Fruits and Nuts: Disappointing fig tree, 1 by ritchh

ritchh wrote:
losrobles...
I'm in Northern NJ Zone 7 and have a fig tree in the backyard that was planted in 1957 when my father-in-law built the house I am now in. I'm sure it was from a cutting from one of his Italian friends and no-one on the web has been able to ID it for me over the years. In any event for 20 years after his passing it was never wrapped for the winter, just trimmed, and never died. It actually flourished reaching heights of 18-20 ft. each year producing many hundreds of large delicious figs. The winter before last was extremely cold and it died completely to the ground. I cut it down and to my surprise in early July it started thowing up shoots although it produced no figs. I trimmed it and wrapped the 3 ft. shoots last winter not expecting much more from it this year. However, finally getting to my point, I have started using Messenger every three weeks on all the plants in my garden including the fig tree. The tree is now about 8 ft. tall and loaded with figs, they normally ripen here in mid August. I can't say for sure that Messenger is the reason for the rapid rebound from the total die off but everything in my garden this year from tomato plants to hydrangias look better than I can ever remember and you might want to consider giving Messenger a try. I've attached a pic of the tree taken last week (sorry not the best quality) and if you look closely you can see the large number of fruits that have set.

Rich

This message was edited Jul 18, 2005 9:01 PM