went to look at the trees in the garage and some of the branches were not doing too well. the breba were dried up, leaves are falling off.. they are 4 yr old trees. so.. emergency root pruning. i think the soil was too compacted and the water was not getting to the roots. 

took them out of the container and they didn't look too bad as far as impacted roots are concerned, but the soil was broken down and very compacted. 

spent took me 2 hrs to do 3 trees. removed all the bad looking breba, took some of the leaves off. cut 2" off the side, bottom and top, cut deep into the center and took some wedges off. 

put fresh soil mix and water well. the night temp won't go down to 32 from now on, so left them outside. 

just not a good week for the figs. i'm sure the main crop will be fine. now i have only handful of breba left on all the trees. 

on the other hand, Longue D'Aout is putting out buds, so there is a bright side to whole thing. 

Sounds bad.  This transition (to Summer) is always hard.  Too much water for the stage of dormancy, soils breaking down, too much warmth in the day, too cold at night, breaking dormancy while the nights are too cold to stay outside.  I'm going to have to get a MH light for my garage if I can't keep my figs dormant.

Maybe try adrianos tip of driving a large spike in 1 or 2 places in the top of the compacted soil, then water into those holes slowly to wet the soil back up.

chivas, 

i have done that last year and it does work very well. only thing is, i didn't have spikes today. and they were in the 10 gal for last 2 yrs. so it was about time. i was going to push for 3, then decided it might not do. the soil has broken down to a point, it was just hunk of thick cake. all the pine bark fines were more or less non-existent. perlites were only visible on top of the soil. 

once i sawed into the side and bottom, i could see that everything were more or less broken down and uniform brown mess. 

i was tempted to just bare root, but i don't think that was possible. the roots just inside of the edge were very fine. all the thick rope like roots were circling outside near the edge. 

i think best option is one that james suggested some time ago. cut 1/3 of the soil off every 2 yrs. by 6th yr, the whole soil would have been replaced. 

i'm very tempted to just use peat moss/perlite mix at 1:1 even in large container. they are much easier to sort through the roots. but that would be just too costly. 

Meh if there the white types dont sweat it !
  ; )

Martin, spoken like a true Cajun. (Meh or may or mae)
"gene"

martin, the one that got hit was dark type x) but i'm sure it will bounce back. just need to do more timely root pruning and aerating the soil.

edit: just found 12" long, 3/8" thick spike. that will aerate my containers fine :)

Grrrrrr.

minor set back. i might do air layer too.. just incase.