If mine i would not mess with it as it usually makes matter worse by up rooting or probing etc etc.

Some years back i had Kalamata Black , Madeira and a few others under Lionel train table with a T-6000
or whatever its number is i forget and late winter they suddenly started dropping leaves .


I let them be eventually once outside they regrew leaves and did fine.

Sometimes we try to play Doctor and wind up harming the patient.

Sounds completely normal. They don't grow much in winter, even in a greenhouse. They do decline if not kept warm during the winter, esp the first winter.

Hmmmm....I have to agree with Bob C. on this one. 

If you haven't watered in over 2 months and your moisture meter is pegging out just below the surface, it's a good indication that your roots may be having problems uptaking the water.  And, if roots are left too moist, you can get root rot which will prevent the roots from uptaking water and being a fungus, can spread if left untreated. 

Also, although I don't grow in SIP, they seem to be a pretty reliable way to grow figs from what I've seen, so perhaps there's some other issue going on with your SIP design (i.e. too high a water/soil ratio, or soil that needs better drainage/aeration, etc.). 

So, IMHO, IF there truly is a problem, doing nothing may only make things worse in the long run.

if the cutting is still alive, get rid of water reserve for that SIP, but leave the wick in. the wick should help to drain the water out. leave it to drain the water out and monitor. messing with root is the last resort. unless the root is already rot and the cutting is heading toward death, leaving it alone to drain water will bounce it back.

I had dumped the water a few weeks back. Maybe that's why it dropped the leaves.

We have another cold spell coming next week. Several nights in the 30F's possibly getting down to 32F one night. After we get past that, I'll pull it out of the pot and see how the roots look, without disturbing the root ball. Perhaps I'll put it in a 5 gal then...depending how it looks.

Hi Dallasfig,
I don't know how is the weather at your location, but here it is still winter .
So I wouldn't be surprise to have the tree drop the leaves.

You bought the tree rooted from someone, so he might have kept the tree warmer than you did and that induced dormancy.

At which temp has been the tree kept ? Is it near a window or a door ?
Is the pot near/upon a heater (root cooked ?) ?

Now that she seems dormant, let she be dormant - don't water her and remove the water from the reservoir if any.
Let's see what she does in April or May - don't move the sip around so that the tree is kept at the same status .
Did you give some fertilizer to the tree ?
What kind of dirt did you put in the SIP ?

I got the tree last oct or nov and kept it indoors until a few weeks ago, I moved it to the garage.  was a little cooler, but it didn't affect any of the other stuff I moved to the garage.  It's been warmer outside this past week, so i put them in the green house, where older trees are starting to wake up now.  Haven't fertlized yet.  SIP mix is about 40/40/20 of MG potting mix/perlite/cow manure compost, which worked amazingly well in a 5 gal SIP last year for my LSU Tiger.

soil mix doesn't sound bad. i keep all my younger trees in 50/50 MG seedling soil/perlite. they drain well. however, with lower temp outside, the containers are rather heavy even after a month. i last watered them in 1/15/14. i assume that without sun, they are not evaporating fast, and since no leaves, water is not being used too much. 

typically when i'm rooting, i don't water if i don't have to. when i water it's only when the soil is very dry, but not completed dried out. reason being that the roots are tender and they can rot easily if sits on the water too long. 

winter rooting sucks with water control. 

yeah.. I've been letting the reservoir completely dry up in my 32oz deli sips for 2 or 3 days before adding a little more water.  And they are growing much faster than before when it was wetter.  I'm still learning that less is more when it comes to watering..

Here's a current pic of it.  Leaves dropped from the main stem, but not from the little one coming up on the side.

 

Hi DallasFig,
The bud is green and the stem looks healthy. I wouldn't worry too much for that tree.
Let her make it with her own planning.
I've got 3 cuttings growing, and I haven't watered them for the week.
I'll wait until Wednesday to see - I normally water them once a week.
But for now they are still not asking for a drink and have the leaves look more dark green.
Not watering too much is important as well as keeping the temp ok and this as well complicated at this time of the year as we get a day warm and a day cold .

It turns out that little sprout coming up on the side of the pot isn't from the tree.  I have the exact same thing coming up in several other pots with the exact same leaf shape.  And they don't look like fig leaves.  And they are extremely fast growing.  In one pot, one was a couple inches tall last week and now it's about 6" tall.  Still no sign of budding on the Black Madera trunk itself. :(

I have an almost identical experience with BM. I was lucky enough to 
get a couple BM cuttings in last years F4F cutting. I managed to kill
them both, but they were the only cuttings I totally failed with last year.

