I was wondering the halls of the internet and opening doors looking for information on figs and it looks like I came to the right spot….

I have been doing Bonsai for the last year or so and my wife wanted a fig tree/bush so that she could enjoy the and I quote “Fruit of the Gods”.  I picked up a Fig (Ficus nana )but she wanted the real thing …. I found one at a tropical retailer and brought it home. We are now the proud owners of a Brown Turkey and I have several questions.

It came in a 5gal container and checking the root ball there was plenty of room, but I am going to transplant into a proper container …. What size should I use? The terracotta one in the photo is approximately 20 gal.

It has a main trunk of 1-1/2” tapering to 3/4”, 13” high. It has 3 main branches from 33” to 53”. My bonsai experience tells me to prune down the 3 taller branches, but everything I have read says hold off till the tree is dormant. We would like to have a harvest this season but if it improves the stock …. My pruning shears are ready.

We have about 10 breva figs under the canopy about 5” abovethe surface so I think we will enjoy some fruit this season.

I am looking forward to any and all suggestions that will help me become a fig person… Thanks for all your help

Get a bigger pot.

Hey, Mark!

Welcome to the forum! That terracotta planter looks small for 20-gal. Maybe it is very deep as it does not appear very wide. I'm sure you will get lots of opinions on how to prune it and potting recommendations as well as folks recommending a fig other than Brown Turkey (BT) to start with. There's a lot of confusion and misinformation out there surrounding what a BT is and is not. A jump from a 5-gal to a 20-gal is a bit much for now, but if you use a good potting mix and a planter with a wider mouth, you should be okay. Problem with terracotta is that they usually do not have great drainage holes and what they have is usually on the bottom. If the roots grow out of them, you could have a fight in your hands when you decide to move the plant or prune roots. The shape of that planter will be a problem when it is time to add fresh soil and/or prune the roots. If it were my tree, I would prune off the tips of the longest branches to about 24" in order to encourage more branching and shading of the trunk. It appears as if your main trunk already has sun damage. As far as the variety, some people experience significant splitting of the fruit of that variety in humid areas such as Florida. Again, that problem may or may not affect yours depending on whether or not it is a true BT. Good luck!

Mark,

I'm new too, but this is the right place. You will learn that there are certian basics that don't change much, but other treatments and selection of variety may vary depending on your geographic location and climate. Read through several of the threads. Even the back pages are helpful. Good luck!

Mark,

First of all thank you for your suggestions ….

After reading the posts I pruned the tree down to about 24”,my wife complaining all the time that I was running the crop and I would have to get another tree/bush for her to have some figs this season….  I also took the pruned branches trimmed them and placed them in sphagnum as an experiment…. Who knows I may have several BT in containers

I am still looking for “that pot” to transplant the BT inbut I may have to use the one I have because and I quote “It matches the otherones we have!!”

Ruben …. there is some damage to the main trunk. I think it is due to poor pruning in the original nursery. I am going to stay with container gardening as we live in a “planned community” and the landscapers who cut the grass have damaged my orange trees and mowed down the small lemon treeI planted.

Again this is a great site and I am in the process ofreading the threads and learning

You can tell your wife that she is in for a longer than anticipated wait as typically the first fruits from figs do not have the best flavor. You may enjoy them, but you should know that it usually takes a couple years before you get the true taste from a tree. Some on this forum will say even longer. Once your tree is fruiting regularly with some maturity it will all be worth the wait.  

Tell your wife that Brown Turkey is one of the worst tasting figs available, so she shouldn't worry about what it produces.

Viv, it's a mix of HTML code and MS Office  (mso) markup tags used for fancying up (formatting) a message.  If you edit your posts using a smartphone or other handheld device using the WebsiteToolbox forum, it sometimesreveals all of the markup tags, which is what you're seeing above.  I think it may only happen if you edit in Advanced mode, but I've had it happen when responding to private messages via iPhone.  If you read the text between the tags (ignore the stuff between the greater than/less than brackets), you can get the gist.

Noss

I corrected the post and stripped all the formatting out ....sorry about that….

Welcome!

Welcome datmantoo, by that name it sounds like you have a little Cajun in you. You know, like in "WhoDat".

"gene"

satellitehead…

 I checked with the nursery and they claim it is a Brown Turkey (Ficus Carica).I spent some time on line looking for photos of the BT leaf, but I did not get much out of it….. still looking for information.

rcantor…thanks for the welcome … great site full of information

gene …. again thanks for the welcome….. datmantoo was given to me by my granddaughter when she was much younger. She kept on saying where is dat man and can dat man play wif me … and I became datmantoo to all my grandchildren

I have decided after reading so many posts about other fig cultivars …. Thought I would try and find some other figs and am looking for suggestions on what to grow here in Southwest FL zone 9B-10. I would like to obtain them in larger size containers (5–10 gal) as I am getting old and do not want to sit around for 2 or 3 years.  All suggestions are welcome and I think we will end up with 4 or 5 container trees/bushes

