Fig Trees: Why They're NOT Ripening & Why You SHOULD Protect Them

All right fig lovers, this is Ross the Fig Boss. Welcome back to another long form video. Thank you guys here for joining me. Please do me a favor right now, if you've been enjoying this long form content, hit the like button for me right now. Hit the subscribe button for me right now. I really appreciate it. I've been enjoying making these videos. I know a lot of you guys have been learning a lot from this kind of content. It's definitely not the short and sweet stuff where I give you guys, you know, all everything to the point, this, this, and this, and then we're done. This is, you know, we're going to really show you guys a lot of show and tell a lot of like expanded thinking about how fig trees grow and why they grow the way they do. So we're going to talk about all kinds of different things in today's video. Who even knows where this one's going to take me, but we are going to specialize today a little bit in some of these trees here behind me. We're going to talk about protecting them for the winter time. One of my recent person, someone, one of you guys commented on one of my recent videos and you said, Ross, you know, how do you protect all these young fig trees? And I kind of want to talk about not just how to protect them, but why we're doing this. This is actually going to be the exact topic. I'll be a little bit more hands-on and a bit more demonstrative at the Arboretum. So just in a couple of weeks, today is actually August 17th. We're here by the way, on this property, I have multiple properties. I'm growing fig trees on actually between three different properties, but this one in particular is a property we haven't really showcased a whole lot from. I tend not to show this property all that much because the front yard is a big, amazing meadow of native plants. I really love all kinds of different plants, not just fig trees. We also planted here on this property, younger fruiting plants. This is a, like a two or three year old apricot. Now it's getting huge. We planted a lot of different things here, just for ease of growing things that are easier to grow. Don't need a whole lot of care and attention, but the fig trees here on this property are also just rather young. And so I don't really have a lot to share because of that. But like I said, today is August 17th and we're going to talk about how to protect your fig trees for the winter time and really why we're doing this. And then the same thing at the end of the month, two weeks from now, I'm going to be giving a talk at the Althaus Arboretum. It's a fig festival there. If you've never been there, I would highly recommend checking it out or going to a fig festival near you. They're all over the country now at this point. And I have a nice little slot there, I think within an hour, maybe from two to three, I think it is, if I'm remembering correctly, where I'm going to be doing a demonstration talking about this exact thing. I might film that, but for, you know, just for you guys, and maybe I'll even publish this later, like maybe in the winter time. Let's kind of talk about this stuff now, right? Let's, let's cover some of this on my own time. Maybe I can cover things in this video that I won't necessarily cover in just an hour's length of time at the Althaus Arboretum. I expect a lot of you guys to visit, a lot of people to say hi. I'm also going to be selling fig trees there, and I think it's going to be a bit of a madhouse. Even just this past weekend, I was at Squares and Fair down in Summers Point. I told you guys to come visit. I was selling fig trees there, and at one point I was probably talking to like six or seven people at the same time, so it's going to be, it's going to be pretty crazy. I think it's going to be much crazier at the Althaus Arboretum than it was at Squares and Fair. There's going to be probably like, I think the person who run it, who runs it, Donna and Mike, I think they said there was 500 people there in the prior two years that they've been running this, so it's going to be pretty crazy. I'm also planning to not just bring the trees, but also fruits as well, so that you guys can hopefully try some fruits, and you know, that's part of this. I wish I had more fruits at this point, like right now. There's about six or seven varieties ripening, but the late frost really has delayed things, especially here on this property with all the potted trees. Some of the ingrounds, we're going to look at those in a bit, but the ingrounds might even just be a little too young, depending on the tree. We'll talk more about that, but these potted trees are looking amazing, and really, they should be fruiting now. I mean, really, we should be getting a whole lot of fruit at this point, and I should be evaluating a lot of different varieties. It's not that we don't have the fruit on the trees necessarily, it's just that we are really late because of the late frost. This property, I've discussed it before, but this property is in a different county, a different part of Philadelphia, and it just basically gets colder here. I mean, it's simple as that. All the things and all the stuff I've been doing at my other property, I've done for years, about a decade, and I know what to do, what not to do, and you kind of have to rewrite all the rules here. I mean, even the first year