I paid my slumbering trees a visit yesterday. Looking good. The large ones are for sure doing fine, the smaller ones, hard to tell but they looked OK. I did a light watering.

The pomegranates: I can't tell with those but I'm not too worried, as last year they looked totally dead, but were totally alive. Not a single loss.

What I am trying to avoid is losing a bunch of fig trees like I did last year.

So far so good.

Cheers everyone,  from deep within the Sleet Capital of Pennsylvania!

I did the same yesterday and everything looks good in my unattached garage.  I also finished pruning all of the container trees.  Last year I waited until late Feb. and once the trees came out of dormancy they leaked clear fluid for what seemed like weeks.  I hope that doesn't happen this time.

The cold has not been nearly as bad and as long as last winter, hopefully things are better for you this year! I gave mine a drink yesterday, as well.

I am checking too, with the deep freeze coming I am shuffling the smallest figs in 1-gals indoors for about a week until the deep freeze passes. This winter seems identical to last year here in the northeast. Just as cold if you ask me.

I did the same as well last night, well..let's be honest here, I check them all the time! But after all the talk of trees breaking dormancy, and our unseasonably warm days we have had lately made me want to check them a little more thouroughly. I can say I finally found a bright side to having a north facing driveway, it keeps the garage a little cooler during warm spells. Although I put some snow on the pots last week, I decided to go out front to the mini glacier snow shoveling pile and chop out some nice heavy granular snow chunks and lay them on the pots to keep the roots chill. I'll have to call the wife and make sure she keeps the garage door shut today, 70 degrees warms up the garage fast.

Rafael, it also seems to me that it has been a colder than normal winter here though not quite as bad as last year (so far).  If the cold snap later this week is the last one of the winter then I am optimistic that I will get through with much less damage than last year.

I have found that if I water right before the temp drops into the scary part of the thermometer the figs seem to do very well.
I held off watering as --as Steve stated -- we are in for another cold spell. Yesterday it was in the 60's. I long for spring. I can't wait for the birds to build their nests and start eating the bugs for me.

What a difference a couple hundred of miles make! We're going into the deep freeze again later this week, here in Philadelphia ... Rafael, what do you mean, you are bringing plants in? In from the greenhouse, or what!

I just noticed a few of mine have broken dormancy in my attached garage.  This should be an interesting 3 months.

Not sure if it actually helped, but I put gallon jugs of water on and around my potted garage figs to help with temperature swings. Temps have been between 26 and 40 most of the winter in there.

Kelby, I have a 50 gallon container with water in it in the back of my garage and I position my potted figs all around it.  I think it helps a lot because when the temps drop, and the water freezes, it gives off heat to the figs.  Likewise when it has been cold and the temps then rise it absorbs heat as the water thaws to keep the temps from getting to warm in the garage.

Donna

What I meant is, that even though I have a small heater in my uninsulated garage, I still fear super cold snaps may harm small potted figs, so I do a winter shuffle and bring them indoors for a few days, rather than risk the cold harming them and ruining all my efforts. Call it fig paranoia.

If you decide to go this route pick a 50k btu unit and run it on K1. Its good for 1200 sq ft. I can melt the snow off the roof and raise the temp in the garage to 70f + no problem when it's in the single digits outside.

"Hottie" is a '90s vintage DESA Reddy Heater 55k btu. Completely rebuidable even though DESA went out of business years ago. "World Marketing" appears to be the new DESA and they have a complete product line. 50k btu units are like $199.

I tossed a bunch of 1 gal pots (some w leaves still on them) inside a 15 gal pot and burried them all with dry pine bark fines. We'll see what happens.

Rafael, is you garage attached?