Green Diva Mizar in the Garden: Save the Figs!

As many of you may already know, whenever possible, I “grow” everything in my front yard. This year I had zucchini and 2-potted fig trees.

Actually I’ve had the fig trees for nearly 4-years. Every spring, I lug the pots out of the garage, out into the sun and wait for figs. At the end of the season, to prevent the roots from freezing and the trees dying, I lug the pots back into the garage again.

A good plan for sure but this year … I’m done!

As you can see, one of the pots is already empty because I bit the bullet and decided to plant my trees right into the ground. 

I chose a spot out back – the south side of the house — right up against the foundation where I’m hoping my figs will winter over successfully. Two 2-deep holes in the ground later, I had the trees planted.

Winter Garden Hint #1

When planting a tree or any perennial, one rule of thumb is — you have to dig a 20-dollar hole for a 10-dollar plant; which means twice as deep and twice as wide. A bit of top soil in the hole and pop in the plant or tree or shrub, etc.

So,  here’s one of my fig trees (this is the Black Fig Tree) my favorite as it’s much sweeter than the green fig. When putting fig trees into the ground, the key in northern planting zones, is to protect the roots from freezing. 

Instead of heading down to my local DPW to load and lug buckets of mulch and to my local farm stand to buy hay and and to my local hardware to buy burlap and string, and having eyed the already dried out grass at the end of my yard, I had a Green Diva thought . . . 

Yup, I walked all along the perimeter of my yard yanking out bundle after bundle of long, tall and dried out grass. Instead of buying what I needed, I basically re-purposed what already grew in my yard. That’s pretty sustainable too!  So far I’ve put the grass around the base of each tree, tamping it down fairly well. Next I’ll gather more grass and basically surround the tree altogether, making sure to tuck a lot in between all the branches. All that grass will hopefully make for a nice winter coat for my fig trees. Come Spring … a little fertilizer, warm sunshine, those April showers and all my TLC will work together to produce trees full of luscious, yummy figs! When that time comes, I’ll also make sure to once again check out Green Diva Gina’s informative and delicious post about figs!

Lets hope they survive! Either way, it beats moving those heavy pots back and forth, but if they don’t make it … I will be sad.