I figure it's about time I got some figs in ground and I'm looking for recommendations.Not many people grow figs outdoors in ground here so I thought I'd reach out to the wider community.

I'm looking for recommendations for varieties,spacing and timing for putting them in ground.Any other thoughts or suggestions appreciated.

I have just started clearing and prepping some ground for them,it's a 10ftx20ft plot on very slight west sloping slope which faces south,it is protected from wind by hedges to the North,West and East and is not overshadowed at all,it is open ground in full sun.

I want to space them as close as possible to maximise the number of varieties and I intend to prune to keep them at 6-7ft tall and will be growing them as traditional single trunk trees with multiple scaffold branches rather than in bush form.

My climate is west/North Europe,mainland UK.I am based outside Birmingham UK in a place called Bearwood/Smethwick,it's a residential suburb,there is some 'heat sink' affect but not as much as we're I in the centre of a city.

Where I am falls between the 52nd and 53rd parallel North and based on temperatures,sun hours and precipitation my climate is probably most similar to the Pacific North west of the USA(Washington,Oregon state, cities of Portland,Seattle,Olympia,Salem) parts of Canada(British Columbia-Vancouver as well as to some extent Ontario and Quebec,and in Europe similar to Germany,the Netherlands,Belgium,parts of Poland.

We do not get some of the extreme cold wether that can be seen in some of the places I have mentioned above but based on average temperatures,rainfall,sun hours etc I think that's as specific as I can narrow it down to.My trees won't freeze to the ground or suffer extensive frost damage in most years.

Looking for a mixture of Green/black/brown figs,flavour profiles and good Breba/early main crop varieties

My 'short' list of varieties is:

RdB(have) edit-may swap out for Negronne if splitting is a problem with RdB
Sultane(need)
Madeline de Deux Saisons(have)
Longue d'Aout(need)
Desert King(need)

I'm also considering Michurinska 10/Florea(have),Randino(have),Dalmatie(have), Osborne Prolific(have), Goutte d'Or(have) and Hardy Chicago(have),edit-Improved Celeste(if I can get it),Brooklyn White or Becane,Filacciano Bianco

Open to suggestions/recommendations

Thanks

It sounds like your main issue will be a short season / possibly insufficient heat rather than absolute cold.  So the San Pedro's such as Desert King seems like a good choice.  Among the common figs, you'd probably do best with early varieties such as Florea, Improved Celeste, and Ronde de Bordeaux -- all of which have worked well for me.  After that I'd go to the early midseason varieties such as the Mt Etnas (e.g., Hardy Chicago).   

Hi Joe, you are spot on with your first statement,the weather here is such that my figs are more likely to die of boredom than cold!.The short summer,cool temps and low sun are my main barriers to getting ripe figs.

Improved Celeste is on my wish list but it is not readily available here in Europe,I'll definitely consider it as an in ground choice though if I can get it(added to the list).Hardy Chicago and Michurinska 10 seem to be 2 of my earliest in pots,sounds like they would be a good in ground choice as well from what I've read.DK is pretty much a definite,it's the only green fig on the short list for now,hope to add at least 1-2 more..

A contact in Central Europe has advised RdB splits in ground where he is and suggested Negronne instead.My rainfall is similar to his so I'm considering keeping RdB potted if that's the case so I can control watering, I relegated Dalmatie to the second list for the same reason.Last few summers have seen periods of drought and heavy rainfall which sounds like a perfect recipe for splitting.

Any recommendation on spacing or timing of putting them in ground?.

It sounds like DK might be great for you.

I haven't had a major problem with splitting of RdB here, but my rainfall is probably less than yours.  It seems to work OK in a pot but with a shorter season.

I don't really have a good suggestion for an early Adriatic type fig (green outside / red inside).  The ones I grow seem late and prone to splitting in rain.  Lattarula / Italian Honey is a very good honey fig that is fairly early (greenish yellow outside / yellow-amber inside), but it might not hold up to heavy rain either.  

FWIW, my Florea splits in heavy rain too.  If you can get it, I suspect that Improved Celeste would be a better choice.  It seems to require a lot of water.

Longue d'Aout (aka Nordland) might work for you.  It has decent brebas but I think you should grow it for the main crop, which seems to ripen here just after the Mt Etnas.

The "European Brown Turkeys" aka "English Brown Turkeys" (e.g., Laradek's, Valleiry, Bayernfeige Voletta) are supposed to produce good ubrebas and apparently succeed in non-Mediterranean Europe but mine are too young for me to know based on first hand experience.

There are also other San Pedros than DK.  I have a 2nd year Filacciano Bianco; it produced a couple of good honey flavored figs the year. 

Here where the winter is rougher, I'd strongly suggest planting in the early spring after risk of frost.  There it may not matter re cold, but that would still be my suggestion.  You want to avoid planting into a cool, wet winter.  Take advantage the spring / summer sun.   

