Are you going to keep it in the pot indefinitely? If so, how tall do you eventually want it to be? Do you want it to be a single trunked specimen, or multi-trunked?

Al

i plan to keep it in a pot for as long as i can keep it alive and correction it is 6 feet tall and i would like to keep it single trunked because the four other figs are multi-trunked and they too are in pots. i guess five feet tall would be a manageable height, so i guess i should prune it down once it is established, i plan to put it in a 15 gallon black nursery pot. so am i on the right track? someday i hope to taste my own homegrown fig, thanks AL

How large the pot should be, IOW the most appropriate pot size, depends on plant mass and soil choice. The more water-retentive your soil is, the more critical pot size is; this, because when portions of soils remain soggy for extended periods the anaerobic (airless) conditions kill roots. The longer the period of saturation, the larger the roots are that are killed. If and when air returns to the saturated areas of the pot as the water occupying the soil is used or evaporates, the plant then has to expend energy that would otherwise have gone to increasing the plant's mass or making fruit, to replace roots. That is how the plant is genetically programmed, so most top growth is suspended until roots catch up. You can see why it's a very good idea to avoid overly water-retentive soils and over-potting.

When using fast draining soils that support little or no perched water, there is no upper limit to container size./ You can literally place a fresh cutting in your 15 gal pot with total impunity, avoiding entirely the cyclic death & regeneration of roots associated w/heavier soils.

Cut your existing trunk off about 2/3 of the height you want your tree to be. Rub off all buds that occur low on the trunk & just keep branches that occur in the upper 1/2 of the trunk. This will give you a tree with a trunk that is 2/3 of the total ht of the tree, with the branches that eventually will form the canopy emanating from the top half of the trunk. The rest of the ht (1/3) will be filled in as the canopy develops. Hopefully, your pruning skills will develop as quickly as the tree, because you'll need some basic skills if you don't want your tree to look like it was 'topped'.

You'll also need to be able to count root pruning and fully repotting among your skills if you plan to maintain the tree at its best vitality over the long term.

Al

Hi Al, thank you so much for your advice, base on your expert knowledge and experience, i think i will go down in pot size to 10 gallons and save the 15 gallon for potting up. i have a very large bag of perlite to add to my potting soil to keep it loose and i plan to put styrofoam "peanuts" at the bottom of the pot to keep is draining well and lighter.Repotting skills are okay, i also have a few (30) orchids plants but this is my venture into more edibles.once again thank you, and i will be back as the fig tree hobby grows.Happy New Year.

FWIW - the peanuts won't have an impact on drainage, but they will reduce water retention at the same time they reduce the container volume available for root colonization. The short of it is that using them is very simply like growing in a smaller container.

Thank you for the kind words! I have a dear Dr. friend I regularly help with her figs & citrus in your neighborhood - Fremont.

If you're interested, reading the thread I'm linking you to below should give you a much clearer perspective on the function of container soils and how to use them to greatest advantage.

Best luck. Hope you find it useful and informative.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Click me and I'll take you to more info

i read the thread with great interest. i think i have all the components to make your planting mix, fine orchid bark should work, i don't know the exact type of conifer that is use for orchid bark, i couldn't find it on the bag, years ago it was redwood but i doubt very much if it still redwood,i have perlite,moss,etc.thanks .

Usually it's fir.

Take care. Let me know if you need help.

Al