I was using this garage as winter storage, I had a lot of rodents in there, and ate up all my fig trees, and killed probably like 25-30 trees that winter. So, you know, not ideal, and it just seems like there's always a test, and there's always something new to learn. That's part of growing fruit, and that's part of why we're making these videos, and teaching you guys, and trying to be, you know, educational with this. Not just saying, hey, look, look at me, and what I'm doing, but look, this is life. You know, this is how it works. So, we do have some figs ripening here, I'm not going to lie, but these varieties here, if they are ripening now, or you know, they look really good at this point in the season, in terms of their fruit development, they were not hit by the frost. And so, the frost at the other property affected the trees barely. I mean, I thought it would delay them by about two weeks, if that, and some of the trees, and probably most of the trees over there, are just completely unaffected on the patio. Some of the in-ground trees were definitely hit hard, and which is really a big surprise why a variety like Alex was the first in-ground fig tree for me to ripen this year, because we did get the frost, but clearly that one was not affected by it, and we were able to ripen some by August 14th, I think the date was. One of the questions I've been getting a lot lately, so I've been going through my emails, catching up on things, man, I'm still really busy, even though I haven't even been shipping trees, but you guys, man, it's a huge influx of people. It's definitely a good thing, but I got so many people that I talk to on a regular basis, just new people that keep coming and asking questions and want help with this and help with that. I have two other jobs. There's a lot of things to do, and a lot of things I've been trying to catch up on. Even just in my personal life, there's a lot of things to do. So, you know, we're getting there, but one of the questions that I've really had a lot lately, here's actually a vertolino here, by the way. Starting to get this fig here, it looks like, to swell. Oh no, it looks like this one here might have not gotten enough water and it's going to fall off, but you can see the other vertolino there. It wasn't hit by frost. It is actually ripening some fruit. So anyway, the question that I've been getting is, Ross, why are my figs not ripening? Two videos ago of the long form content, we mentioned why they might not be fruiting at all, right? This is a different issue. You have figs on your tree, but they're not ripening and you're like, oh, it's August. I mean, I'm sitting here not thinking the same thing. I'm expecting some fruit pretty soon here, but I know just based on experience, right? Like this fig right here, about this size and probably even slightly smaller than that. Let's see if we can find one that's a little smaller. I mean, even something like this, you know, it's like barely formed here, a little larger than that. So something like pea sized, maybe like this, this is probably perfect. This fig right here will take about 90 days to ripen. And it's pretty much clockwork guys. You don't have to be some kind of fig wizard. I mean, you just know once they're there like that, it only takes about 90 days. Now every variety is a little different and everybody's climate is a little different. If you don't live in a super mild climate, like the Pacific Northwest, like parts of it, or the United Kingdom, where your summer just isn't that hot, that 90 days can take a little longer. For some of you guys that have earlier varieties, like Ronde de Bordeaux, let's say, instead of that 90 days, it actually takes 65 days. So every variety is a little different. Some are like, most of them are the early varieties around 70, 75 days. You know, you could say like a variety like Alex might be like 80 days. Smith, you know, is another one like 80 days. Heart of Chicago, like 80 days, somewhere in there. But most varieties will take about that 90. And some, like even Black Madeira, the later they are, it might take over that 90 day. It might take actually like 100, 120, again, depending on where you live. So we've got this fig here ripening up soon. This is called Sweet Machinka Unknown, very similar to White Triana. And then the other thing that, just to quickly go back to that, the other thing people don't get right away is that figs will ripen, the whole ripening process works in a very specific way. So you'll see them when they first start forming, right, like on this tree, they're going to go from the small size to a larger size. And it's going to happen like every day, like there's going to be these slight increases in growth of the size of fig, right? But then it's going to like kind of top out, maybe get to like something like this, and it'll just sit here at this size for like 30 days. And it won't do anything. And then almost overnight, it'll ripen to a slightly larger size, like maybe like this, and then sit there for another 30 days. And then finally, it will start to swell. So it happens, you know, you get those three, pretty much three different ripening stages. And then there's the fourth, which the fourth is it starts to swell, change color, becomes soft. You can see that there might be some cracking, honey at the eye, but as we've discussed in other videos, that's