I have a vigorous Green Verte in a 3 gal pot. It is bush about 30in in each direction. It has outgrown the pot, but I've been too busy to up pot the last month. So I have two options as I see it:

1) plant it in the ground now, mulch heavily, and cover it over the winter
or
2) up-pot to 5gal and keep it in a shed with a light bulb on at night

I live in zone7b, normal lows for the year are around 15F. So if we have a normal winter it would have lots of time to get established before the coldest part of the year in mid-Jan. But last year the hard cold started in mid-Dec and low was around 0F in late Jan.

What say yea?

Option 2 sounds better to me. It's still small and not worth the risk.

I would up pot it to the 5-gal if I were you.

Better to cover it as you would have better chance.

Door #2

Hi Genedaniels,
Do you have another "Green verte" hanging around in another pot, just in case ?
I would plant the tree in the dirt. I'm in Zone7 as well, and last year we got hit by -15°C/5°F and the trees got no problems - with the trashcans protections in place.
I would have done that sooner in July, but ok, you can still do it. I planted myself 4 trees from 1 or 2 gallon pots in ground two weeks ago.
And I still have one to plant. I'm waiting for a toadkiss fig tree to fruit - and the last one will be replaced by the potted one if the fruits are still awful.

I would choose option 2 unless you have another Verte as backup. 
Outside for the winter a small plant can also be a target of hungry critters.

Hi Genedaniels,
That is easy, I did a post for that :) 
http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/winter-protection-6910093?pid=1282877020#post1282877020

Last year I had about a dozen babies in 1 and 2 gal. pots ranging from 18" to 30" in height. I  grouped them tightly and placed them about 10" away from a sheltered wood fence.  I then surrounded them with a 2 flake thick layer of straw around the pots (about 8-10" of packed straw still compressed from the bale). I then fluffed up more straw and sprinkled it over and between all the trees until they were totally buried in a thick layer of loose straw. We had several periods of nighttime 5-9 degree weather with daytime temps up in the teens and 20's. With the exception of a VDB and a Bryant Dark, all the rest were not especially hardy members of the honey fig family. I lost no pots and had no winter damage to any of my pots.

The very small in-ground trees which I was able to fully bury in a combination of wood chips and leaves had no damage. My 8-10 year old trees which were too big to protect in the same way experienced quite a bit of die back. The ground will freeze down a few inches in this climate but I have found that applying a 4' wide 12-18" layer of aged wood chips around my larger in-ground trees pretty much guarantees the survival of the root ball for anything short of a zone 6 or 5 type winter. Decomposing wood chips produce some heat so there is the additional benefit of creating a micro climate around my trees and the layer of leaves tends to preserve some of this heat.

This year I have duplicates of most of the babies I started over the winter with one having been planted in-ground and one remaining in the pot to be buried for the winter. Think we are headed for another really cold winter this year too.  Maybe next spring I will have more of an answer on wintering in pots vs planting late in-ground because I waited till the worst of the summer heat had passed before planting 6 of this years babies in ground. They have not had a lot of time to get established.

Gene, put the tree in ground, plant it deep and also air-layer a nice big brach (or two) for extra as a backup. :)