Have just bought a couple of fig trees - one from wilkies and the other from a local wholesale garden centre. The difference between the two is remarkable - the one from wilkinsons (that I thought I was doing well buying) has 2 spindly stalks with soft new growth on. The other has at least six or seven branches coming from the base and the leaf buds are just starting to break. Difference in price - wilkies was nearly £5 the other was £6.95.
Now, do I plant them in the open groung - in a paving slab 'box' - or can I put them in containers. Do they need protection in the winter - we don't get snow but our fish pond freezes every year (really cold) - and if so would they be better in pots Am now going to trawl the back pages to find recipes for figs
Conventional wisdom is that figs are fine on south walls and don't have to be in pots. I actually think that if something is OK in a pot, where the cold can get at the roots from the outside of the pot, it should be OK in a bed, and you can also put protection round it. If it is on a wall, you can also drape it with protection.
However, we have three on south walls, grown with no other protection; one is really old, dating from Victorian times. It has been cut back to base once (when we had to underpin a section of the wall) but much to our surprise came back strongly. It is the variety Brown Turkey, which is said to be very good for hardiness. We have certainly had some pretty heavy frosts and snowfalls here in Wales and it has come through productively.
I see you are in Cumbria, so it does depend on your local conditions. You could have a look at, say, your local NT houses with gardens, or some of the gardens in the NGS Yellow Book, and see if they have a fig in them.
Alison.
The specialist fruit tree nursary grower i bought a fig tree from this year said that when you plant the fig you need to earth it up to cover the first 2inches of the lower branches for the winter and put bracken or straw over the earth to protect the roots from frost.
Unless the idea of putting it in a pot would be to move it to somewhere warmer i would put it in the ground.
They do love growing against walls - but a word of caution; we had to remove one growing against the house a few years ago that had died (i think it had been there for a very long time) and despite 2 days of excavation we did not manage to get all the root out and it keeps popping up out of the stonework, obviously it wasn't as dead as we thought.
