[lina]

We have brown turkey fig in our back garden which has produced lovely figs for past 3 years. This year it is massive and really needs pruning - is now the time to do it?

I have just taken the last of the ripened fruit off it and I don't want to damage it in any way. Preferably I want it to grow along the fence not down into the grass - so where to i prune?

Also - why do figs produce 2 seperate crops each year? Ours has just set a new mini batch which very rarely ripen before winter frost. 

Lx

[tode]

Hi,
good link RHS:  http://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profiles0103/fig.asp

Our fig got badly hit last winter ( -15° ), and we pruned out all the dead stuff this Spring. It looked pretty sad after, but it must have done it good, because its never been healthier than this year.
We take off all big figs about now, too late for them to ripen, but leave little "bud figs" for next year.
Good luck with it.

[lina]

Cheers Tode

The link is spot on. Looks like I'll be getting the secateurs out at the weekend! 

Thanks 

[DavidT]

The small  figs are next years crop. The ripe one`s you have picked this year started growing last year.

[sunshineband]

The small  figs are next years crop. The ripe one`s you have picked this year started growing last year.

I hope you don't mind me mentioning that the overwintering crop is about the size of a match head at leaf fall. Anything larger won't survive and should be taken off carefully.
  Hope you don't mind me saying... I'm not disagreeing with you at all David 

[Miss Bean]

I always remove the overwintering crop as I've never found these to mature to anything worth eating – I feel that the tree is wasting its energy on these fruits! We always get a fabulous crop that forms late spring and matures early august.

[tode]

As Sunshine said, anything bigger than about a large marble is this year's 2nd crop: it wont ripen, and wont pass the winter: to be removed.
Next years are the tiny buddy ones, to keep.

[lina]

But isn't it a strange plant/tree? I can't think of anything else which produces fruit through the year - my mediterranean husband swears there is no second crop where he comes from (he is probably wrong as he is a city boy )

Lx

[Trillium]

Figs only produce one crop per year, but as said, they set their fruits for next season on this year's limbs. At least you'll know what you'll get next year.
Another way figs love pruning is to root prune them. That's done by digging up most of the plant, hacking away outer, far reaching roots. If your winters are quite cold, you can dig a long enough trench beside the plant and push it into the trench. then cover trench with a good width of black plastic, then cover that with insulation batts glued to another sheet of plastic and cover all the top layer's edges with soil and rocks so winter winds can't blow into the 'pit'. Come spring, dig the lot up and set the tree back in place with soil at its roots. That's what we do here.

[tode]

Lina, I think we're so used to our UK plants and climate, that sometimes mediterranean/tropical plants come as a bit of a surprise. The sight of an orange tree in flower, with big fat oranges hanging on the branches left me speechless (not to mention the perfume  ).
Talking of figs, I can only go on what they do round here: producing one lot in Spring (which don't ripen before winter) and a 2nd lot in Autumn for the next year. We've just picked ours, and there were three different sizes of fig on the same tree.
Maybe it depends on variety, or climate. I saw one in Turkey, growing from a crack in the rock, and you couldn't see the branches, there were so many figs.
I believe they need a restricted root run to really perform.
Good luck with it.
ps how does yours work?