A little early but wanted to do some planning

For younger in-ground trees. A popular method is bending over to the ground, covering, and insulating.

What do you usually insulate with?  I am thinking about a couple bales of wheat straw, (some moth balls down with the tree to discourage rodent and bugs.)

Also does the cover need to be permiable?  I am thinking of using an old tarp.

Bump

Sorry I don't have experience winterizing young plants.  My plans for this winter are to use one (or two) of these pop up to house any figs that are still tender. 

Not much of a freeze to worry about in Houston though.

http://www.amazon.com/Flower-House-FHPH130-PlantHouse-Pop-Up/dp/B000Q5VF8K/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1378781493&sr=8-6&keywords=green+house

Have you tried doing a search in the forum?  A lot of good information in old posts.

I hope you're getting some really long stakes Meghan for those blow you bald headed days we have.

Hi Greg

I follow Trees of Joy website advice for protection, tie up tree with string, then wrap around tree with pink fiberglass insulation all around the tree and tie that up, finally wrap and tie up some blue tarp around the tree, cover the base under the tarp with lots of leaves, and you should be good to go.  After about 4 years the tree should be able to withstand a cold winter, depending on branch and trunk thickness.  Prune back any thin tips regularly after that.  Good luck!

PS Never experienced any die back with this method!

I could nail it to the fig bin!  Won't blow away then.  Although you'd think if there was enough wind to do blow this thing away that my wind chime would sound off more than it does. 

What I have been doing is first tie the limbs up together then wrap with burlap a couple times, then I wrap with 1-2 layers of bubble insulation and then last year I used a fence to make a cage around the tree with at least 6 inches of space between the cage and the tree.  I then wrapped a tarp around the cage and filled it in with cellulose insulation, which I would recommend if you do, put it in bags first as it causes a mess for clean up in the spring (others have very good success with bags filled with leaves as well) then I put a bucket over top of the hole in the tarp at the top.

Going to try bagged leaves this year...had a lot of dieback last winter, especially on the 1 & 2yr. old trees(all survived and are doing well this year, but still...)

personally, i like leaves. when i lived up north, i'd just bury everything in leaves, high r factor. you can use a tarp to keep them from blowing away.

There's an excellent video on YouTube from Dr Fig on winterizing a fig tree.

Paul very good. Thanks for sharing.