Tying down fig trees

[Romain and Lucy]

I went to the tree pruning workshop in Glen Eden last week-end and came back with lots of ideas!
One of the most interesting realizations for me was that most fruiting happens on horizontal branches, as opposed to vertical, which is why in commercial orchards you will often see water bottles hanging down from trees to keep them low. It also helps with fruit picking obviously.

My question would be, does anyone know if that applies to figs as well ? It was mentioned for apple, pears, citrus etc... so i assume it is a generic thing. Unless anyone can tell me it's a bad idea I am going to tie down my fig tree!

[Earl Mardle]

Fig trees grow fruit on second year wood so the information I have is that you should prune right back to the main stem of selected branches every couple of years to keep plenty of growth close to the vertical rather than have it constantly spreading wider.

We have a dwarf fig that is only 3 summers old and this year it has produced 7 dozen fruit and many of them almost as big a tennis balls but the whole tree is only about 1.5 metres tall and about the same wide.

A couple of the wider branches will become cuttings this year. I'll let you know about this time next year how that pans out.

[Kali]

I would be interested to know this too, my fig trees are getting a bit unruly and I want to prune them to make the fruit accessible

[Romain and Lucy]

Well I reckon, even if it doesn't improve the fruiting, it can't be doing any bad to at least keep things accessible...