Figs are the quintessential Mediterranean fruit tree and when we moved here in 2022 I was so happy about the miniature grove of fig trees at the very back of the garden! But in that summer and fall we didn’t see a single fig. Having no experience at all with fig trees and lots of other things on my mind, I thought at first that they might simply be a kind of non-bearing fig tree. There is, of course, no such thing.
Some talks with neighbors and a bit of research later I came to realize that they had probably been cut back drastically – and improperly – the year before. Unfortunately many “garden maintenance” people are in a hurry (or incompetent) and instead of carefully selecting the proper branches to cut, they do a once-over cut, straight across the top. In this case this resulted in lots of long, bare, and spindly trunks with “lion tail” tufts at the very top and nothing underneath. Creating a canopy that effectively cut out the light below and left no fruiting branches.
Over the past two years I’ve been getting them in shape again by taking out the longest, most spindly lion tails at the bottom and shorting others strategically. This way they have grown back from the bottom and re-formed a thicket of shorter, well-branched fig trees. And this year’s fig harvest has been a lot better – we’ve picked sweet and juicy, purple fruit from the beginning of August through the beginning of September.
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