Protecting figs through the winter
The
best way to push your hardiness boundaries is to provide tender
perennials like figs with a warm and dry microclimate. One grower
I know planted
his fig right under the dryer exhaust vent, with very good results, and
others recommend locating your fig on the southern side of a
house. Stone patios can grab the heat from the winter sun and
radiate it back out at night, and presumably locating a fig near a
large body of water would serve the same purpose.
If you dry your clothes
on the line and don't have a patio, you can still get figs through zone
6 winters with a little extra effort. One option consists of
cutting the roots on one side of the tree with a shovel to allow you to
bend the whole tree down flush with the earth. You can either dig
a trench and bury the branches underground, or simply top them with
bales of straw.
The alternative we've used
involves autumn
leaves insulating the aboveground growth of the fig. My method worked
okay, but the leaves got beaten down by rain and snow, and any branches
that ended up exposed died back. This winter, I'll probably take
the advice of more experienced fig growers and tie the limbs together,
pack in leaves, then wrap the leafy insulation with a tarp or other
waterproof layer.
A final option,
especially handy for those in the extreme north, is to treat your fig
as a potted plant. The fig can spend the summer outdoors, then
once it drops its leaves (usually after a light frost), you take the
plant inside to a cool basement or root cellar. Alternatively, if
you've got a warm, sunny window that's not already full of dwarf citrus, you can keep a potted fig
growing all winter by bringing it in before cold weather hits.
I'd be curious to hear
from those of you north of zone 7 who have had good luck growing
figs. Which varieties did you choose and how do
you get them through the winter? What kind of yields have you
seen?
| This post is part of our Fig lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi, I have a 2 year old “Little Miss Figgy.” Do you know it? I had 2 figs on it when it came out of winter storage in my basement. They dropped. I moved it into a new greenhouse, it’s growing great, but no figs! I plan to keep it in the greenhouse for the winter and espalier it like Lee Reich, pruning it after leaves drop. Any advice would be welcome. Thank you.