As hard as it is to believe, it is time to start thinking about hardening off new growth for the winter. I will fertilize my inground figs one last time this weekend. But I also have several young plants in pots that I plan to overwinter in the shed before planting in the spring. When should I stop fertilizing them?

I will keep the potted figs in a small shed this fall where I run a heat lamp on nights that drop below 25F. Oh, and I am in zone 7b.

What say yea?

I've cut off water and fertilizer to my in-ground figs. They are started in place this spring and only 12-18 inches tall. No chance of making it without freezing back unless I protect. But I want them to harden as much as possible even protected. Nothing like Arkansas or mature trees just my take. We always freeze back even the yrs I protected. So I've got to have a better plan this yr.

I've heard you should stop fertilizing by early August/late July.  Better wait for the pros Gene.  ;)

GeneDaniels,
The general rule is to stop fertilizer and reduce watering 1-1/2 to 2 months before your first frost date. This forces the plants to slow or stop vegetative growth and to "harden off". There are a few cultivars that form lignified wood very quickly, Celeste, Hardy Chicago and Mt Etna Types are a few.

If very young dormant fig trees (1 gallon and smaller) are kept just above freezing there is very little chance of winter damage. The younger the plants are the more severe the damage below 32*F. Good Luck.

<edit> I would never recommend or store 1 gallon and smaller plants below freezing temperatures.

Thanks Pete. I have never stored fig trees before, this is a new learning curve. All of my young trees will be in 3 or 5 gal pots for the winter.

What Pete said.

Last year I gave my last feeding the 2nd week of August. Several young trees still had some green shoots, but I don't let my garage get below freezing. They were all fine except one bigger one which started to grow again before I put it in the garage and it was close to the big garage door. But that tree never appeared to have freeze damage and it bled when I pruned it in February. But come April it just appeared a little bit dessicated and never broke bud.

Hi Genedaniels,
I don't have space to winter the trees inside. So a tree is a tree . They all stay outside - except when  I'm making tests - but the productive ones or growing ones are outside.
I fed them a closed hand of fertilizer 10/10/10 last Sunday for the last time for this year.
If needed, I keep watering until several nights of frosts are here - somewhere after 1st of October and near 1st of November - unless we have rainy weather ... I'm raising fig-trees not fishes .
Then the weather is rainy and humid enough that I don't need to water (although I had to water them a bit last year). My reason for keeping the watering is obvious: it is to ripen as many main-crop as possible !

At that time, I now install the 80 liters trashcans - see my post on wintering fig-trees. If the trees are small they are fully protected - I had no die-back last year on my smaller trees .
This year, I'll be using that technique again as I have good results with the 80 liters trashcans filled with nursery-compost .

For my potted trees - if any still in pots- , I'm planning to stack them in a trashcan and fill the voids with nursery-compost...
Good luck ! And remember, I still haven't picked a main-crop fig :( .

I'd stop now. I'm cutting off fertilizer to all my stuff, stopping pinching, and irrigation only for potted plants (unless we get a sudden drought). Month and half to 2 months is a good estimate for hardening off growth; August for most of us zone 7 and colder.

For some reason all my figs are showing a spurt of new growth. Even the two new trees which had not grown any at all since planting in April are now putting on growth. I have stopped watering except the potted ones, but the weather has been so good I guess it is encouraging them. We are having upper 80s and low 90s for highs, upper 60s for lows, and rain about once a week. The figs all seem to really love that combination, or at least the vegetative growth does.