Keep posting about how this works. We may be onto a good way to force some early growth to add to Herman's pinching. I will do anything to get more figs; well almost anything ;-)

well,gene, i'll beable to supply long term info on bottomless buckets.
i can't do without them due to fringe benefits.
1] they totally stopped attacks by evil jack rabbits who love tender shoots of figs.
and

2]those trees surrounded by 5 gal buckets are using much less water. they can go days longer
without watering than unprotected plants.

i ordered tree guards to stop  bunny raids, but i'll use them only when i have no buckets available.

I'm guessing that the bucket is raising the humidity for  your trees, thus lowering their watering needs. It will not help long term, as they get taller, but I may be a big help at this early stage.

I have tons of rabbits in the front yard (none in the back due to the beagle), but for some reason they have not bothered any of my fruit plants; not young figs, not blueberries, not my crandalls, nothing.

these are ugly jack rabbits, not cute eastern bunnys.
due to drought, there's  really no greens for them to eat. they are eating figs, cherries, honeysuckle, virginia creeper everything i planted this year but the peach
 which has no  leaves in reach. they haven't eaten bark on big older figs either.

if it ever rains my garden will be less appealing, i hope.

Well, I ended my experiment with forcing growth today. It has been rainy the past several days and I noticed gnats in and around the figs that were enclosed. So I pulled the enclosures ASAP. I don't know  what gnats would do to an in ground tree, but I don't want to find out either.

From this little experiment I came to this conclusion. The enclosure helps if it is small. Since mine are growing into bushes, I had to enlarge the diameter of the enclosures and they seemed to lose effect then. But I do think the grow tube, or actually a slightly larger "grow enclosure" helped get my Hardy Chicago off to a good start after dying back to the base this winter.

I will use the set-up again if/when I have a small tree that I want to jump start bud break. But once they need an enclosure wider than 8-10 inches I don't think it helps. Probably the smaller enclosure or tube creates a warm micro-environment that the larger one cannot.

does anyone have experience with mulch box rooting, it seems that decomposition would keep warm environment and wick the moisture to the cuttings in 1 gallon?

gene, my expeience is contrary.  the figs surrounded by bottomless 5 gal buckets are doing better than the control tree.

this may be due to desert climate. temps are in the  80s to 90s, so adding heat probably doesn't help much.

yesterday, there were gnats everywhere but i didn't seem to see more in the buckets. this  followed 3'' of wonderful rain.

by the way, all my plants seem to prefer rain water. i saw visible growth in 3 days.

pat, the mulch box thing is an old organic farming technique. you can probably find info on a veggie site.

I was wondering if it gets around the gnat problem, as well as solve the constant heat and humidity questions.  Do not know if it might increase mold issues.

i would've thot it would increase gnat problems.

 as faras i know, a mulch box is used to force early veggies, not for any permanent planting'

i suppose you could sink potted figs into a working compost pile to keep roots warm, but if it's cold enow
to need that, how do you protect the top?