Ross "The Fig Boss" addresses the heartbreak of a "dead" fig tree after a brutal winter, explaining that while the top growth may be brittle and maroon (a clear sign of winter kill), the tree is likely still alive underground. For those in colder regions like zones 5 through 7A, temperatures dipping below 5°F often force the plant to restart from the base. Ross emphasizes that patience is key; because fig growth from the roots isn't as fast as asparagus, it may take until May or even later for green shoots to peek through the soil. He also shares a crucial planting tip: burying the trunk 4 to 6 inches deeper than the root ball provides a "safety net" of protected nodes that can reliably regenerate the tree even after a deep freeze.
To avoid the disappointment of a season without fruit—since total dieback often means the tree won't have enough time to ripen figs before the next frost—Ross advocates for proactive winter protection. This involves bending the tree to the ground (using ratchet straps for the older, more stubborn ones) and insulating it with tarps, straw, or mulch to trap radiating ground heat. While late spring frosts can still "crisp" new leaves and cause a two-week delay, protected trees generally bounce back much faster than those killed to the ground. Ultimately, the video serves as both a technical survival guide and a much-needed pep talk for gardeners waiting on their stubborn trees to wake up.
0:00 Identifying Winter Damage & The "Snap Test" 1:13 Why Fig Trees Grow Back from the Roots 2:36 Planting Deep: A "Safety Net" for Cold Zones 3:11 Methods for Heavy-Duty Winter Protection 4:13 Recovering from Late Spring Frost Damage
All right, fig lovers, this is Ross, the fig boss.
A lot of us that grow figs in colder growing zones,
we had a very brutal winter this year.
And a lot of you guys have been wondering,
well, why is my fig tree not growing?
Why is it not budding out?
It should be budding out by now.
Why is there growth down here at the base
and not here at the top?
Is my fig tree dead?
It just got hit by a late frost.
What do I do?
All these questions we're gonna answer
and more in this video.
And you can see, now that I've just snapped
my fig tree like this, the wood is dead.
This is a good sign, one of the signs to know
if your fig tree is damaged from the winter cold.
You'll have this maroon color here on the one-year-old wood.
And all this top growth here is dead
because we had a winter cold here of about two degrees
to maybe even all the way down to negative three degrees.
I looked at a lot of local forecasts and weather stations.
It was not good that morning.
And not only was it cold,
but it was cold for a long period of time.
So fig trees really don't like that.
Anything below five degrees Fahrenheit,
you're really starting to push it.
And if it gets too cold for too long,
the whole fig tree will die all the way to the ground.
And that's the thing.
Is my fig tree dead?
Well, the chances of it being dead are actually kind of low,
especially if the tree is as old as this Ronde Bordeaux
that we're looking at.
This thing's been in the ground
for probably close to seven or eight years,
something like that.
And you can see down here,
it is actually coming back from the base.
So anything below the soil in terms of buds on a fig tree
can actually survive the winter and come back.
And usually they do.
Even really young fig trees like the ones right here,
these are trees I had just planted last summer.
So they haven't even been in the ground for a full year.
And you can see the top's dead.
We had some rodent damage here on the side
because the snow cover was all the way up to here.
And that was protecting the trees as well
and keeping the ground warm.
And now we're having growth
that's coming up here from the base.
Same thing down here.
All these trees are gonna come back
and they might take some time.
You know, it can take some time.
Here's one right here.
You might not even see this as a fig tree, but there it is.
There's the growth popping through.
We're almost here at May 1st,
which is about the time when all these fig trees
should already be awake and already doing their thing.
But we haven't seen it
because the trees got killed all the way down to the base.
So it's really sad.
You might think your fig tree's dead.
And then two months later from now,
you might start to see some of that growth that I showed you
coming up from the soil line.
And then finally your tree is back to life.
The important part,
when we plant our fig trees
in the ground in these colder zones,
we bury at least four to six inches of the trunk
above the root ball below the soil.
And that will just protect that set of buds,
those nodes,
so that the tree can always come back from below the soil.
It's not like asparagus
where they just shoot up really quickly.
It can take some time to get them growing
and try to find that light to break through that soil.
I've even had some trees, this is crazy,
where they haven't woken up and done anything
until the following year.
It can be heartbreaking.
I understand you guys are sad and upset about this,
but really the only way to fix it
is to do some winter protection going forward.
Take your fig tree,
bend it all the way to the ground,
get it really close to the ground.
You can use all kinds of ways to get it close to the ground.
Some people were like,
well, Ross, I can't bend my fig tree to the ground
because it's just too old.
Well, you can use things like ratchet straps,
get yourself a really heavy duty stake
and kind of ratchet it all the way to the ground
really slowly.
Then we can cover it with all kinds of stuff,
tarps, mulch, leaves, straw, all kinds of things.
That'll trap all that heat from the ground.
As it radiates up from the winter time,
it traps it in here in the tarp
and all that stuff that you covered it with.
And these fig trees will be way warmer
than if you didn't do anything.
So that's the trick.
For those of you guys out there in zone five and zone six,
and even colder zone 7A like me,
we got to do some kind of winter protection
for one or two years.
Because if our fig tree dies all the way to the ground,
like this Ronde Bordeaux,
it may not fruit at all this season.
And if it does,
it's going to fruit so late in the season
that you may not get any figs until after frost.
When it comes to a late spring frost,
there's not really a whole lot we can do.
These are actually some fig trees right here.
I've protected this winter time.
Like I said, we bent them over to the ground.
We cover them with straw and cardboard.
You can see the straw down there.
And the trees leafed out,
all like everything was normal.
And then we had this awesome late frost that came in
and burnt these growth tips here to a crisp.
Now, luckily you can see though,
we're already starting to get these buds down here,
starting to expand.
So all is not lost.
Further down the branch, we'll start to go.
And we're probably going to lose,
unfortunately because of this, about two weeks.
But two weeks is better than nothing.
But anyway, that's the video here, guys.
Thanks for watching.
Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button
if you haven't.
Check out my blog, figboss.com.
We get all kinds of fig trees for sale.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you for the next video.
Take care.
