Here it is the end of August and I have staring at a Rubado I started last year, but never sprouted this spring after that long, cold winter. Yesterday, of all things, I noticed it is finally showing leaves! The question is: What now? Do I let it sprout then wait for it to go dormant? Do I try to carry through the winter indoors? I am afraid it has such little reserve that it won't be able to recover next spring.

This is a tough question and I certainly don't have tons of experience with it.  I fertilized mine but the last one that started up was in early Aug.  If you have a grow room I'd fertilize it and try to let it grow for 3 months, then slowly let it go dormant.  If you don't, I'd give it a fertilizer with something like 2-10-4 plus trace elements - a small amount with every feeding for a week, then 0-(3-10)-anything for a week and then let it go dormant.  It's tough to give a fig enough light in the winter to keep it from getting weak and lanky.

Thanks, Bob. I am going to follow your advice to grow for a while, then ease into dormancy. Since it is still small, I can bring it to the sun room until that gets too cool, then downstairs under lights.

Dale,
You can move it back and forth from the sun room to the house. Not sure how cold your sun room gets on average, but mine only gets dangerously cold 5-10 days/nights a year. I keep some plants out there year round except for moving them inside the house during extreme cold snaps. Last winter a small fig tree joined them for the first time. It was interesting. The fig tree, which was about 8 inches tall had 3 leaves, it only dropped one leave but it didn't grow any new leaves until April.  It did grow roots during that time frame though, occasionally I would see a new root poke out the bottom holes.

The interesting thing is I kept thinking at some point I should move it out to garage to give it some dormancy and I never got around to it, but it started to bud swell the same time as all my trees in the garage were breaking dormancy. The other interesting thing is that this tree is a later ripening variety but it was the first tree to put on a fig, I let it keep the one fig and removed all others from there on.

Timely post, I just had a fig do the same.  I'll bring it into my sunroom before it gets too cold out.  Thanks everyone.

I'll keep that in mind, Calvin.