I just read Herman's Pinching Thread with great interest.  And I'm wondering...especially since a couple of my little trees are coming back kind of bare and  scraggily this spring. 

My trees, all two to three years old and under 8 feet tall,  are growing inground  in desert conditions.   Low humidity, high temps (over 100 for weeks at a time from June through August), and 20+ mph winds are not uncommon. 

Three of my trees don't have much of a canopy, and they may not develop much of one this year.  So I am toying with the idea of allowing the 10-20 suckers growing out of the base of these three trees to remain, pinching them off at about a foot above ground level, to shade the lower trunk and ground area around these trees.  Trees are already mulched with 4-8 inches of straw.  I am thinking that the  shade they provide will protect the trunk,  keep ground temperature lower, and help retain moisture.

Comments?  Suggestions?   Good idea?  Stupid idea?

Thanks...........................Dave

Hi,
The suckers will eat the nutrients and steal the water... And you'll have to keep them under control and they will never produce anything...
I'm myself using currants,roses and raspberries around the trees for cutting the wind blow .
Those grow well here for me. What does grow well at your location ?

With 4-8 inches straw nothing else will save water. Anything green uses water. The leaves might keep the soil slightly cooler by evaporative cooling but again that much straw already keeps the soil cool enough. Figs love the heat and sun. 100F isn't too hot for figs. The fruit will be sweeter and possibly drier with the heat and sun. Less of either will only improve the figs if you like them juicy and watery.

Everyone of those suckers is going to suck life from the rest of the tree and retard its development.

Fig 'suckers' are no different than branches and they can act as main stems.  They are branches that came from underground nodes.  They will produce fruit like any other fig branch.  If you're going to cut them (or some of them) you should airlayer them, sell them on ebay and fund your retirement.  It depends on what you want your tree/bush to look like.  If it's going to die back to the ground periodically a lot of us feel we have better chances of recovery if there are multiple stems all with deeply buried nodes.  If you want a single trunked tree there's no point in keeping multiples.

Thanks rcantor.

Ya, I airlayered several last year.  I always have a few little ones in pots as back ups, and usually just give them away.  One of the neat things about heavy mulching with straw, is the bottom portion of the straw layer remains damp and these suckers will  sprout roots in the mulch, which makes it easy to dig em up and pot or  transplant.

Since our conditions are so harsh , and after reading Herman's thread, I got to thinking about retaining a bunch of these suckers to protect the bottom portion of the tree from the extreme whether we get here on occasion.  I have whitewashed some of my trees for protection, and this seemed like a more natural alternative.

I am aware that these trees will survive hotter temperatures than we get here, because I was growing  them when we lived in a much hotter part of this state.  It's the combination of heat and low humidity and strong winds that I was thinking of.

Anything for you  :)   I honestly don't think the extra branches at the bottom will do much to protect the main trunk except by shade.  And in the winter you'll lose that so I think the whitewash is your best option.