not a reliable way to know if a fig is ready. The only reason this fig has cracked, as an example, is because it rained last night. So rain sat on the top of this fruit overnight, didn't dry, and some of that water gets absorbed into the fruit. So it's a fast absorption and the skin just breaks apart like that. A lot of times you see it at the eye, but if you have a variety that hangs well, long neck, long stem, the eye is protected and it doesn't split and spoil. Just dropped it on the ground, so that's not great. But long story short, this fig is ready simply because I touched the neck. And actually the neck is a little bit firm still, but for you guys here watching this video, I will harvest this thing. So you're waiting here to touch the neck. You're not looking for the honey at the eye. You're not looking for cracking, any kind of visual indicator. It's all by feel, by touch. And the only visual indicator that is helpful is then to help you approach the tree to then touch the neck. I keep seeing this crap. I'll probably see this crap till the day I die about people just improperly picking their figs. And you know, there's just misinformation all the time. Let's try it. This is called Vertolino. And normally I would recommend picking your figs well before the rain or right before the rain. The rain damages them. And even though you can have varieties that are rain resistant, and that's really what I've been specializing in, what have I been doing here in the Philadelphia area? Trialing many, many different varieties. Most of these are all the same or duplicates of each other of new varieties that we'll very soon get to evaluate and see what all these are about and see what their traits are and things. And we already know that Vertolino is quite special for rain resistance and it does really good with drying on the tree. But even so, I would not recommend, you know, leaving it on the tree prior to a rain. If you want to do that for testing purposes to see how rain resistant it might be, you can definitely do that. That's something I've done. But yeah, it's not always recommended. So that way you can preserve the fruit quality, right? If they're right before the rain, you might as well get them off because when they're still on the tree and damaged by the rain, this fruit here is actually a little watered down and soon will spoil. In fact, they don't last nearly as long in the fridge or on the counter or anything like that. The quality goes down because there's now more water in the fruit, right? So that's making things have a higher chance of spoilage, okay? And so, you know, that's it. That's how to pick a fig. That's what I do here. I pick them before the rain unless I'm evaluating them. And this here is Vertolino. We talked about Longuet in the other video that we did and we talked about Salam just in the last one, I think. Excellent figs. Definitely excellent. Really good rain resistance. Again, still will pick them prior to the rain. Even though that was a bit watered down, actually still had good sugar content and good flavor. So don't let me fool you there. I just want to be a little bit more accurate. It's not as good as it could be, let's say. All right. So that is the major thing I know that a lot of people have been asking me. Why aren't my figs ripe? We get this question a lot in August. Why aren't my figs ripe? Why aren't my figs ripe? Why aren't my figs producing fruit, right? We have figs on the tree. Why are they falling off the tree? Well, we talked about why they might be falling off the tree. Look at this one, right? So this one here probably doesn't need pollination, but you can see this one here shriveled up, turned color and fell off. Well, this fig here probably didn't get enough water for a period of time and this tree aborted this fig because it couldn't support that extra stress. When they're under stress like that from a lack of water, they drop their leaves or they drop their fruits. Now I do have another variety over here that's dropping their fruits. Now this fig though, here it is on the ground. I threw this on the ground because this fig is in its final ripening stage. It's actually entering now, I believe the third ripening stage. Now this is something interesting. A lot of you experts, you're going to, you need to know this, right? So figs, as I said, they go through four ripening stages. The fourth one's when they turn color and actually ripen and turn soft. Well, in the third one, so right before this, Smyrnas and San Pedro figs that need pollination and are not pollinated will drop their figs. And you can open these up. I wouldn't recommend doing them when they fall, like opening them up when they fall off. It's a little bit less accurate. Instead, they're green and hard on the tree like these. Take this off, rip it in half or cut it in half. And then if it's hollow on the inside, you know, it needs pollination. So this is hollow. It's not a void. It's different. It is very different. So, and this leads me to, you know, pollinating them too. So if you're going to pollinate your figs, for everybody out there who is pollinating them, I didn't get a chance to do that this year, unfortunately. I had the pollen and kind of got to it a little bit too late in terms of harvesting them. And then some of them molded and I just didn't have time to extract the pollen. But long story short, you