Hi friends,

today i decided to repot my tiny littel fig trees which i don't know the name, and was aspecting for some surprise. In fact, I inherited, three little fig trees ( the biggest one was 50 centimetres tall) from tunisia a year ago. When I put them in their pots, last year, i noticed  very little worms and thought it was RNK. Well stop laughing please, i am just beggining in fig trees breeding...:-)) And I am a good mum' too.

The white one grew fine this year (well depends what you call fine, 15 cm?...), the first black one was very slow growing, and the third, slower than the second, showing signs of mosaique (leafs form, color) and not very solid on its roots.

While repoting this year, no worms in the pots, but the little sick one had the little caracteristic nodes on the roots, roots not very developped too. What can I do (they are grown in pots) for this one? Should I say goodbye?

How can I help the others to grow a little more?

For the moment, i keep them inside in winter (garage), last year i didn' give them anything (except water of course !) because i am very caustious, i prefer not to do than doing wrong sometimes. But now i a talking with specialists! ;-)

Thanks,

Nadia

Dauphine, it may help if you do a search on RKN in this forum and on Gardenweb fig forum. The forum have some pictures of root knot nematodes. Your 3rd plant may have RKN. If RKN is present, you will see nodes on the roots. RKN is so tiny that it is usually not visible to human eye. Take extra precaution with RKN, they are nasty and the forum have tons of advise on what to do. Meanwhile isolate your healthy fig trees from the sick one.

You can go to "google images" and search for root knot nematodes
they have some good pictures of them for you to look at.

It seems to be RKN. I will read the posts on the forum. Anyway the little fig tree is isolate (they are in pots). I keep it away from the others.

Thank you!

Well, I think i have 2 solutions: 1/say goodbye, 2/grafting...

If I really wanted to keep the plant I would air layer it next Spring!

Thank you very much Cecil for the advice, that's what i'll try to do next spring, if the little plant survives...I'ts very funny, it's trunck is court on legs, has a lot of noddles, and the leaves have a velvet touch. I'll try to save it.

Dauphine, theres a good visual method illustrated by Xon on how he recover a fig tree via air layering that was infected with RKN. His website is:

http://www.galgoni.com

The illustration is titled "Recovering a fig tree using air layering". It is on the right side of his page, just under the heading "Fig Jam".

Dauphine,

I agree with the others that airlayering is the way to save this fig  - especially since it sounds like you could not replace it.  However, assuming you can safely keep it in a "quarantined" area where birds, squirrels or other animals cannot pick up soil from it and carry it to your other pots, it might be best to let it grow next year as it is (figs can survive - and sometimes thrive - for a very long time when infected with RKN).  You want to be sure the size and hardness of the branch being airlayered isn't so delicate it breaks when you try to airlayer it.  I have quite a bit of experience with this.  I have received quite a few figs that had RKN.  Unfortunately, I did not discover this in some cases until other nearby plants had been cross-contaminated by squirrels.  What I have ended up doing with the infected plants is to isolate them as far from the others as I can.  Also, (and this has worked very well) I add a thick layer of pine bark nuggets to the tops of the pots.  When I do this the squirrels don't jump in to dig and thereby carry contaminated soil to other pots.  Then I airlayer "replacement plants" from the infected trees and eventually dispose of the infected root masses.

Anyway, if this is indeed an irreplaceable fig variety I would make sure it has grown enough to better insure the airlayer will work and the shoot will not break.

Henry