Angela - wrapping a tree doesn't keep it warmer unless while in the wrapping of it you devised a strategy to capture heat from an extraneous source. IOW - if you put a cup of water inside an insulated cooler and put the cooler in the freezer, eventually the water in the cup will be the same temp as the rest of the food ion the freezer. However, if you were to plug in a curling iron and seal it in the cooler w/the cup of water, the water wouldn't freeze because there was an extraneous heat source and the cooler trapped it.

The fungal issue was due to a high moisture content and lack of air circulation. The only benefit wrapping has is to reduce the effects of dessication, which is about nil in a garage.

Since tissue dies as a result of exposure to cold lower than the tree is genetically programmed to tolerate, and wrapping doesn't affect how cold the tissue gets - only how long it takes to get there, it's ineffective as an insulator.

Better, would be to take a large box and upturn it over your tree and poke a few holes in it for circulation. This will trap extraneous heat conducting through and radiating from the floor and should keep the top part of your tree (and roots) from killing low temperatures.

I hope you get a ton of figs this year, too! Good luck.

Al

How cold does you unheated garage get?

I was surprised that the tree grew back.
The garage is pretty cold but shares a wall with a heated room. I will try the flipped box this winter. Hopefully that will work. If not one of the guys at my work promised to store it in his office (which he uses only to grow/winter his plants).