basically need to pollinate them at the right time. So if you're going to pollinate them, it needs to be in the first or second ripening stage. And I would say something like actually like this size here is probably the perfect size, perfect stage. And this is still in the first development, first ripening stage. You know, this is like super small, just formed maybe like 10 days ago, something like that. This is probably the perfect size. And then you can go up to like, this is still good here, but the smaller they are, the less pollen water solution they need. You think about it, so you're saving yourself in pollen and water by doing this at the right time. So that's another thing to consider there. All right, so let's talk now about protecting the in-ground trees and why you do this, how to protect them and why you would do it. So it's really critical to do this here in colder climates. So what is a cold climate for fig trees? Let's define that first. So I'm in zone 7A, Philadelphia, the Philadelphia area. Now, if you look up your USDA growing zone, everybody has a different zone. And even the USDA zone that it gives you based on your zip code could be just wrong. This is also 7A, but based on the winter low that we saw this year, this I would classify now as 6B because we got down to negative two degrees Fahrenheit. What is your actual USDA growing zone mean? It is your extreme average winter low over the last 30 years. So on average, we get down to about zero degrees to five degrees Fahrenheit in zone 7A at the most. I guess you could theoretically still get below that, but that's my point is that if you get below zero degrees and you go to negative two degrees Fahrenheit, which is what we saw here, I don't think you should be classified as zone 7A anymore. In my opinion, you should be 6B, which is why I'm making this argument. And this is really important because fig trees, if they are lignified properly, we'll get into that in a minute. This basically means that branches are hardened up properly going into the winter. If that's the case, fig trees can withstand about five degrees Fahrenheit. They really don't like that below five degrees. Once you get down to zero, very few of them will survive, if any. And I think realistically, once you get below zero, there are some that could survive a temperature below zero, but it's really about the duration at that point. So you need not just a hardy variety, but what about the duration at that temperature as well? Because the lowest, the low temperatures, what they do is they expand the cells and they basically freeze the cell walls in your plants. And that's what kills the fig tree. Basically, the cell walls explode. And what does this do? Because we talked about this in the last video, we basically said that if the tree takes winter damage and dies all the way down to the base, which is what the majority of the trees here on this property have done now, they are coming back really strong finally. It took a while. I did do a lot of weeding and I think that's been helping and you can now really see the trees. All the trees on this property were either planted last spring, last summer, or the summer before. So these are only two or three year old trees. Now they're a little older since they were growing in a pot potentially for a little bit longer than that, but most of these I've planted from just a one gallon pot. This I planted from like a three or five gallons, so this is a little bit bigger. What variety is this? I can't remember off the top of my head. Oh, here's the tag is down here. Let's see. This thing here is Torbelay. Actually, I'm not really remembering if this was a three or five gallon pot, but there are some in here that are like a good size like this. Like this tree was a two gallon, good size. This is unknown blackberry right here. This is looking like a good size tree and that was only a, that was a three or five gallon size tree. So generally the bigger the pot was, the bigger they are today. This is a Vertolino, I think, and maybe a two gallon. And then as comparison, oh yeah, here's a Savanac Noir. That was a three or five gallon we planted. This is a De La Gloria and I think this was a really small tree. So it's not always the case that the bigger the tree is, but certainly the bigger the tree is, the better chance it has at becoming a bigger tree quicker. But I like to plant them from one gallons because the one gallon trees you plant are actually easier to protect. We'll talk about that. Here's actually a three to five gallon size tree I planted just this spring and you can see it's not really doing a whole lot, but theoretically this is now going to be a bigger tree next year than some of the one gallons I planted. But you know, again, not always the case. If you want tips on planting the trees and how to care for them, we did do, we've done, I've done so many videos and written so many articles on it, but there was a long form video we did about caring for these trees and, and removing the fruits, you know, things like that, removing the fruits, training them, getting them to grow, putting down compost, watering them, everything you'd possibly want to know. So when we prune them, or if the winter comes in here and kills them, like a lot of these trees were killed down to the base that I didn't successfully protect, we do, they kind of just