Figs are the most amazing food. Not those things at the grocery that try to pass off as figs. Real, grown to full ripeness figs are like a honey bomb. My favorite variety is Negronne, found at Jung Seed Company. It is sweet, but the flavor. THE FLAVOR. Is like tropical honey, meets strawberries, meets papaya. Hard to explain, but you’ll understand once you taste it.
Now, if you want the highest yield of figs, you’ve got to trim the trees. Otherwise, they’ll focus more on growing branches and leaves rather than fruit. Early spring is a great time to trim.
This is an untrimmed tree.
Let’s get to work!
One word of caution beforehand: Fig leaves and fig roots are worse than poison ivy. Even though you aren’t touching the roots and the leaves haven’t come out yet, it is best to exercise caution and wash your hands really well afterward regardless of if you wear gloves or not.
First, we are going to trim all suckers growing from the base and out of the dirt:
You want a total of three to four main branches, so all of those little branches that I circled need to go.
Second, those three to four main branches should not have a whole lot of shoots coming off of them. Let’s get to work there:
All of those little, side branches in the first picture need to go. The first year I was supposed to trim my figs, I fought the notion of trimming all of those branches. More branches means more figs, right? WRONG. I ended up with a whole bunch of leaves. The trees get the message and focus on fig production when kept in proper shape.
That is pretty much it. Fig trimming is fairly straight forward and easy.
The cool thing about all of those cuttings, is that you can keep them and try sprouting them into more fig trees:
