For maximum growth have the lights on 16-18 hours a day.
For ligthing system nothing beats hid lights but its cost more :)
I use 2 1000 watt systems on my 2 basement rooms

Here is a link that might be useful: sample of my system

Thanks for the reply figster2007. Nice looking setup you have there by the way. Everything looks so healthy. Is there anything I should do other than water them and place them under lights 18 hours a day to grow nice healthy looking plants/trees like that? Any secrets or pitfalls I should know about?

As short as these Zumwalts are I was just planning on putting them under a 600w HPS along with a few other small fig trees and my blueberries and a large Pandan plant.

thank you
600 watt is fine, i use 1000 because i have to light 2 12x12 rooms and about 200 plants :)
keep the light about 3 feet above the plants...any closer and you will burn the leafs, dont let the soil dry out and fertilize regularly.
also cover the walls with mylar (reflects 99.9% of light) or the next best thing...flat white paint.
another thing you are going to have to keep under control is humidity...i use duck fans to suck the air out of the room and into my chimney.

figster, are those lights HID?

If so, are they somewhat efficient?

yes they are Hid, right now i have the hps lamps in this promotes flowering and fruting, as we get close to spring i switch to metal halide to promote growth.
the reason i sart out with hps is if i used only metal halide the plants would grow 4-5 or even 6 foot till they hit the celling during the 5 months they spend in the basement.

Thanks for all your help figster2007. Its starting to get cold here now. Today it was only 85deg F today. Even so with fewer daylight hours than needed to to keep these little ones from going dormant its time to bring them in and put them under some lights.

Thanks again

THISISME

fortisi876 they are not the most efficient 1000 watt hid consumes about the same as 6.5x100 watt incandecent bulb, but
the main diference ia the light spectrums produced with hid plus my 1000 watt hps lamp puts out 155000 lumens, it would take many incandecent lamps to come close to that

hehe it was 28 here today + 35 mph winds :)
its a balmy 80 in my grow room and no clouds !:)

Hi figser2007, My grow room is a lot smaller than yours but it looks like they are all happy in there. I still need to get a timer so the light has been on 24/7. My little Brown Turkey's and Zumwalt's are growing like mad. I bet they grow another 2'-3' before they go back outdoors March 1st. There are still a few Fall crop figs on the BT's. Will they continue to mature or will they die off because the light is on more like the summer time?

THISISME

thisisme, they'll ripen fine. I also have a BT that I brought in this fall and put it under my 400W HPS. The figs that were left on it turned out pretty good. They didn't get as dark as they normally would if they were outside, but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the taste.

I just brought my Desert King in from the frost and put that under my light too. Hopefully, I'll get an early breba crop out of it! mmmmm....

Thanks ccc1, That makes me wish I could bring in my Patrick's Giant Fig that has 50-60 figs on it. The problem is that its in a 25 gallon tree pot and its to tall.

I'm hoping the Zumwalt's will grow a lot so I can take some cuttings and trade a Zumwalt for a Sal's in the Fall of 2008.

I have a 2 year old dwarf fig in a container and just moved to an apartment without a garage. The leaves fell off in fall and I took it indoors when I heard it was going to freeze outside. We have had 1 full week of freezing temperatures and I am not sure how to proceed. Keep it indoors where we keep it about 60 degrees and there is a window (I don't have any grow lights, I'm new at this!)? Allow it to be outside and hope it survives? I don't want to confuse it! Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I wish I had the answers for you Charity925 but I'm new to figs and I'm just learning myself.

Will someone who knows what they are doing come along and help Charity out?

THISISME