June Hughes writes

Well, David, I am no expert but was told here in urg not to let the
roots spread, so have it in a huge pot where it can get lots of sun.
(I am not now sure this is correct as my neighbours are Greek Cypriots
and their two fig trees are planted in the ground without restricting
the roots, producing many figs. We also stayed with a Cypriot man in
Bath a couple of years ago and he too had his fig tree in the ground
without restricting the roots. Its figs were huge but he had it under a
canopy of corrugated plastic.)

I think it's because the tree will grow leaves at the expense of fruit
if it's unrestricted in a rich soil. In the Med, the soil is often
pretty poor, so that acts in the same way as restricting the roots. And,
of course, they can get huge. At a previous house, our neighbour had a
huge fig on the boundary which was unrestrited - gave us plenty of figs.
My current main fig used to be in the ground, and cropped well, but I
needed to move it when we replaced the porch, and we've now confined it
with a few buried paving slabs. I won't comment on the size of this
year's crop - I usually pretend not to see fruit until they've ripened -
bit like never filling the jamjar till you've caught the first
stickleback.

I feed mine with seaweed every so often, as instructed by the man from
whom I bought it. At the end of each summer, there are little nodules
on the branches and these are the figs of next year.

There's two crops a year. The ones that are match-head sized over winter
are the crop that ripe Aug-Sept, the ones that appear after that and are
larger in the autumn are the spring crop, but they never ripen in the
UK, and are the ones to be removed. It seems to me that this crop is
always bigger than the summer crop - over a hundred compared to about 30
for example.

Any larger figs that have not ripened, I remove. The figs grow until
ripe in early to mid- August, when you have to pick them pretty
sharpish or the wasps will beat you to it. The tree needs to be kept
well-watered once it is established and seems to grow an inch or two
each year.

Ah - that explains why you confine them! Mine was growing about 8 inches
a year n the ground!

Figs in the wild have very long roots. We were in a cave and scrambled
up into a cavern about 15 ft high which was festooned top to bottom with
what at first sight seemed to be electric cables but which on closer
inspection were tree roots. We think they were from a fig tree higher on
the hillside.

Often things which one thinks of as tolerating dry areas do in fact have
long roots allowing them to tap into water deep down - agaves for
example

Figs are very easy to increase by air layering.
--
Kay