So I bought a 1 gallon rooted BM cutting from a well known member on
Ebay last august. I immediately put it in a 5 gallon SIP and put it on
the porch in a partial sunlight position.

The plant was healthy looking, but did absolutely no growing at all last
fall. Fall is a big growth season for figs here in AZ and it was disheartening
to see the BM just sit there while all my other trees made good growth.
Maybe it was the climate change, as the BM came from back east.

The BM went dormant and lost all it's leaves in late December, along with
all my other figs. It honestly hadn't made even one new leaf since it arrived,
but it didn't look like it was suffering. 

It is leafed out nicely now and making good progress. It is positioned in full sun now.
It still isn't a fast grower, but at least it's growing. Spring is the other growth
season here in AZ, so hopefully it will make good progress before the summer
furnace starts. I will probably reposition it into partial sunlight before summer
really heats up. It will almost certainly not need to be up potted from the current
5 gallon SIP this year unless it really takes off.

I also ordered and received BM again in this years F4F cutting. I learned my lesson
last go round about my incompetence rooting BM. 10 days ago I grafted both
BM cuttings onto a couple tissue culture Brown Turkeys. I bought the BT last
year for the purpose of root stock and they are currently in 1 gallons. So far,
the BM scions haven't broken bud but are greening up and swelling. It looks like
I could have both grafts take, knock on wood. It will be interesting to see how
BM grafted onto brown turkey roots progress. Supposedly the tissue culture 
plants are virus free as well so they shouldn't contribute anything to the obvious
virus load of the BM cuttings. 

I'll try and post pictures in a few weeks when/if the BM grafts are leafing out.

I received only one cutting of BM from UCD Last winter and was successful in making it root.
During the summer, I inserted the container into the ground after cutting the bottom. I must say that this fig grows very slowly!
I left it outside all winter without irrigation or protection and about a week ago I removed the container and kept the plant as is in the ground.As of today it is still dormant but I'm seeing a small green shoot on the side.
The latest freeze caused some winter injuries to the top part of my small fig plant and it's not the only case I have, but I'm happy to see a green shoot on the lower part of the trunk.
I will post an update later if and when I see some real growth.  

Today I see more growth on my Black Madeira.  

Mine has woken up too!  It's leafing out very nicely, nearly as much as Sas' right there.  I'll try to get a picture of it and post.  I believe I'll be putting it in the ground very soon.

James, after seeing the injuries this year, I think that I should protect this tree for the next two to three winters at the very least.

Black Madeira is growing like crazy, now.  This is about 3 weeks growth since it finally broke dormancy.

 

Hi Dallasfigs,
Nice !
Just asking: Did you fertilize the pot ?

The small thing is an oak tree - the third leaf is typical - at least that is what came to my brain when looking at it. Do you have that around ?
At least move that small thing to a new pot so that it won't compete with the Madeira .

Wow.. who said Black Madeira is a slow grower? lol.   Right now, it's growing nearly as fast as my Joe Dark and faster than most of my trees.  The pictures above in post #43 were taken about mid April.  I just up potted it from a 3 gal SIP to a 5 gal SIP this past weekend.  Check it out now.  It has more new growth than it does old growth.



The SIP is a was made exactly like FMD's Mini SIP, but using a 5 gal bucket and an inverted microwave plate cover from Dollar Tree (see link below).  It's a perfect fit for these 5 gal pickle buckets. I scalloped the edges of it with a hole puncher so water can flow underneath the rim.  Used a plastic tube for the overflow drain (it's on the other side).

http://www.dollartree.com/household/paper-plastic/food-storage/Cooking-Concepts-Plastic-Microwave-Plate-Covers-10-/500c509c512p331157/index.pro?method=search

James, it is doing great in the Texas sun.   I also have my Black Madeira and Figo Preto in 5 gallon SIPs (made using the global buckets method) and they are doing great too.  Somewhere on the forum I read that B.M. is more sensitive than most figs to having wet feet but it does seem to like SIPs!  I should get a handful of figs off of both the F.P. and B.M. for the first time this year - can't wait.

Mine sat around last years putting on small deformed leaves and barely growing. It's finally getting past that this year and putting on growth with normal leaves and figs. Any desert growers tasting these figs? Are they good?

Here's today's picture of my BM after suffering from winter injuries. This BM came from a cutting from UCD last spring and went into the ground almost immediately.
It is hardly growing but I'm glad it's green after a harsh winter. As you can see the new growth came from the lower part of the main trunk.

 

James,

Where did you get your Smith from? The leaves on mine look nothing like the leaves on yours. The leaves of my Smith look very similar to Black Madeira.