respond hormonally, which is what we talked about in the last video, all about hormones, why fig trees do what they do, and they respond by putting out tons of new growth. So lots and lots of new growth here. And so now this tree here is Stella, no fruits on it to be seen at all, I don't think. Maybe there's a branch in here somewhere. By the way, some people are really like on the fence about this tree. I've gotten like a bunch of questions in the past. This is an amazing fig, by the way. I don't know why there's such hesitation perhaps. It's one of the best tasting figs and it is reliable in colder zones. Now maybe it's not the most rain resistant, but you, I can get this through the wintertime, see its genetic potential in terms of its hardiness. We're going to have something because it's going to produce Braba. It's going to be incredibly productive. But this tree here, like I said, it's not, it's not fruiting right now because the tree got killed down in the ground. So the hormones, the way they work just very quickly is that the more we prune back our branches, this is something I was explaining to people and really why I'm kind of making this video today because we talked about it at Squares and Fair and a lot of you guys that met me there had these questions. So if we imagine, you know, this branch here is about five feet tall, right? Or let's say it's six feet tall, just to make it easy. The top 33%, the top two feet of the tree of that particular branch, not the tree, just this branch is really critical to protect that and keep that alive going into next season. Because if we remove the top 33, two feet of growth, whether that's by our pruning shears or whether that's from the winter cold, it makes no difference. The tree responds the same way and puts out a lot of growth the following year. It's more likely to grow than it is to fruit. Now if instead we can do something where we protect the tree, right? We bend over a branch towards the ground, pin it to the ground, cover it with cardboard and straw. You can see here it has fruit development. Now we've talked about this in other videos. You really need two years of good winter protection, but certainly if you do one year of winter protection, depending on the variety, like this is a barbelone or barnasote, excuse me, or noir de barbantine or noir de bologne, excuse me, oh my god, barnasote is also synonymous with noir de bologne, excuse me. But you can see there's fruit on there, right? There's wood that we've protected on these trees. Here's another alex tree. We bent this over. Now this thing's got fruit all up and down the branches. Some varieties are a little bit easier to get than the fruit. Here's another one. I think this is unknown rome. You can see the fruit development, right? So we're we practice what we preach. We do it. We protect these trees, especially the older ones, and they're more likely to fruit. Here is squeglia. A lot of sucker growth down here. That's normal. That's fine, but the fruit development is further ahead up here on the branches that we made, we got through the winter time. Okay, so see how that that wood is a different color than the other branches? That's because it's a whole year older. So there's a big difference, right? Basically, people want to know, Ross, why can't I get my fig tree to fruit? That's a big one right there. You're just simply not protecting it. You're not getting it through the winter time, or you're pruning it improperly. You're removing the top third of the growth. This happens a lot, and so depending on the variety, you can get away with removing the top third of the growth. Maybe if somebody said, all right, well, I'm going to pillard this, right? I'm going to draw an imaginary line at whatever height, chest height, waist height, whatever it is, and I'm going to prune everything above this line. So you're going to shorten every branch by that 33%. And you know, they even say in the fruit tree books, all the lessons about fruit trees, they're like, yeah, Ross, or they tell you prune your trees by 33%. That's how you control their growth. It's not true. You don't want to do that. In fact, you'd want to do that actually in the summertime, you can even remove half the growth. And this is what I've done with this particular apricot. There's a lot of new growth on this tree. This is actually last year's wood right here. So from here to there, and then it formed new wood here to here, and then I pruned it. See that? I made a cut there in the summer, and now it's branched out into three new shoots. So I'm gonna do the same thing now, because this tree is going to be huge if you don't do this. Now there is some growth in here in the center and whatnot. So like this is a good example, right? I have growth that, let's say, you know, I'm looking up here at the top of the tree. This is going to be a really hard tree to protect potentially, right? Or not protect. It's going to be a hard tree to harvest from. So some of you guys may be thinking, all right, well Ross, look, I need to prune my fig tree. So you're telling me don't remove the top third of the growth, and that's going to throw it into some state in which it just wants to grow even bigger next year. It's usually what's happened, but that's what happens, right? You draw an imaginary line, you cut the top third of the growth off, you think you're making