Monday, April 28, 2014

Figs Slow to Leaf Out?

We've had a lot of calls to the office recently about figs that still have put out no, or few, new leaves. We did have some unusually cold weather this past winter, and UGA's publication "Home Garden Figs" contains this caution about the relative cold-hardiness of figs in Georgia:
"There are many varieties of figs available, but only a few are well adapted to Georgia. If you want to try to grow figs in the mountains, select a protected site and try Celeste or Hardy Chicago. In addition, some varieties such as Brown Turkey will produce some figs on the current season’s growth after being killed to the ground by a freeze."
A Texas A&M webpage that contains Fig FAQs includes this statement:
"Normally we prune figs very little in Texas because of potential cold damage, ie. we usually have to prune back to live wood. This past year our varieties went dormant extremely well. We had a lot of cool, mild days prior to very hard winter freezes. The figs went through this very well and most were in great shape. Then we warmed up in February and the plants lost some of their accliminated dormancy and bam, they froze to the ground in March."
North Carolina State University's Charlotte Glen has this to add:
"The only other problem figs sometimes experience in our area is cold damage. This is more common in particularly cold winters or when extremely cold temperatures follow a stretch of unseasonably mild weather in late winter. It is very rare for figs to be killed completely, though they may have to be cut back to the ground and allowed to re-grow if heavily damaged. Cold damage can be minimized by planting fig bushes against a south facing wall."
The figs in Cobb County have been very slow to leaf out primarily because of the hard freezes that we experienced this winter. Some plants will have been killed back to the ground, while others will just have been damaged partway down the branches.

In the "killed to the ground" scenario, all the dead wood above ground should be removed. Less damaged plants need to have the dead wood pruned away after the extent of the damage is more clear. Since leaves are just now emerging on the plants, waiting another week or two before pruning away large portions of a plant would be prudent.