High Density Fig Trees: The Pros and Cons of Planting Fig Trees 2 ft on Center

all right fig lovers this is Ross the Fig boss I was asked recently to update you guys on the high density fig plantings that I've been experimenting with uh here in the Philadelphia area zone 7 I have about 120 different fig trees uh planted in the ground and this experiment started I think about sevenish years ago uh where we decided to plant fig trees 2 foot on Center um and in fact we have about five different plots here on the property uh this plot here behind me has about 35 to 40 fig trees in it that we're going to look at today this is on the west side this is one of the two plots on the west side of the property we also have one on the South Side the north side and the East Side um so we have five plots in total this one here though has been I think it's the most advanced um and so I'm going to show you guys this one because the one that is the most advanced obviously has the largest trees and when you have planting uh or fig trees that close together um it can be really tricky to grow them so close together for such a long period of time so some of the trees in here even though we started about seven or eight years ago with this experiment some of the trees in here actually all of them we originally were planning on cutting them really far back every season so they would grow six 7 8 9 10 feet in one season and and then at the end of the year I would take all those cuting and prune them really far back to about 6 to 12 in and that was a great plan for a while I mean obviously I had a lot of wood and I could sell a lot of cuting but the trees were not very productive that way and so I would highly recommend anybody that's in like a zone five or six and that's your strategy for uh winter protection or that's your winter strategy would not recommend doing that at all um you can of course I think at this point I could chop the trees really far back if I wanted to and restart the form and make the trees a bit smaller and more Compact and that would work and I think they would fruit the following year after pruning them but generally a hard prune like that is going to result in a lot of fig trees the majority of the ones I have here they'll produce almost no fruit the next year so it's really about the hormones I thought it was about light or sunlight um but it's really I think all in the hormones and when you pck your trees back like that uh you just really don't get the fruit set that you want um so you have to have some kind of Base to your tree that's going to keep the hormones at least uh in a heightened state so that you can have them in this right balance but if you're constantly pruning them back every year it's just going to be really difficult to get the fruits set that you want your fruits will also be later uh you'll have less fruits and the fruits will even be a lower quality there's a huge uh difference in quality believe it or not the one benefit is that your fruits will actually be larger so that's maybe a benefit for for some people but um some of the trees in here now I would say maybe about 75% of them are now entering their third or fourth growing season having survived the winter with very minimal damage uh I think some might be in here in their Fifth Season uh but certainly what that means is they're getting a an established form and I don't have to I'm not cutting them really far back anymore and so they're taking up a lot of space and so when we gave the tour of all the fig trees here on the property or a lot of the fig trees this was obviously someone's thought well Ross how are you managing all these trees in such a small space so again they're two foot on Center uh we have nine um I would say there's five rows if you think about it going back towards the house up to five rows and it goes across uh nine plantings or nine trees so it's easy to to deal with them right here right I'm on the outside of the of the planting at the outside of the plot but when then I get into the plot it's very difficult to kind of organize myself walk around Harvest some of the fruits um now I'm not complaining at all I did this to myself but if you're not somebody who needs to have hundreds of varieties and is someone like myself who's triing hundreds of varieties uh you don't you don't need to do this and that's the main message I think people ask me all the time Ross what do you recommend Spa where how far apart do you recommend spacing your fig trees when you plant them the answer is I think you got to go at least four to six 4 to 6 feet away excuse me um 2 ft is definitely too close but it's doable and I'm making it work and I will continue to make it work but you have to really know pruning you have to know how the trees will be affected by the pruning that you're doing and you also have to be able to train the trees stake the branches use limb spreaders limb bending uh you know every little trick and Tool in Your Arsenal that we talk about here on this channel to be able to make this work again it's possible I I'm not going to say it's not um and I also think it's it's kind of nice actually having just a giant mat essentially of of fig trees uh so it's almost like if you want to do this and you want to have a higher density planting even 4 feet is a higher dense planting most Growers uh commercially will not plant them that close together that's a little bit absurd um and so you know I I think when you when you have them that close basically you can just think of this this whole plot here as one tree and one living