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| South of house, fig tree row. 8.31.14 |
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| Plastic to eliminate sod and weeds. 8.31.14 |
Some of the fig tree / bushes have small figs. I don't know if we'll get ripe ones this fall.
Earlier this month, I mowed down the weeds and weedy grass, and used the cuttings for mulch around the trees. I have been adding spiny juniper trimmings to reduce small herbivore browsing. Sort of a wreath around the trees. Not near the trees, but in a row on each side, I treated the lawn with nitrogen / pee-cycle. I don't want to stimulate fig plant growth, but I do want sod that can be mowed and walked on for better access.
At the rear of the photo, not showing well and fore-shortened due to distance, is the first of the black plastic mulches to heat/exclude water/ exclude light. That can be left until Spring. Then, broadcast bee forage seeds - borage or others, and I have a nice bee-foraging area. Plan to do the same between the fig trees, which will ease mowing and feed bees.
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| Better view of plastic weed eliminator. 9.1.14 |
I thought my fig cutting didn't root in a pot and I stick it directly into the ground as a marker and then it sprouted from ground zero. The stem part above ground was totally brown and brittle. None of my figs have names because they are rescued from parking lots and such. What it tells me is the fig has a very strong will to live and the root system is not to be under-estimated.
ReplyDeleteI have a fig tree that I tried to start from a cutting, it didn't grow, I gave up and stuck it into the ground as a marker. It grew a year later. Then chickens ate it off. So I dug it up and planted in a container. It grew, but I left it outside in a bad freeze. That didn't hurt it. Now it's in the row of figs - Sal's fig. A lot of others are not so tough, but this one surprised me. It was also the only one in the row not to be top killed by the historic freeze last winter. That's not a good test of the others - they were first year.
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