Thanks all for your help

datmantoo

datmantoo,

for pictures of any variety, you need not look any farther than Jon's Figs4Fun Varietal Information pages which are sorted alphabetically here (i'd bookmark this link):  http://figs4fun.com/Varieties.html

for reference, see the Brown Turkey picture page here (note none of the leaves match your dominant three-lobe leaf shape):  http://figs4fun.com/Thumbnail_Brown_Turkey.html

also see the following two posts for my in-ground Brown Turkey tree and the general leaf variety of the Monrovia sourced BT (note none are tri-lobe):

http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/show_single_post?pid=41210261&postcount=19

http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/show_single_post?pid=41210339&postcount=20 

the search feature here at the forum is also an awesome research tool.

i would like to address your "bad pruning at nursery" mentioned above.  i disagree.  i think the nursery grew that tree from a non-tip cutting and what you're seeing is actually because of how the original cutting was cut from the parent tree.  notice the branch grows out at an angle from the scar - that was probably the first bud above the note producing a side branch.  See the "without terminal bud" pictures here to better understand what i mean:  http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t158/axierx/Bud.jpg

all figs are "ficus carica", 'brown turkey' is the variety of "ficus carica", so the nursery saying it's Brown Turkey (ficus carica) means very little.  if they can't divulge their source, you should be pissed, you paid them good money for that tree, you should be able to confirm the source and the variety.  the nursery i bought mine at purchased the tree from Monrovia, and i've confirmed it with another member in Canada that also had a tree sourced from Monrovia (so it is possible!).  sure, if the nursery says this is BT, it's possible, but that leaf looks much more like Aldo, Sicilian Red or Sicilian Black to me.  it also looks like this unknown:  http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/?id=4619697

for potted varieties that you may want to grow, i'd pick up Conadria or Adriatic, it won't steer you wrong.  i'd also recommend Violette de Bordeaux and Hardy Chicago.  just my personal opinion.

I've had that Bob Seger song on my brain ever since I saw the same ;)

satellitehead

Thanks for the information….I went thru Jon’s Figs4Fun database …. Found a leaf photo (fpix/FP984-05.jpg)that looks like my “Brown Turkey”, copied it and enlarged to match one of the leaves. It was almost a perfect match …. Now I have to see what figs it produces.

I am impressed with the depth of information available and it has helped me a lot ….thanks Jon for a great depository of information

I spent the last 2 days looking for your recommendations but alas it as out of stock, not available, or they did not know what I was talking about. I did manage to find an Iscia that is 5’ tall, main trunk 1-1/4 to 5/8”. Checking with U of F  IFAS Extension on line it was one of the cultivars it recommends for Florida so I purchasedit.

Today I had a close look at it and was wondering about the brown spots on a few of the leaves…. Normally I would have just cut them off….but I just completed reading your posts on FMV and was wondering if I have a problem…. See attached phots

The brown spots look almost like the result of water sprinkler leaving water on the leaves while in the sun.  I personally wouldn't worry about it, it doesn't look serious.  It's definitely sure other folks can chime in.

Could you post pictures of the underside of the leaves that have the brown spots. 

Charles

Here are the photos of the front and rear of the leaves.

Normally I would just cut them off and not worry about it ....but after reading some of the posts here I thought I should ask

The second picture seems to have a couple of small larvae on it and in the last picture there seems to be clusters of little rounds things, maybe eggs. Hard to tell from way over here. You need to check it out with a magnifier.
"gene"

Most of the damage to the leaves appears to be due to rust. With all the rain and the high humidity here in Florida rust is more of an annoyance than a concern. You can search this site and the UF Ifas site for more information about rust.

I do second what Gene said. I would break out a magnifier and see if anything is moving.  

gene & Charles

I looked at the leaves with my trusty magnifier... cut a couple of round clusters open with an exacto blade and found nothing

Charles --- you are just up the road from me and you are right about the "rust" but I sprayed with  Spectracide 3-in-1 just to make sure. I use this on my bonsai all the time and it should work.

Thanks for your help

These pictures show what I am taking about with regard to how a rooting with a non-tip cutting can result in the injury you show in the first post.  Sorry for taking so long to follow up, I had to find time to pull a tree that was a great example.

Is there some sort of trick to avoid or minimize this kind of damage when rooting non-tip cuttings?  Also, if you have this kind of damage is there something you can do to get it to heal-over?  I assume that as long as it is not healed it is an entry point for disease and bugs.

I'm not sure, to be honest.  The best luck I've had is by leaving at least half the node above the cut line and always use extremely sharp pruning spears.  It doesn't hurt to take smaller cuttings (less than 8") and bury the entire cutting above the cut point, although this can lead to bush growth.

One thing in common about the cutting in the first post and the cutting I just posted is that they were cut literally millimeters above the joint of a node.  I do have some cuttings that were taken this way which don't have the same issue, not sure what the difference was.