Hello All,

I wanted to give everyone a short video of our 300 fig, in-ground nursery as well as some in-ground trees.  Maybe this will encourage others to try old-fashioned methods of deep cultivation and in-ground growing as much as possible.

Many thanks to Charles Johnson of the LSU Ag Center and Charlie from the Fort Smith area for cuttings.

Thanks truly goes to God and also for the Ellen White tree planting method.

Impressive operation. It must have been a lot of work to get it to this stage. Congratulations. If you don't mind me asking, What is the spacing between the nursery trees and the rows?

Thanks Dan.  It took roughly 2-3 weeks for the setup work (digging, mounding, & mulching).  But since then it's just been a little weeding.  Now of course watering is the challenge especially since I don't have drip irrigation.  That's where the deeply dug trenches come in pretty handy :)

In the nursery, the rows are 8 feet apart on center, with cuttings originally spaced 6 inches apart in either direction for a total of 3-5 wide in the double dug and mounded row.  

I buried the cuttings about 5 inches deep in the mulch and actually placed them horizontally.  I don't plan on doing this again, because it seemed that although I had a decent rooting/shooting percentage, a large share of the cuttings didn't have the strength to push up through the 5 inches of mulch before they ran out of steam.

In the orchard the spacing is 20' x 20'.  If my trees can make it to a decent size like many do in my area, this should be a good spacing.  If a certain variety gets killed back to the ground each year, I'm going to want to do the orchard spacing significantly tighter.  Anyone with experience in zone 7 orchard growing of varieties such as HC, Champagne, please let me know your thoughts.  I know Celeste and several others can survive and make large trees in my climate though.

Looks great Eric great work!

Remember seeing that figs were recommended for Zones 8-10. 
Sorry I don't know the weather for SE Oklahoma but you list it as 7b. Does this mean that your winter temperatures dip below 16F? 
If so then you may want to consider some winter protection rather than lose the fig trees to ground level in bad winters and have to start growing the trunks over again.  Even the cold tolerant varieties like the Mount Etnas will need to be protected if temps hit 15F.

Awesome!  What's the overall plan of the nursery?  Are you going to leave the plants to continuously grow there while taking air layers for plant distribution?  How many cuttings did you start out with?

I have my trees planted on 8 foot centers but have contemplated planting a tree between each making 4 foot centers.  Thanks for the video, post more when you have time, I would like to follow this project.

@Pino- It's true that our temps dip below 16 F, but figs are relatively popular in our overall area and a high percentage get between 15-20' tall with no winter protection.  Of course this all depends on variety to a degree, but one of the factors is that if you can get your plant to have stems/trunks thicker than 2 inches in diameter, they can take the cold better.  Also, our winter lows often only last for a couple hours in the morning, and this isn't long enough to really freeze the woody plant tissues.  

For example, we had probably an average winter this year, and I kept my one year nursery figs (last year's nursery) in the ground and didn't even suffer damage to anything except maybe the tips of the smallest shoots.  Part of the winter they were covered with a row cover though.  What actually hurt the worst was two late frosts coming in April that completely killed all new growth and forced most of the current growth to come from below ground :(

Here's a [dormant] in-ground fig in Amity, AR- same zone as me (7b).

 

@Tennessee Fig- I was originally planning to sell the majority, but I am wanting to plant about 75 in a 1/2 acre orchard.  The rest I would like to "donate" to an agricultural school we are trying to start.  We only have one student now, but if the school grows, we may need more.  I don't plan on leaving them in the nursery for more than one year though.  Do your figs mainly freeze to the ground in the winters?  If so, how big do they get in a season?  Also, what varieties are you growing and what's your AHS heat zone?  Thanks!

Nice work Eric.  Your spacing plan seems fine to me.  Sorry the deep horizontal method didn't work out so well.  I think the long spell of cold nights into Spring had a lot to do with it.  I had patio cuttings just starting to push our leaves way up into June.

Thanks for your response.  My family grew figs in NC where I am from, there figs grew unprotected to enormous heights.  I never witnessed winter dieback at all.  Last year I planted a bunch of cuttings and potted figs here in TN where I live now.  In NC I lived in zone 8a here I am in 7a.  I was concerned about dieback due to what I was reading on the forum therefore I attempted to winter protect using wire cages, leaves and bags partially covering the top.  All my plants died to the ground due to rot, we had a very mild winter and I believe all my trees would have survived.  Some of my plants came back and came back super strong, others didn't make it.  Last year I had southern brown turkey, celeste and brunswick.  This past year I obtained cuttings from a couple sources on this forum.  I was able to root MBVS, Green Ischia, Hardy Chicago, Stella, LSU Purple, Antonio's Black, Gino's Black,  and there is probably another that escapes me now.  My setup is not nearly as impressive as yours neither do I have nearly as many cuttings.  I do have enough land to do something like what you are doing here.  I like the idea of high density planting, I would like to know more about your layout.  How many cuttings per area and do you know all 15 cultivars?  YHWH be with you and your project.

