HOW TO PRUNE A FIG TREE: PRUNING FOR FRUIT AND STRUCTURE. Gardening is good for you. No. 46 скачать в хорошем качестве

HOW TO PRUNE A FIG TREE: PRUNING FOR FRUIT AND STRUCTURE. Gardening is good for you. No. 46

Patrick Mioulane, editor-in-chief of NewsJardinTV, guides one of his friends in restructuring a ten-year-old fig tree. When all the autumn figs have been harvested, it's best to prune the fig tree during the dormant period to encourage the next fruit production. This involves removing the oldest branches that have borne figs as close as possible to their starting point. Use pruning shears for the smallest branches and a pruning saw for the largest ones. Take advantage of this procedure to remove malformed branches or those that grow too far outward or inward. The fig tree has hollow, soft wood, and it heals poorly. Formative pruning should therefore be done in the spring, when the sap is rising. A distinction must be made between single-bearing and double-bearing varieties. Single-bearing varieties produce only one crop per year, at the end of the season. summer-early autumn on the current year's branches. Bifera figs produce two crops per year: flowering figs, large fruits in June-July on the branches formed the previous year, and autumn figs, smaller, until the onset of frost, on the current year's branches. For single-bearing varieties, all branches can be pruned severely. For bifera varieties whose branches bear flowering figs, pruning is limited to light thinning. Naturally, the fig tree grows in coppices. Coppices allow trees to be kept lower, facilitating fruit harvesting, and renewing aging frameworks with stump shoots, but can hamper soil cultivation. However, with appropriate pruning, it can be given a goblet shape with a single trunk. It will then be necessary to regularly remove the stump shoots. You can shorten the peripheral branches by pruning them above an outward-facing bud of the tree. For optimal pruning, cut the branches as close to the stump as possible. The goal is to free the center of the tree to allow sunlight to penetrate more easily. Branches should always be pruned at an angle to allow better healing and prevent waterlogging. There is no need to apply a healing product once the fig tree has been pruned, since the latex that naturally oozes from the cut branches plays the same protective role.