it smaller, and in fact it's going to grow even bigger next and it's probably not going to fruit. And if it does fruit, it's going to be too late. So you're thinking, all right, well, I got this tree, it's too big. Well, here's what you do. You trace back the taller shoots on the tree to a lower point and make a cut flush with the growth below it. Don't draw an imaginary line because the growth you leave behind, right? If I were to take even just this branch here, let's say this is the tallest branch on my tree, trace this back, trace this back, trace this back, trace this back. Well, here is a point in which it started from this season. So I can make a cut literally right here and I could leave this branch and it's all good. Because if I cut this right here, I'm not leaving any buds behind, right? There are buds right here. So there's one right there. There's one on the back because of this leaf. There's one here. There's one here. And there even can just be buds that form just even in just this length of wood. So if I make a cut just really perfectly here and try not to leave too much of this behind, I'm not going to create what are called water shoots. Now, water shoots, we got one here in the center. This is growth. Look, we made a cut right there last year. And as a result, a water shoot forms. And this thing grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. And it's huge now, right in the smack dab in the middle of my tree. So I'm going to come in here this year. I'm going to cut this water shoot completely out. And I'm going to try to take this as low as I can without damaging the bark of the tree because I don't want to leave anything behind. So you do the same thing on your fig, right? You come in here, you trace it down and you cut it wherever you want. Now you can, instead of making this cut right here, I can just keep going. Let's just keep going to another lowest point. Oh, now we get to this crotch, this branch crotch. We can cut it right there. Or I can go even lower, just keep going and I can get it down there and then remove the entire scaffold. And that would solve the problem. In fact, that's what I argue a lot of you guys should do is get your tree to form multiple scaffolds. Or in the case of a fig tree, it's a bush. You have trunks. Well, instead of having this little section of tree here that counts as your main trunk, you don't have this. So instead of the scaffolds being like six inches off the ground, which is the size of this trunk, I purposely trained this tree, by the way, to have lower scaffolds because I didn't want it to be big. It's on a standard rootstock. It's going to be big no matter what, but you can, you can really prune the heck out of these trees to keep them smaller. And that way, instead of having this trunk, the, the trunks are formed down here at the base. Those are your scaffolds. So what you could do is if you have one trunk or one branch here, like this is the tallest point, trace this all the way down, remove that entire trunk, remove that entire scaffold. You remove one scaffold, a new one comes up in its place. You just keep doing that over and over and over again. And the tree eventually just recycles itself and becomes smaller. So one year, or let's say the first year you have a problem, your tree is too big, remove two scaffolds, remove two trunks. That's it. You're not going to create a problem that way by causing your tree to grow too big next year and even bigger than it was and cause it to, to have a problem fruiting. So that's how you prune them. And that's kind of why we should prune them properly and why we should protect them. Now, in terms of protecting them, it is really simple. I actually have some of the, the garden staples in this little bin here. These are what I use to pin the tree down. And you can use all kinds of things. You can use heavy landscape rocks, boulders, whatever you got, I don't care. But you can see all the trees are planted on an angle. See how this one's growing out this way? Look at this guy, he's rather sad, but he is growing out this way. That's because he was pinned down to the ground right down there with this garden staple. Same thing with this. Look how pliable they are, especially the one-year-old shoots. Two-year-old shoots get a little bit more difficult to bend them over, but we do need to protect them most of the time, especially if you're in zone five and six, especially. Zone sevens, like seven B, you could probably get away with just one year. You don't need to do more than that. But for those of us in seven A, I think two years is also highly advisable, but we do one year of winter protection, and then we hope to God that the second year is rather mild. And if it is, we hit the jackpot, but you really want to do two years. And still, I mean, even though, you know, like this is the biggest tree right here that I did protect, you can still bend this over. Look, very easily. Look, this is right up against the ground. So all you do is get a couple staples and all the new shoots on the tree too. So all these branches have to get protected. Remember, it's the top third of the wood. That's the important part to protect, but you also don't want to miss the crown, the base of the tree, because you want to protect every single inch of that growth from last year. Okay. So now it's pinned to the ground, right? Let's just