Sawdust

Trunk sawdust

Trunk sawdust

Sad fig tree

Sad fig tree

Last winter severely damaged the wood of your tree. Various insects attack such trees. It's not serious for the tree but may mean that you need to cut out the damaged limbs and grow new ones. In fact that should have been the plan when the tree showed damage in the spring.

I won't cut it back now. Next spring decide how much needs to come out. Going from your last picture I'd cut out most of the old top next spring. You could salvage what grew this year off the old limbs. It would probably be better to form a new tree from one or more of the strong shoots that grew from down low on the tree this summer.

The USDA has me now in zone 8a. Mine freeze back like that every winter.

Thank you, Fruitnut, for your response. I had suspected as much. Being a novice here in NY and by divine fig tree intervention, the tree has always thrived in this climate. But this past winter was too much for this tree. We had a yard worker who took it upon himself to severely prune the tree in late fall. The thought had not crossed my mind that the tree was damaged from the winter. I didn't want to shock the tree any further. So I just let it comeback. It didn't occur to me that it was frost bitten until too late. Then I noticed the sawdust and realized that some of the limbs may be dead. The type of bug is what scared me.

Your tree gets the same damage from the winter? Do you wrap your fig tree now? Also is there a good book resource on pruning the fig tree? I did it myself for a few years and it thrived but as we discussed the winter was too severe. But even though, I read various things on fig tree pruning. I never really felt that it was pruned the way it should be. That's for taking the time to help out a novice. ;-)

I wrapped a couple yrs very elaborately, leaves/carpet/tarps, but it didn't help so I quit. Wrapping can help but it needs to be done properly and I guess I didn't have the magic formula. I'm going to try again this winter with a new approach on newly planted bushes.

Pruning figs isn't hard. I mean there are elaborate ways to do it but all probably yield about the same results. Next spring at minimum take out all dead wood. You can take out more because some is partially damaged, dead on one side not the other. Then save shoots growing where you want and take out the excess. Once a tree starts freezing back like this you are left with a multi leader bush, not a tree. You choose how many leaders.