Went out to my tool shed about 3pm today to get a hatchet for chopping some kindeling and decided to take a look at my stored,two year old fig trees( haven't been out there since way before that super freeze we had about ten days ago)....took one look and knew I had a problem....had 7 trees out there, 3 in the large 35 gallon pots and 4 in 15 gal. pots....one of the 35gals.(Neri 2) was frosen solid including the entire rootball with substantial top side damage as well...the other two 35gals had just a light frost on top of the soil with no visable signs of top damage, so I double wrapped those two with insulation and some old army blankets. The four 15 gal. pots were also frozen, but did not show any serious top damage.....Soooo I carried all the 15gals into the attached garage where it's about 15 degrees warmer and I yanked the entire 35gal frozen tree out of the pot and dragged it into the garage(trauma center) where I pruned down the frozen branches until I came to living tissue.  That beautiful Neri 2 is now only about 10" tall with two living trunks, so if the thawing process continues with no further damage to the top of the tree I think it might make it.(fingers crossed)....When that arctic blast hit us the weather men were saying that it was the coldest it's been in 17 years (long before I took up figs as a hobby.)  So if these guys survive then I'll have to take more serious storage measures next winter !!
Anybody else have any arctic disaster stories to share?

Vince,

I don't know if it was a good idea to prune now. With roses, we wait till spring because we know there would be dieback. If you cut early then you have dieback all over again.

Not saying you made a horrible mistake. But then again, you moved them to a warmer location so hopefully all should be fine.

As for storage disasters go, I used to store most of my figs in the backyard shed. Two years in a row I would loose my entire collection due to freeze. That would count to roughly 50 plants each year. I did everything I can think of to protect them from the eliments but still failed somewhere somehow.

I was still new to figs and didn't know much. I did store a few in the attached garage and those survived.

I even brought the question out here and was given plenty of advice.

For the last three or four years I've been storing all my figs (125 to 150 avg.) in my attached garage and I only had one or two 1gl. plants to die on me.

I think it is a good idea (when practicle) to store them in the attached garage and water them from time to time. Just enough to get them wet once every ten days or so.

When you have figs so rare or so hard to get, you will do just about anything to insure their survival.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the advise Rafed. This is the first time in the 6 years I have been growing figs that I ever suffered any winter losses.  As far as the pruning back of the dead branches, I wasen't quite sure what to do.  The only thing that came to mind was the old Army training films on frost bite, where they had to amputate the dead tissue in order to save the living tissue.  I guess it's a little different with plants. Oh well, live and learn...    :)

You'll be fine.

Vince,
I would seal the cut branch ends. I have used Elmer's School Glue (mentioned on the forum and works fine), but a commercial product would work. It prevents dessication, dieback and seals the cut branch. Good Luck.

Thanks Pete...just wrapped the top of both branches with Parafilm...that should keep it until springtime.

Vince -sorry to hear of your losses :( :( 

Hope they stay the way they are until spring - NO MORE DIE BACK!!

Thanks JoAnn...after Superbowl I dragged all the plants into my work office, which is adjacent to my attached garage, in order to give them a couple more degrees of warmth.(the rootballs are still like blocks of ice)...took a real good look at the top growth on the 15gal. trees, and still could not see any evidence of dieback.  After a close inspection of the rootball from the 35gal. tree I could see many dead and frozen roots(some of them just turned to mush when I touched them)...so I root pruned the rootball back until I saw healthier looking roots(root ball is about half it's size now) then I put it into a 20gal. pot surrounded on all sides and bottom with warm(room temp) potting soil...will have to wait and see, but at this point I think I've done everything that I can to help put them back on the road to recovery.

Vince:

How did everything work out for you?   I went out to my attached garage and found that the 10 or so pots closest to the garage door are frozen blocks of ice.   Shuffled those to the back of the garage where the rest are not frozen.

Might as well ask others out there what experiences they've had.

   @dfoster25....Dan, after going through the 'big' freeze last winter, I didn't hold out much hope for my frozen fig trees...but to my great surprise, when spring time rolled around, all those dead looking trees started budding and leafing out, and had a remarkable come back...I was truly amazed at the resiliency of the "so called" delicate fig trees...wait until spring, and hopefully you will be in for a pleasent surprise...someone once said: "It ain't over 'till it's over".