@Charlie- I'm very thankful for the horizontal method you directed me to, especially since I spaced the 1,500 cuttings so close together!  Imagine what a nightmare it would have been to separate out the trees if they had all come up!  Next time I'll just space the cuttings farther apart and probably try a similar method, but possibly with the cuttings vertical..    So you think 20' x 20' orchard spacing is OK?  Do you think HC will get frozen to the ground each year and therefore maybe I should space them more like 15' x 15'?  Thanks for all the help Charlie.

@Tennessee Fig- I was wondering about rot due to winter covering with leaves, mulch, etc.  Thanks for sharing.  I am pleased with using row covers, but it really only works well covering nursery rows/trees that aren't more than about 3' tall and maybe the same width.

I spread 1500 cuttings out over 500 linear feet of mounded row, so that means an average of 3 cuttings per foot.  They were spaced 6 inches apart in either direction and laid horizontally.  The first year I rooted fig cuttings, I used a much more micro-managed method involving cups, domes, etc and I knew I could never handle a large nursery that way.  The newly-tweaked method in a nutshell has the cuttings sit outside inside mounds of homemade biochar for a couple months (no rot, no humidity monitoring).  Cuttings start forming initials and roots and then the cuttings that seem viable are transferred to about a 1' x 1' spacing in mounded rows and possibly all nodes/buds covered with mulch unless no frost is expected for the rest of the spring.  I think it might be good to place the cuttings vertically, just of course be sure to not damage the roots and make sure there is very good drainage.

See my post about cuttings in biochar at the following link:  http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/cuttings-in-biochar-experiment-7750578?pid=1289923053

The varieties I have are:  Unk "Apple", Madeline's Yellow Italian, Madeline's Dark, Madeline's Green Greek, Hardy Chicago, Jim Dandy, Alma, Champagne, Celeste, Unk "Mrs Clark," O'Rourke, Hunt, TX EB, LSU Gold, LSU Purple.  Then I have six or seven other varieties growing as 2 year old trees, but none of those varieties in the nursery..  

pino,
"Remember seeing that figs were recommended for Zones 8-10. "

pino your in zone 6?

Funny question to ask.
Do they grow for you?

I live in a zone 7b-8a.
My orchard is surviving
well being in ground and no winter protection.
With 73 fig trees and 50 plus varieties, I see no difference
in one variety surviving any different than the other.
Nice work FinleyFigs

Doug

For whatever it is worth I am using a spacing of 8-10 ft in the row and about 15 ft between rows.  I have noticed many others using 10 ft spacing and have even seen as close as 3ft spacing.  However I have yet to see a full result of harvesting from the 3ft spacing.

Last year we had 2 late frosts. Killed all the new leaf buds twice!
That sucked as it delayed growth for a few extra weeks,
The age of the tree makes all the difference in ground.
I get killed back to the ground with a very bad winter and trees less than
2 years old. When they are 3 years old they have survived the winter with no
problem. When they got killed to the ground, only 1 or 2 out of 30-40 young trees
did not grow back. Don't worry about the killing back to the ground, they grow back even stronger.

I planted my rows 10-12 feet apart, my tree spacing is 6-8 feet apart. I was more cocerned
about making sure I had good drainage vs exact spacing.I planted in rows.
I will be keeping my trees trimmed back with cuttings so they never grow out of reach.

In time, the trees take care of themselves.

Doug

I have to agree with Doug about the dying to the ground issue.  It seems if they come up from dying to the ground they come bigger and stronger than before.

Nice.  Glad to hear folks.  Thanks for the advice!

Quick picture update.  These two pictures are both of plants started from cuttings this year.  They all probably emerged from the soil level in May or June.  The second picture is a LSU Champagne.

Had to upload the pictures to Flickr since I couldn't upload to this site:

1.  https://flic.kr/p/PbBUGx

2. https://flic.kr/p/PbCsZi

Very nice Eric. So what have you been feeding those trees?

Sas- the main nursery (in the first picture) had a small amount of liquid chemical fertilizer early on because the plants were looking a little yellow from all the wood mulch (when they were about a foot tall).   However, the vast majority of the growth came steadily through the season afterward.  No organic fertilizers were used on the nursery- simply because there was no way I had enough for the roughly 500 hundred trees.

The lone LSU Champagne grew particularly large and tall mainly because a large amount of organic nitrogen sources were placed in a trench dug up next to the tree.  This trench also soaked up rain water and so the plant never had a lack of water or nutrients all summer/fall- even though I only watered once.