New to figs and the Fig Forum- I certainly have enjoyed my forum reading!  Question:  I've found conflicting information re: the watering of dormant potted figs.  No watering vs 1 cup per pot per month during the dormant period.  My five figs were brought inside my insulated garage (38-45 degrees) at the end of this past October.  They are all in 5 gal pots with each plant root-bound.  I have an inch or so of mulch on top of each pot.  All plants (four Black Jacks, one Brown Turkey) were purchased in these pots during this past summer with the intent to repot them into larger nursery containers in two months.  I've given each pot 5 ice cubes so far (melts slowly so better absorption with no water running out the bottom of the pots).  I plan to repeat this monthly until the trees go back outside.  I do understand that, without leaves, no transpiration is occurring.  I've read that watering should occur to avoid the soil turning to powder.  I've also read that a frequent cause of dormant fig fatality is too wet roots.  But it rains and snows on dormant figs planted outside.  Surely my pots have better drainage than outside figs in soil.  So, to water or not to water? 

Hi Steve,

Me personally, I feel good about watering my dormant potted trees once every 3 weeks.  For a 1 gallon pot, I use less than a cup of water.  For a 5 gallon, I use about 2 cups.  I don't really measure it, but that's about what I use.  Everyone has their own schedule, so don't settle on my habits.  My garage stays around 50°f all winter.

Welcome again Steve, I live in sunny Florida so my experiences and needs are different, in the 80s by Sunday. But you should get plenty of welcomes and advice from other members very soon. Good luck and good growing.

Steve, every may do things differently.  Meaning you're going to have to learn by doing.  You're going to get mixed comments from folks and that's OK.  Here is what I do.  

My garage is a large and long 2 car garage.  On my side of the garage, I winterize over 100 fig trees and about 20 on the wife's side.  They range in all shapes and size container ranging from 27 gallon pots to 8oz rooted cuttings.  My garage never gets below 40 degrees unless I'm working in there and the garage door is up.  I have some trees that I've taken out of the ground and just wrapped the root ball with a large wad of burlap.  These guys, I place inside my shop sink and let them suck up what they need after 24hrs.  The others are in self watering pots and all I do it just add water in the bottom of the pot.   They will suck up what they need.   I just add water every month and I wet the entire tree.  I do all this with a garden hose.  The SWPs are turned in such a way that all I have to do is stand in one spot, turn my nozzle on jet and hit the trees.  I have a water faucet inside my garage and all I do is turn on the water and go to town watering.  I also have some trees not in SWPs.  For those, I use a moisture meter and just give it enough water until the meter says, "MOIST" and that's it.  Some folks measure water, I don't.  I got too many trees to measure watering.

Steve, pretty good info you have gotten so far.
Much depends on how dry the air is in your part of Kansas. Our winter air is rather dry here, well so is our summer air..which is the point, locally you will have differences. I think much moisture in the soil is lost to the air -vs- leaf transpiration in winter. What I do is wait until I see the soil starting to pull away from the walls of the pots, if you have mulch on top then this may vary. When the soil has pulled away about and 1/8-1/4" and I can scratch into the soil about 1/2" with my finger and I can't feel any moisture at all, then I water. I prefer to put about 2" of snow on top of the soil of each plant, if there isn't snow I use ice cubes like you mentioned but I try have about half the surface area of the soil covered with cubes. My smaller pots(0.5-2gal) that are up high on shelves get 2-4 loosely packed snowballs the size of tennis balls gently lofted up(like very carefully shootin hoops), bigger ones get 4 and smaller ones get 2...you get the idea; as far as ice cubes these pots get about a 8-10oz cup full for the smaller ones and 16oz for the bigger. By the way a dust pan is the perfect tool for distributing snow from the bank to the pots. For me the timing works out on average to be every 3-4 weeks, but sometimes later in the winter it will be more like 2 weeks here. If you can scratch a bit into the soil and feel any moisture at all, don't water.

This moisture meter is cheap and very helpful.  I try to keep dormant plants in the "moist" range.

https://www.hydrofarm.com/p/MGMP1

For me it depends on how moist the soil was when I put them in the garage in the late Fall as well as the weather conditions during the winter.  This year my figs got rained on pretty good a couple days before I stored them and, as a result, I haven't watered them as much as usual.  I generally water every 3-4 weeks (put a calendar reminder in my google calendar) and add about 1 cup of water for 5 gallon containers and somewhat less for smaller containers.  I am also concerned about the soil being too wet as my figs get down to the mid to low 20's a few times every winter.  One would imagine the rootball would be more prone to freezing if the soil is quite moist.  However, I haven't lost one yet so it does seem like they are more forgiving then we give them credit for.

Welcome, wildcat fan!  I live in KC, MO (and don't care about football :- ) and I have a bunch of pots stacked in my garage.  I attach a garden hose to the sink closest to the garage and use a shower head to water the pots and between the pots to get to the pots underneath.  I end up doing this every 4 to 6 weeks and it works.  This year I'm heating my garage to stay over 38 since I lost a few to the cold and a few didn't start growing until late August.  That means I'll probably water more frequently (3-4 weeks?) since the air is dryer and they're not as deeply dormant.

Last year I put a snow balls in each of my pots so when they unfroze they got water.