Currently we have a old Brown Turkey in the ground but also have a half dozen 1-2 year old ones in 5 gallon buckets. The "kids" all came from suckers that we either dug up with roots or bent to the ground, dropped a Belgium block on them for weight, and burried for rooting. The kids are now dormant in my garage.

There are 3 kids that are now very lanky, 3-4 feet with no branches so I have bamboo stakes in the pots so they will not snap when it's windy. They just seem to be getting taller and taller. Is there a way to encourage lower horizontal branching of these tall skinny children of mine instead of vertical growth only?

Any suggestions are welcome, thank you.

Pinch the tip.  Branches will shoot out from the nodes below on the top foot and a half or so. The energy will form a thicker trunk as well. 

Cut the off at 12-18" and usually they will branch. Sometimes they will just grow one new vertical whip for a couple more season.

Bend the current plant over horizontal. It will flush new vertical growth in the Spring, and then you can end some of those branches in other directions.

For example, in Japan:

Thank you Jon and Dominick for the tips, I'll give them a try and post pic son how I fare.

Jon, those Japanese ones look like they are trying to cordon train a grapevine on a wire with all those horizontal arms. I suspect the new growth in the spring will grow straight up. What a nice open canopy that must make.

How on earth those Japanese fig-people can produce such

I'd like to ultimately grow a plant in the style of those in the Japanese pic for ease of winter protection - only 3-4 ft tall!

Vince, that is my understanding, that all the new growth is vertical. I have a seedling (long story) that has a very long branch that has leaned over to the horizontal, and it is not growing vertical growth from almost every node. So from that sample of one, it would seem that is the behavior under such conditions.

If you look closely at the Japanese espalier work above, you will see that they left two branches intact.  It gives a good indication of the growth habit.  One comes off the first row of trees about 2/3 of the way back on the right, the other one is on the second row of trees about 2/3 of the way back on the right.  Follow the pattern and the diameter of the branches that are cut off on the left-hand side, that's a pretty good indicator of the branch color and diameter.

PS - I'd love to have that as a hedge around my house.  I wonder how John (GeorgiaFig) is doing with his hedge?  I need to bump in order to get updates ;)

See additional photos, Fig Link 739a

Hello,

I just saw this method mentioned for the first time in the post by drivewayfarmer recently. I love it and am sure going to try it. Thanks for the great links Ingevald!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pitangadiego

Is there a way of estimating how far apart the trees are planted in the picture, assuming the diameter of the metal conduit is 1/2 inch?

Any intelligent guesses? Is two feet too close?

In addition to the fig orchard project, I will definitely start a smörgåsbord hedge as a wayward home for all of the extra rooted cuttings that tend to accumulate over time.

Frank.

Hello,

Just a guess, but I'd say the main trunks have to be at least 6 inches diameter.  So to estimate distance between you could try to figure how many trunks could fit in between two trees if stacked next to each other.  Looks like at least 6 or 8, which would imply at least 3 to 4 feet between trees. 

However, I don't see any problem starting at 2 feet apart (or even less) and then taking out or moving them once they start to shade each other.

These trees look like they were trained like a grapevine, vertical shoot positioning. I'm going to take one on my lanky ones in a bucket and bend it over in the spring and see what happens.

Someone rediscovered this pix for me.



See other great how-to pix in this thread.

Ingevald ,
Thanks for pulling out and re posting those best documents on Japanese fig training method.
I had been looking for those.

There are fig farms around the base here in Japan and I see those tree growing like that too.