You can also feed them diluted urine, which is high in nitrogen, and much
easier to obtain, and it's free.

I live just north of Toronto and have a few figs that are in the exact situation as yours

At this point they're trying to put out friut, you'll probably notice small buds just above where the leaves meet the stem on the green growth

This is why they slow down

You can definately do what Rayrose suggested, what I do is just put down an inch or so of compared cow manure on the surface of the soil and then you can put you mulch back over top

I use a water soluble fertilizer as well, the one I use is tomato fertilizer 15-15-30 I think which seems to work well

But the most important thing if you want more growth is when the figs start to grow, you'll have to pluck then off this year to restore vigour to the plant

Sad but true

Thank you three so much. I will start with the fertilization-waterings. I do not think that I see and buds as yet but if they come I will pinch them.

Eat a low salt diet and keep hydrated and use your own urine within 2 hours of discharge. figs are very aggressive growers and will grow fast while fruiting if you give them the feed they need. my raised bed 6 inch fig tree put on 25 feet of combined twig growth the first year. She get killed back to the ground and comes back with 100 feet of combined twig and trunk growth with figs. Feed them.

I like urine 4-1-0 and grass feed 8-0-4./28-0-4

This tree is 9.5 months old with a 4 month winter dormancy (no leaves)

Steve

Wow. Ok urine it is. By the way how did you store the fig during the winter? Mine are potted I only have one in the ground now to see if it will do something.

Thank you

In my garage. We got down to -12 F outside and the tree took some damage in my unheated garage but came out a month late and is doing well now. I have kept my fig trees in my basement but they start growing 3 months before last frost and do poorly as far as fruiting is concerned. You do have to water them to keep the roots from drying out. The picture above is not the garaged tree. It will be bigger and garaged this winter.

Picture of tree stored in garage

um, really? urine?? okay, I'm so sad my fig isn't doing as well as what i've seen on our walks in the neighborhood, West LA/Santa Monica, CA area. It's planted in the yard, gets sun almost all day (when we don't have our gloom) and watering system is 3Xweekly. It's healthy but skinny and has some fruit. This is our second "season" so we planted last year.

I'm getting great growth on around three-fourths of my fig trees by watering them every second time with a diluted Miracle Grow solution, 1 tsp to one gallon of water. An evening leaf spray above and below the leaves with the same solution once a week helps also. Rapidly growing figs in pots seem to need daily water on hot days. I've also tried Floralicious Plus and Grow Big plant foods as directed. Some varieties are just slow growers. Some seem to stop growing for 6-8 weeks once you move them up to a new pot, then they take off. For the one and two year old trees, leaving only one or two figs on them so they can focus on growth helps. But I think it's important to let a new tree produce at least one fig or two to make sure it's not mis-labeled. If your eBay bargain black gourmet fig starts producing yellow figs.....

Southern California Zone 9b

Herman, how do you brew your manure tea? Do you use fresh or composted manure?

dharmadm: have you tried pruning your tree? if you prune, it tends to branch out more shoots, and then you'll have more branches and leaves. I notice my friend's tree (bought the same time with mine, I gave him one and kept one) also became tall and skinny due to no pruning, versus mine (short, fat and branchy, lots of leaves)

Both are good to make manure tea just find cow manure for this operation,not other type:Horse pig birds etc.

Dear Newlandscape.com The nursery pruned it it has good leaves but not giving fruit like last "season" I also "pinched" as was recommended and have one more week of watching for fruit. Neighbor has four left in the original gallon pot and tons of fruit, she does nothing and they get very little water and sun. HOHUM!! Thank you for the advise. IF I were to prune again what would I prune?

Hi dhawmadm: call me rough LOL but even as a baby tree I snip its tip and it forced to branch out side branches. I train its canopy/shape by snipping tips of the branches...when its tip is cut, it'll branch out new shoot from the original....so you trim where you envision having new shoots. My fig is in a pot, I don't let my tree grow too tall (or skinny)

Thank you tough love. I have pinched the buds in leaf groupings I hope that was right. Someone mentioned this pinching for fruit I'm still confused WHERE to prune. I've included a pic of my tree

Update: Most of my trees have started to grow! I have to admit I tried urine once but that can be difficult to collect and is limited. So I tried the daily fertilizer watering. It has also been very hot and humid here for two weeks now so that might have helped. All trees have either started growing leaves or figs! The figs however had stopped growing so I have to make sure I keep up with the fertilizer. All trees except one had snapped out of the growth pause. My Italian Honey fig is just doing nothing. I am worried that it is going to die because of the colour changes of the stem (turning a little bit yellow). I will try to take pictures in the day time.

I would like to try the manure but to tell you the truth I can't recall the last time I saw manure being sold anywhere.