do it over here. And if you want, you know, you can do this throughout the year, like every so often. Come out here and just keep bending it. Bend the one-year-old shoot that you have so that it's more pliable come wintertime. And then it's easy just to lay it over. But I'll do the same thing, right? I'll bring this branch here. I want to keep this. We'll pin these here together. Get as close to the ground as I can. Cover the whole thing, every inch of this, from the very top to even the base of the tree down here with cardboard. Okay. Then once I get the cardboard, I've got all kinds of scraps and things just piled up over here. I'm going to get a lot more too. But see all this yard waste and things in there? That's going to come out. And I'm going to put that right on top of the cardboard. Okay. And that will insulate the tree because you're going to have some space in between the cardboard, some air in between, and that counts as like extra R-value of insulation. And all we're doing there is just trapping in the heat that comes up from the earth. Some people like to wrap their trees. It's a pretty common, really common one, especially if their tree is a little bit older and bigger. You could do that. And also, by the way, if you want to just do one shoot, like I showed you guys over there, you could do multiple. I'm just doing one because you can do, that's all you need. You only need one, but the more you actually cover the better off you are by a long shot, actually. So I would recommend covering them as many as you can. And, oh, here's another tip. Bend them in the direction they're growing. So this shoot here is growing out this way. We've got to bend it down this way. You try to go the other way with it, you're going to break it. So a lot of people are just afraid, confused. It's pretty simple. Wrapping, you can definitely do wrapping. But the whole idea of wrapping is that we get all these branches together, tie them up. And the wrapping, what it's supposed to do is we're supposed to keep the air out, but also trap the air in. Okay. We don't want the top to be open. I know some people do that because we're trying to capture that ground heat. We want the skirt of the tarp or whatever it is that we're wrapping the tree with, there's got to be a skirt and it should be airtight because the heat that radiates up in that needs to get trapped up here. And that's going to keep the tree warm. Remember, it's all about the duration and the temperature. That's it. Pulling out this weed. At the same time, I pulled out some liatris. That's not good. I'm going to plant this liatris somewhere else. Liatris is a really pretty plant for anyone that doesn't know about liatris. It's striking, but it is a biennial, so not as great for some people because you got to be patient. Patience, it's tough for some people. It's got these little tubers and you can just plant the tubers. That's pretty cool. Maybe I'll divide that up and just plop them in. Anyway, that's the lesson there on protecting them, why we do it, how you do it, how to prune them. We mentioned hormones. How this all ties in together is just amazing. We kept telling you guys from one video to the next, if you went back and watched, because I think we're on the eighth long-form video now. I've been doing one a week. I think we're probably close to the eighth one, somewhere like that. I think it was the second one we did, we talked about evaluating fig varieties. We said that when we evaluate varieties, the hormones make a huge difference in how the trees respond and grow and behave. If you don't understand the hormones, like we talked about even just in the last video, you really don't understand these trees. You don't understand why they're doing what they're doing and how they're actually growing. Here's a really good one right here. This tree, I would bet, doesn't have many fruits on it. Look at this new growth. It's insane. I did top it. I pinched it there, as we do with these trees and we train them. I've mentioned this before, but we'll talk more about that in the future. There's only one fruit on this tree. It grew as a single stem. Actually, look at that. It's got a whole other section of the tree over here with fruit all over it. This single branch is growing like mad because this started from the soil line. It grew up three and a half, four feet like this, topped it. Now it's growing even more because the hormones in that particular branch are different than the rest of the entire tree. It's just amazing. It goes to show you that even though I mentioned, that's why I said if you prune the top third of each of the branches, you change that particular branch. You don't change the whole tree, just that particular branch. You could prune, you could do it a little experiment next year, this winter. This winter, prune back a third of your tree and one section of it and keep the other section unpruned. See what happens. So anyway guys, keep this one a little shorter than normal. Thank you all here for watching. Please hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. I hope to see you guys at the Althouse Arboretum. We're going to have fig trees again available for sale at the end of this month after I come back from the Arboretum. I hope to see you guys there. Say hi and maybe you'll get to eat some figs. All right, take care guys. See you for the next one.