on the planting it may even depend on the tree you know the location is obviously extremely important but maybe not all of these trees are created equal in terms of their hardiness this is probably the biggest winner of them all this is long to do known as a very hardy fig and this main whip survived almost all of it survived and there's a lot of brava on this uh some of them look really weird i imagine some of them will fall off but this this thing's going to produce a ton of fruits the problem is it splits a lot and i hope that because the tree is now this in this form it will slow down its growth it will produce more fruits and then because it produces more fruits the fruits will be of a smaller size and therefore they will split less so that's my hope the other big winner over here was this guy here which was azores dark it's a hardy chicago type we got a brava down there um really these trees against the house performed wonderfully this winter there's a naruchilla to elba down there we got this one that's rather new it's kefeji black another azores dark which is growing really well that's a conde it's another hardy chicago type this is a blue celeste in the form of stallion or really just celeste let's be honest there's only i don't think blue celeste really exists other than the variety that is just called blue celeste there is one variety that the uc davis has in their collection called blue celeste but the celeste itself a lot of them the different celeste variants out there can turn a shade of blue or a shade of gray anyway here we have a planting actually we just took the tunnel off of this there's a lot of damage this is a again a shadier colder area real only winner over here so far is this fig which is the campanery it did die you can see it's sending up some good suckers and they're growing real quick so that's kind of uncharacteristic of this variety to grow super quickly but um it's doing its thing um everything in here for the most part there was a few trees that did not survive and actually i made a list i went through all the trees today made a list of all of them that didn't survive and i'll just go over a couple of the reasons why some of them didn't live some of them were just not well established that's certain i had a koldedom roja actually over here that never really got established because this bed has a full planting of peat moss in the middle and that that stuff just sucks it gets dry it doesn't and it doesn't get wet again so it's hard to really water these figs and get them established in this middle row but some of them finally are getting established so that's really really good to see but i had to keep an eye on this this planting here because they just don't grow very much throughout the season and if they don't grow well then they never get established and then if they don't get established inevitably they get knocked out by something you know it's not like any other plant unfortunately that can just survive the winter it's just too cold here and there's too many other factors i think that are affecting these trees in a negative way so a lot of them weren't established whether they never got the moisture they needed they may never have even gotten the light that they needed other trees that weren't well established maybe i didn't they weren't really well established when i planted them from a one gallon size pot maybe they weren't even planted well there was a couple trees actually i didn't plant very well and the soil was not tamped down enough and packed in there you know really packing in that soil gets you good contact with the soil and the roots and they never really sunk in and never really got around the roots and that was actually a big reason why a couple of the trees died a couple of the trees were grafted and of course when they're grafted good luck if they're having to survive the winter you have to protect them in some way just would absolutely not recommend planting a grafted tree this far north but a lot most of them were just not established and weak sickly trees to begin with they they really were not about 10 i have about 10 here maybe 13 trees that didn't survive this is a part of life growing figs in the northeast in a colder place you lose trees every year i lose trees every single year uh i lose a couple potted trees not many potted trees anymore but i used to and uh you always lose some kind of in-ground fig and typically it's the one that's sickly not established weak um and that's mainly why i plant them in the ground is actually to help them become established and no longer sickly and weak maybe i just have to be a bit more patient really and you know all of this is a learning experience guys you're gonna kill trees yourself so you just have to learn why you killed them exactly i just gave you all the reasons i know exactly how every single one of these trees died that's the only way you learn so anyway we have uh quite a few spots actually to fill with these 13 new trees plus we have the new planting that we have on the east side and we can plant a number of new trees if we want probably around 30 different trees um the question is which ones do i want to plant and um i don't have really much of any at this current moment to plant um so we'll see what the deal is with that at some later date but um planting the trees in the ground and growing them in the ground is by far and away my preferred method um and something that i like the most so all these trees that are left have come back uh or will come back we have some pastelier some ponte tresa you got gayette uh demos unknown this is a narutio de elba actually looks like the gayette has yet to put out anything just yet and some of you guys get a little impatient with them waking up and that just happens with some of the trees you know some are just slower to wake up than others a lot of that has to do with how well established they are how much moisture they're getting so what i need to do actually to a lot of these that aren't doing their thing yet is really water them in and the temperatures actually tomorrow and the next day are going to be 90 in the 90s so that'll also help we need to give them soil temperatures and moisture you can see this year i had a lot of leaves and i put the leaves underneath the tunnels and i wanted to see if that did anything helping me keep the soil moist and it did this planting here is just extremely dry because of that peat moss this this whole thing here guys is a learning experience when we do this for real on the next property you know everything's going to be done basically the best way you can do it and this is all putting it all together trying different so many different things to learn as much as we can so that when we do it for real it's uh it's it's going to look so easy anyway so this is a new planning we did actually as i mentioned that these are the varieties i really liked or were new to me and i wanted to have an established in-ground tree getting them established before we move uh getting them established maybe to have more plants more cuttings uh whatever it is only one of them didn't survive and that was a really sick weekly tree that really never should have been planted probably uh i think that was a juwale noire air layer that i took and it really didn't have many roots but i stuck it in the ground anyway most of the trees believe it or not survive even these young ones and this this was not protected crazy to plant young trees like this that aren't established and expect them to survive like these are all one gallon even less than one gallon size trees that we planted i do have some five gallons back here that we planted and they're totally fine like vagabond and and uh nin v and the other one over here is a black celeste i also have a couple air layers i took that were in larger sizes that's vertelino i also planted a prosciutto which by the way doesn't look too good because the entire top of it snapped off and i don't know if it will actually come back from the roots we will see uh but this little black celeste air layer i took that didn't have many roots to it actually survived so it's crazy to see what survived and what didn't this super small hative de argentio air layer survived and so did that verdone from nicky so it's so weird um but as long as i think they're somewhat established they can survive the winter even when planted in the fall but it's just like really stupid in this kind of climate to not protect them after planting them in the fall that's just a huge mistake in my opinion um you know i made a mistake i didn't i didn't protect them it is what it is um so for a few of these the only one i lost was this joale noir so i'll have to air layer it again and try again um this fall plant maybe a joale