I was just looking at hungryjack's great post on his old trees in large pots and wondered, what is the smallest pot one can use for a fig tree and get a reasonable harvest?

Depends what your idea is of reasonable amount , for example during harvest i can eat a dinner plate
of dark types for breakfast .

One can get figs on a small plant in a 3 gallon pot .
The bigger the pot the larger the tree it can support due to a larger root system therefore the larger the crop of figs it can support without taxing the tree.

3 gallon with a lot of tip pinching every 5-6 leaves with proper watering, fertilization, and sun!  How's that for vague?

A lot depends on the variety too! 

I have gotten decent crops from my VDB in 3 gallon containers, but better in a 5 gallon, plus it has anchored it's self into the dirt, so it's even getting more than what a 5 gallon gives it.

Suzi

Driveway Farmer uses 5 gal buckets and I'm pretty sure he's happy with his yield. You could PM him and ask what he gets per tree. Then come and report back here. :)

Bob ,
I do use 5 gallon sub irrigated buckets like the global buckets that Dominick has posted about in the past.
At three seasons of growing figs in these I don't feel I really have enough experience to know how they will do long term , but space considerations force me to do the best I can with this size at least for the ones under trial.
Once a variety has proven to produce high quality figs in the 5 gallon buckets , I choose which ones to move up to the 25 gallon sub-irrigated versions I've made along the lines of Bills Figs information found in one of the links on this site. For instance Black Bethlehem produced around 2 dozen really especially excellent figs in the 5 gallon buckets at only 2 years old and has earned  its place in the larger pot probably displacing a duplicate of another variety.
Space wise where we live now I won't have room for more than 20 of the 25 gallon sub irrigated pots and the other 40 varieties will have to make do with the 5 gallon size getting root pruned every 2 years and with the expectation of about 3 or 4 dozen figs per plant once they are over 5 to 6 years old.
All of my gardening is done with a long time organic bent , but if someone uses more conventional approach I think the fig production could be somewhat higher.
The sub irrigated buckets work well since I mostly have sun where the driveway is , but given a choice of a sunny garden spot I would go more with the 5 to 10 gallon container with side holes that gets planted in the garden every season once the soil warms up , or with more in ground plants , protected for the Winter .
Others with more experience would have a better idea of eventual yield.
Best ,
Kerry

Rub his lamp and he appears! Thanks, Kerry.

Thanks everyone for the great info.  Yea, I knew someone would call me on what's reasonable.  I'd rather do like Kerry and have 10-30 figs off 20-30 trees than 200 figs of one type.  When I find a fig I really like and does well, then move it to a larger pot. 

i have seen figs on 1 gal container. but i didn't let them grow. i took 6 figs off my White Greek in 3 gal container last year, but i think this tree might need bigger container. my oldest trees are only in their 4th year, and they are in 10 gal container. they are giving me any where between 40-70 figs each. i think that's more than enough for me. like kerry, i'll be moving most of my trees to 5 gal for testing. i know i'm going to move some directly into 10 gal, but ones i'm testing will go into 5 al.