With in-ground plants, you can't easily control the roots, so neighboring plants can bother each other.  If you were pruning main crop trees to a low cordon, then I'd make each plant 10' long (i.e., 5' laterals on each side) and 3' wide.  With 2' between trees, you could fit 4 trees in a space 10' x 20'.  

Alternatively, based on your current plan, you could grow 4 taller trees with laterals in all directions but you still should put only 4 trees in the space.  For example, there could be 4 trees, each with oval-shaped footprints -- 5' diameters along the 10' length, 9' diameters along the 20' length with 2' of space between.

Be aware that breba trees need pruning that saves 1-year old wood.  You'll have to save roughly half the new growth each year for next year's brebas.

RDB and Hardy Chicago will ripen for you. They started ripening here this week and we have the same climate. Unfortunately we have had a lot of rain the past days and these figs started to split. I think many figs will do that in our rainy climate, it is something we have to live with. But these varieties are also very prolific and there will always be enough figs that ripen without splitting. 

I haven't trialled the other varieties in ground, but I will also grow Michurinska 10, Improved Celeste and Bécane in ground. Bécane is a green fig with red interior that is supposed to ripen a couple of days before RDB.

I have a Brown Turkey tree that is in it's 4th year in ground. I think it's a must have variety in our climate.

San Pedros are also interesting because they often produce early brebas. I'm going to grow an unknown green san pedro that looks like Desert King and a Lampeira Preta in ground. I also have Nazareth but haven't decided yet if it goes in ground or not.

Although I can't control how much rain falls I can to some extend restrict the roots and amend the soils to make it more free draining so I'm looking at options for that to deal with the splitting problem.

Joe,what would you say would be the minimum spacing for an in ground tree? As in x by x square ft-I know I will need to prune to keep them as small as possible to maximise my space.I was hoping to squeeze a few more into the space to be honest.

I don't use cordon but on my other fruit trees and potted trees usually a pruning form called 'modified Central leader' where,predicting where the side branches will reach in height in the season you head the plant off lower so the resulting branching reaches the desired height.Looks somewhere between an 'open' and traditional standard/pyramid form.Using this method I can keep 3-4 trees in a 10ft long row 4 ft deep.Those are on dwarfing rootstocks though so perhaps I need to consider wider spacing for figs.Its the Breba producers that are gonna eat up the most space.

I have EBT and Bayerfeig Violeta both of which should produce in ground-but with Madeleine de Deux Saissons and LdA both being green-brown as well I will probably just keep the BT types potted.

I will add Filacciano Bianco to the short list for a 'honey' fig.

Timo,thank you.Improved Celeste and Becane can go on the long list,do you have both?.As for BT I can access several locally for free figs so although I know this one performs I am gonna let it perform in someone else's space as mine is limited.

I had not considered Lampeira Preta in ground,it seems to be a great fig,if I had it it plant it in my garden and not on the land I'm planning on using as I can't be there every day.I would want to keep that one closer :).

I also have an unknown DK like tree but as it's an unknown and I only have proof it fruits reliably in London which is at least a while zone warmer and drier than me I don't want to risk it-yours I know is very local and proven producer for your zone so that's better than an untested known variety any day.

Amending the soil could help. Here the humid air is sometimes enough to make the figs split. Bigger figs split more easily than the smaller ones. The small figs, even when they are split, often still taste good unlike the big ones that aren’t completely ripe yet (often only one side is ripe).

I'm assuming that you will not try to root prune the in-ground trees.  Given that assumption, roots will grow quite a distance from the trunk.    If you put the trees close together while pruning the tops in the hope of keeping the trees small, I'm afraid you will get into an annual cycle of (1) hard pruning in fall, then (2) rapid vegetative growth in spring / summer, with relatively little fruit.  That seems especially a risk when you have lots of water, which you do. 

Somewhere on one of the forums, there's a thread on this topic of spacing.  But personally, I would space the trees at least 8' apart and I'd prefer 10-12'.  But honestly that's based on intuition not hard evidence.

I heard it can be a good solution to plant the fig trees in large concrete pipes with stones inside of it to restrict root growth; any thoughts ?

if you need to restrict the roots for others reasons (e.g., a nearby water or sewerage system), then yes.  Otherwise, planting in concrete pipes seems to remove the main advantages of in-ground planting -- roots have better access to water and nutrients.

If you desperately want to plant in-ground trees really close together, you could use the concrete pipes or other similar barrier.  But it would be like planting in big pots, right?  And what would you do when the trees become root-bound?  You'd have to hire a crane to lift them out of the ground for root pruning.

