[Bert]

I have a fig tree in my green house it is about 10ft tall 8ft wide growing up against the wall. It's a big lean to green house by the way.  What the hell do I do with it? If it was up to me I would cut it down, no space for me to grow my tomatoes with that thing there. But that is not an option . So how do I keep the thing alive and producing to the best of its ability ? It has a lot of fruit on it now are they going to ripen or do I take them off? It is just starting to grow this years leaves. When and what do I feed it? When do I pick the fruits ? When do I prune it? And when do I do everything that I've forgotten to ask about  . Sorry about the 101 questions.

[doganjo]

No idea but I have a 3 foot one in a pot that my kind son rescued from B & Q and it has done nothing but drop leaves and regrow more for almost 3 years - so you have encouraged me to cut my losses and send it kindly to the great garden in the sky via the compost heap!

[spandit]

If the green house is against one wall of your house you could have trouble with the root system. Why can't you cut it down?

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, they're easy to propagate so you wouldn't lose it completely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_fig

[happygolucky]

I worked for many years in Grey Friars Leicester Social Services, there, opposite where I parked was a huge fig tree, so they must like thier feet in Richard the Third   as that was where he was found to be burried!!

[HesterF]

We've got some big fig trees around and had lots of ripe figs last year. They need to have constrained roots which may be a good thing in your set-up - otherwise they produce too much growth and don't ripen fruit. I think their roots are shallow so unlikely to jeopardise your house - ours are about 4 - 5m high and the surveyors didn't raise any issues in our house survey (I also checked with our architect and a builder and neither thought there was any sign of a problem). I think our figs have broken out of their root constraints which is partly why they've grown so big - we had a couple removed entirely (there were eight in total and we don't like figs) and their roots had gone out over the top of the brick enclosures they were supposed to be in.

In our climate they only ripen one lot of fruit a year, in warmer climes they'd ripen two. So the ones you want for this year are the tiny ones that are just formed now. There will be a bunch of bigger ones that might be slightly blackened that would have been their second crop from last year but won't now ripen. You can take them off although I think the tree sheds them naturally anyway.

As for pruning, I think you're supposed to do it in the summer but we've had ours cut back hard this winter. Remains to be seen what will happen - I imagine they're going to go crazy growth wise in which case I'll intervene again this summer. You can train them as fans and so on so they're not averse to being trained. In your position, I'd prune it back to a decent form - keeping it in close to the wall so the fruit has a chance of seeing the sun and ripening and it doesn't take up too much space - give your tomatoes a fighting chance. Then just see what happens....I imagine it will require quite a lot of maintenance. Much like any fruit trees, if you try and keep their size down and they're on a vigorous root stock, they'll just keep coming back for more - so if you have any space to allow it to grow upwards and sideways rather than out, that might help.

H

[Bert]

Thanks for all the info. I might have a go at fig tree training this summer.

If the green house is against one wall of your house you could have trouble with the root system. Why can't you cut it down?

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, they're easy to propagate so you wouldn't lose it completely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_fig

The green house is against the walled veggie garden wall not the houses so there root can do what they like, it's not a problem. I can't cut it down as we are only here on a temporary basis (long boring story) and the owners might get upset if I cut down there fig tree.