Hi - i need some help from people that grow figs in containers.
Does anyone have sucess growing thir figs in land soil mixed with compost ? like a 1 to 1 ratio?
Can it be done with potted figs?
also i saw possible to mix nursery mix , land soil and compost in 30% each mixture....
The soil i get in nurseries is pretty expensive and i am trying to find cheaper ways .....

thanks

You don't want the insects that is in the soil to feed on the tree roots, and regular soil doesn't have good drainage. I have heard of some people who bake their soil to get rid of any insects before they use it. If you're doing a couple maybe but that's not convenient.

part of the problem that i am doing more than 20  small fig trees in 7 gallon pots so.

can the figs trees live in potted enviroment with loam soil mixed with compost? will it be too acidic?

Yes garden soil works just fine problem occurs when you go to root prune.
Been there done that and never again.

why there should be a problem? you mean it hard to cut the roots?
maybe you could prewet the area of roots before tring to root prune?

untill now i mostly buy nursery ready made soil for potted figs trees-but it looks expensive buying this much of soil....

anyone else with ideas-how to make this cheaper?

Eli,

Sounds like you are wanting to use materials available to you from your yard or nearby area.

Looking over the soil maps I have for Israel shows sandy base structure and is from data collected arounds 1979. If you have pictures of the first few feet of your soil this would allow us to direct you more from this route. 

I use pine bark mulch with different nugget sizes as the base of the soil and I add Turface, Bulb tone, composted worm castings, a little vermiculite and a little long fiber sphagnum moss.  I used to use Soil Moist granules but I found that beneficial microbes use them for food.

Elin ,
in my area the soil put in large containers after 3-4 years was hard yes and also the containers were heavy to move about.
Root pruning was very difficult for me.
Not sure about your area of the world but perhaps you can find bales of peat like in America and amend it to make your own.

Soil, land soil, from the garden, will eventually lose it's porosity.  The air spaces collapse and as organic matter is used up, the soil compacts and turns into a solid mass.  It's difficult to work with at that point.  If you plan to transplant, removing most of the soil before the compaction occurs, it may work out.  

I don't like the idea of using it.  It hasn't worked well for me in the past.

If you do mix you need to add something like sand, perlite expanded clay pellets etc for drainage at 10-20% of your volume.  This will add to your weight of the pot though.

The new mix I am using is

10% expanded clay pellets
10% composted sheep manure
30% compost (peat based triple mix but any compost should do)
50% Good topsoil (this one has been cleaned/screen and pasteurized) 


It does have a good weight to it, but we will see how it does for me this year, it is a recipe from Baud in france so I am thinking it should work well.

I  just brought home some dirt home-looks like loam.

i mixed with a ratio of 70% loam , 20% peat and 10% compost. the mixture looks very fluffy and i hope it gets me through buying expensive soil.  i know some people say that root pruning is tough-maybe the weight is too much, but next uppoting i will use more peat to lighten up the mixture.

btw sacrificing my papayas here first :) 

i have been thinking about this for awhile. mainly because i need better mix. now i have source for perlite that's rather reasonably priced, and peat moss also, i need to find something that will replace pine bark. so far for more than 1 yr old plants, i have been using 2.5:2.5:1:1 of pine bark fine:compost:perlite:peat moss. however, after 1.5 yrs of that, they all got compacted really bad and no longer allow air and water to the roots. i will have to manually aerate the soil mix. from what i'm reading, the pine bark fine will break down easy. on top of that, i water them daily using drip system during the day, and sometimes, 2-3 times a day. that might be speeding the the break down.

i have few duplicates and i'm thinking about 1:1 peat moss and perlite. that's basically what i use in 1 gal pots and they seems to stay fluff for ever a year without any issue with weekly watering. i'm not sure how well they will keep up after 2-3 years. or if they will compact really bad. i would feel better if i can find something like pine bark fine around here but that won't cost arms and legs.

I think that fig trees can withstand  clay like rough soil without much air and moisture.
when it becomes too easy for them they grow more leafs and in size like in river banks but they dont grow fruit much also from naturally over watering in these sites.
for now i am using this soil for 2 gallon pots. i think if i transplant to larger ones i will use nursery soil to make root pruning easy...

for now the trees that i have put in the loam mixture are fine and dont show any sign of transplant shock.
Pete like you said soil changes overtime and compacts - arnt new roots expand the soil and decompact it and by this way aerate it to?

i don't think new roots will aerate and decompact. they will squeeze through to extent, but if the soil is really compacted, the roots won't survive too long since water and air is not getting to them. if you have earth worm tunneling through the soil, that will aerate and give good worm castings. i use 12" screw driver to punch holes into the soil every month or so to get the water and air into the soil mix. right now, i only have 13 plants that i need to do that to. but once the new batch moves into bigger container and my mix.. that would grow to over 50. that's would eat up hours of my weekend drinking time.

from a message in a post by vitalucky which cut and pasted from uk magazine:
 

Fig Tree Planting

You can vary the size of the pot or other root restriction e.g a hole surrounded with buried paving slabs and broken brick on the bottom, the rule of thumb is the smaller the pot or confined area, the smaller the tree will be but pruning can also be used to restrict final size. We put ours in 25 gal containers and may take them up to 150-200 depending on their progress. 

No need to worry so much about soil quality, Fig trees will thrive in most conditions, especially chalky. For legal reasons we should point out that a nuclear winter, meteorite strike and agent orange do not come under "most conditions". "

Do you have access to cheap pumice stone?  This might be a good alternative for perlite as well just for aeration.

Eli,
If you do a search for sand or soil based potting mix you will find many recipes. Here is one Website.
and here is the soil based recipe, from that website:

"Soil-Based Mix
This mix is heavier than peat-based mixes, but it has good drainage. Vermiculite or perlite can be used for sand.
1/3 compost
1/3 topsoil
1/3 sand "

I have tried this recipe (for poplar trees not figs) and it did work for 1 season. At the end of the season the soil was very compact (dense), and the trees were planted in ground. If the sand portion was very coarse or small gravel (pea gravel) this recipe would have worked much better.

I would recommend mixing a sample (enough for one container) to see how it would work with your soil.

I currently use the 5-1-1(pine bark mulch - peat - perlite) potting mix for my figs, not a soil mix.

Good Luck,