Thanks for all the suggestions Joe and Timo,Ive got to work on narrowing the short list-I want to have at least 1 of each flavour group in ground so might need to clear some more ground to fit them all in based on the spacing recommendations which is fine,I may plant more in ground next season as some of the varieties I might add I will need to grow from cuttings(the more space I use for trees and mulch the less I have to keep weeded/cultivated for Vegetables etc so it's all good!.

I will try to make space for 8-10 n ground

Mt Etna :Hardy Chicago
Berry: Negronne/VdB and/or Sultane
Honey: Brooklyn White or Italian Honey/Lattarulla
Sugar:LdA & Madeline de Deux Saisons and/or Improved Celeste
Adriatic: Dalmatie
San Pedro: Becane &/or Desert King
Not sure how to classify: Michurinska 10

Nice list.  Some final comments, FWIW:

1.  Mount Etna.  The varieties within this family are probably very similar, and you can drive yourself crazy looking for very subtle differences.  That said my own in-ground Marseilles Black vs is better than my Hardy Chicago -- slightly earlier, slightly bigger, slightly tastier.  

2.  Berry.  You've dropped RdB.  Ok but in your short-season area, I would worry that VdB and Sultane would not ripen their main crops.  RdB may be your only choice for an early Bordeaux berry (unless you are hoping only for VdB brebas).

3.  Honey.  Similarly, Lattarula seems earlier that Brooklyn White.

4.  Sugar.  Improved Celeste seems the best choice for water-tolerance and earliness.  I'd classify Florea as a sugar fig, though it has some subtle fruity flavors.

5.  Adriatic.   Nothing to add.

6.  San Pedro.  DK is Adriatic-ish but with milder flavors than the common varieties.  Nothing else to add.  

p.s.  I see your wish list.  I just started harvesting Smith, so I'm reminded that it is really delicious, a step above.  But it is tender, and I'm not sure how well it handles excess water.  But if you can keep its in a pot, I'd strongly recommend it.  

Thank you once again Joe for your detailed response. I am definitely going to have to make 2 separate plantings or I am just going to find it impossible to narrow the list down enough lol.

My Etna: Marseilles Black VS is hard to come by here but that's a real good suggestion,I was meant to be NARROWING the list hahahaha,thanks.;).I already have a decent size HC that could go straight in the ground,but a second tastier,bigger earlier in the same group might just earn itself a place in the 2nd planting.

Berry: RdB is early for me and will do great in a pot,VdB and Sultane may perform here for me but I'm gonna check with others who grown them, the European Sultane and the US one may not be the same and I know Negronne performs in similar conditions in the Netherlands whereas RdB splits badly.Ill get all 3 sometime soon but which one goes in ground is still up for grabs,

Honey figs:Neither are easy to obtain here so either way I'm going to end up having to wait at least a season before they can be planted out + ill have to source cuttings.

Sugar Figs: all the ones listed are proven in my climate+Timo is trialling the Improved Celeste so i might push that one back until the 2nd planting to see how it does,I definitely want to add at least 1 Celeste type to my colllection-probably IC-whether that's in ground or not

Smith is going to be one for the greenhouse-that one deserves special treatment

Stormy -- That's a good suggestion for controlling the vegetative growth.  But will it convince the trees to put their energy into fruit, or will they just try to sprout new apical growth and new branches?

That is a good suggestion.There are risks with summer pruning on for example apples,it supposedly makes them more exposed to cankers etc that can get in through the wounds.But,I have done it,and have had positive results.

The logic is that trees store all their sap(energy) in winter,so if you prune when a tree is dormant when it wakes up it has all the energy of a larger tree so it has to 'put it somewhere' and grows lots.If you prune in summer you are removing growth which if full of sap/ energy,and also leaves,the trees means of energy creation,so when it goes dormant it has less stored energy and won't grow like crazy the following season.

Would this work on figs-probably for main crop figs but not the Breba producers?

Good question, my guess is you will have fruit the following year. Fruit buds are preformed as of July already, so avoid pruning after the end of may or you will lose the breba crop.
I would also root prune the in ground trees by cutting off the roots with a shovel or spade at a certain distance from the trunk, let's say about a metre roundabout from the trunk.
Does that make sense to you?

I suppose Summer pruning is like extreme pinching lol.Definately something to consider.

The root pruning is an interesting idea,I had never considered root pruning in ground trees,it might discourage shallow rooting as well as limit the size of the tree

I believe that root pruning is often used for densely planted in-ground fruits such as pears.  But the trees are highly productive dwarfs.  I'm not sure that the technique would work on standard rootstocks or on aggressively rooting figs.  And anyway, it doesn't seem worth the extra effort to trade, say, 4 trees producing 200 figs each for 8 trees producing 100 each (or more likely fewer, as they focus on producing branches and roots).  Just pick the best 4 and let 'em rip.