organism and that there's all these other trees in it but it just is one giant thing and if you can manage all the little pieces in that one thing it it makes a lot of sense and it's easier to um to manage but at some point here I will have to do some more heavy duty turning to these trees to make sure that some of them are not getting too far away from the others and and some of them are being kept in check and I don't mind doing that I know how to control these trees and it's really as simple as if we want to reduce the height of some of these trees we have to bring back the scaffolds or prune out some of the trunks actually every tree in here is a is the tree form it's not a bush form and so that's just not necessarily my preferred way of growing fig trees I do I do actually prefer a bush growing them as a bush like this Ron deoro here or this little Ruby tree uh that's in the shape of a bush um and that's because I live in a colder place I've talked about that the differences between a bush and a tree and if you want to have a tree you just have to come in here at the base of every tree and remove all the suckers just keep the one shoot but for me I have one shoot because I like to harvest the suckers propagate them through air layer or I will let the cuting or the suckers grow excuse me and the the suckers will grow rather large by the end of the season and uh they'll get to about six or seven maybe even 8 feet depending on the variety and I'll Harvest those and sell them as cuting every foot is one cutting that I sell every November uh through January um so for me it's um this plot's doing two things at once I'm getting a harvest and I'm getting suckers and prunings and cuttings uh that way um now one thing I think people really love to question when they think about this or doing something like this they're like well aren't the trees going to compete for nutrients aren't the trees going to not do well because they're so close together and yada yada yada I have just not found that to be the case at all nutrient wise if anything there's a competition for sunlight and some of the trees do get far away from the others simply because either some of them never took off the way that they should have they were just not planted properly or they weren't at the right size when I planted them uh there was definitely varying degrees of sizes I planted some that were in 10 gallon pots or 15 gallon pots right in the ground whereas others were in one gallon pots and so some of the trees have obviously taken off much better than others I just actually planted a couple new ones in here so I'm actually adding to this plot I have thought about expanding it um a little bit further and adding another row but generally um I don't really have to worry about nutrients now I do have a really heavy clay soil that's typically higher in nutrients than maybe what you guys have um and so if I lived in a really sandy dry soil with very minimal amounts of nutrients I would start to be a little bit concerned but um at the end of the day no matter where you live I think it's a really good idea if you're going to be doing this is to add lots of mulch and that mulch will break down it'll add nutrients it'll add life to your soil it'll change the the texture of your soil and you won't really have to worry about the competition aspect of of nutrients the the wood chips you would not believe how beneficial it is for Woody perennials and um so I haven't had a problem with that the only real problem is the competition for sunlight and and being able to manage this having the expertise to do so and also being able to harvest uh and uh now I'm getting to the point where a tree like this I'm having a hard time reaching for the fruits I'm going to have to at some point maybe even get a ladder for this um there is a tree over here green merinsa which again I can just pull the branches down but if you imagine this green merinsa here it's almost at the point where it's like this rosan pmen next to it and I definitely need a ladder for that I can't Harvest all the fruits on this rosan pmen it's just too big so we're we're not quite there yet but maybe at the end of this season I will be with this tree and I won't be able to come in here and uh and do that and getting a ladder in here will be impossible uh or near impossible so um not to worry about it though I just have to do some thinning Cuts uh reducing the height recycling some of that wood around where the scaffolds form cut out a scaffold or two a new scaffold comes up in its place so um yeah now I have actually a way of getting cuting as well not just from the suckers but now I can Harvest cuting from higher points on the tree which also is U you know a nice benefit um so in general like I said I think those are really the pros and cons of what we talked about with this High dense planting again they're two foot on Center I would not recommend planting them unless you are really have the expertise and the desire to do this and you don't have a lot of room why I did this is that I don't have a whole lot of room yes there's a lot of grass around here but this is not my property and I did not have the freedom to do everything I wanted if I did uh I would I wouldn't have grass there wouldn't be grass here it would be covered with fruit trees and Fring plants and fig trees um so yeah if you're one of those people then be my guest but it's not for everybody so thanks for watching hit the Subscribe button hit that like button and uh check out my blog fig boss.com catch you guys for the next video take care