Ox: I think temperature is the over riding factor in leaf out date. Keep them cool and they won't leaf out. Covering them will help if it keeps them cooler. In the spring move them back inside on freezing nights.

The Fruitnut

A fig can and will leaf out if temps are right even when days are short. Days are still short here (10hrs of daylight) and my figs and all of my fruit trees are breaking dormancy.

Fellows;
I'm not sure temperature is the answer. Whatever the temps, the days are getting longer. This is the signal that starts the birds to singing, the hens to laying.
Al, where are you.??????

I keep many of my figs in a DARK old "puttin-up room". Temperatures in there drop to the low 30's in the coldest part of the winter and tend to hover around 40 degrees much of the winter. I sometimes get elongating shoots as warmer temperatures start in spring (even though the room is still in the 40's. Light isn't what is waking these plants up as you can sit in this room with the door shut, turn around twice and not know which way to turn to find the door again.

~Chills

I guess I should not say have said all of my figs are breaking dormancy. Some of them never went dormant at all. Today I was checking the figs and some are nearly ripe. Its going to rain the next two days and I had to decide whether to pick them or wait to see what they are like after the rain.
The fig trees with roots that have overgrown their pots and are in the soil thats wormed by the sun never went dormant at all with the same light period as the others.

That is pretty convincing, Chills. No way I could make a garage any darker than your "puttin' up room". I suppose I will quit worrying about it and see how they do. I thought I noticed a little more green at the shoot tips last week.

It is a long while until green-up here. Hope I can persuade the figs to bide their time.
Ox

Ox,
I'm not Tapla but I remember reading, a looooong time ago, that roots are stimulated to begin growing in the Spring at a specific soil temperature and that top growth is stimulated to begin growing at a specific air temperature - about 10 degrees warmer than the soil temperature that stimulates root growth. I no longer remember the specific temperatures.
Cath

Ox - Soil temperature is the driving force behind tree's spring wake-up call (Thanks, Cath), with photo-period or photo-intensity having (practically speaking) nothing to do with it, other than direct sunlight's affect (through solar heat gain), on soil temps. Keeping trees at temperatures below 42* will keep them quiescent indefinitely, but several days at 45* or warmer will stimulate sap flow and bud movement. This, BTW, will also cause a considerable reduction in the tree's ability to withstand cold.

Covering them with a tarp may have a counter-productive influence in that the tarp will tend to trap any geo heat conducting through and radiating from the floor. I suppose during periods of high ambient air temps and low (cement) floor temps, it would help to keep trees cool, but during cold periods it wouldn't serve any purpose unless the cold was extreme for figs (below 20-25*)

The best strategy is to keep your trees as cold as you can (while still keeping them well above 20*) for as long as you can, and then moving them in and out into bright light as temperatures allow, being careful to avoid photo-oxidation (sunburn).

Al

Thanks, Al:
That is just what I wanted to know. This really poses a problem for those of us on the borderline between warm and cold.

Here in OK we are likely to have the "January Thaw" that brings us into the sixties or even seventies for a few days and then have a precipitous drop to freezing within a day or two. This sort of thing happens several times as the season advances, with the temperature swings less extreme.

As I see it the effect is likely to be moderated by large pots that do not warm up so suddenly as smaller ones, this reducing the root ball temperature swings. Since an insulated cold room is impossible for most we will just soldier on and see what happens.

Of course the real solution is the discovery of varieties that can survive when planted outside near a sheltering wall.
Ox

OX - I'm zone 6, and over-winter at least 150 trees of various genera in my unheated attached garage. It's ALWAYS a problem in the spring when plants over-wintered in this manner break bud weeks before their counterparts in the landscape. It happens because the soil outdoors remains cold, keeping the trees quiet, much longer than the soil in the pots on the garage floor. I just bite the bullet & do what bonsai practitioners have labeled the bonsai two-step, which is, I load them on a farm wagon and roll them out into sunlight as temps allow and return them to the garage at night and during periods of chill too low for the plants. This is a particular problem when tending plants that can't benefit from having their pots buried in the garden or beds (so they would leaf out later) because you're pushing the zone.

We almost always have a January thaw, too. I usually just keep the garage door closed. I don't have any difficulty with bud movement during periods like these. We had a thaw so warm in 08 that I was wondering if I might have to mow the lawn, but the trees still waited to start leafing out in late Mar or early Apr, just as they usually do. Think "cool as you can for as long as you can". Aside from a friend with a walk-in cooler, what more can you/we/I do?

Al

I do similar to you Al near chicago in my attached garage when weather permits in and out on nice days.
Just trying to get a early start , even when we do get some nice temps and garage temps soar they still take there time in waking up.
But in the end its all worth it i get nice fig crop.
Ox turn on the AC ; )

That was my next question - for keeping figs dormant, would it be advisable to buy a spare refrigerator, and set it to, say, 40*, and stuff all of your potted figs into it once they go dormant?

You're quite a bit removed from me as far as zonal/weather differences, so I won't pretend to know the best strategy for you, but I would think that it would simply be to bury your pots or set them on the ground on the N side of a building and mulch them heavily, making sure they don't go dry over winter.

Al

My main in-ground fig is on the north side of my house (a BT). Last two years straight, I've seen upwards of 12" dieback from freezing temps.

This year, over the last 3 weeks, we've been below freezing, sometimes single-digits F for days on end...Ground was frozen solid 6" down. Sleet, snow, etc. It hasn't been nice. I'd be pretty worried to put anything potted out in those conditions unless it was a mature tree in a 10-20gal pot.

Satellite:
You have it made in zone 8. I am on the cold edge of seven. I have my in-ground figs on the S. side of my barn and my house, cut back, covered with plastic barrels which are stuffed with dry wheat straw. My potted figs will have to live or die in the garage.

I sent a lady who lives some 35 miles S. of Atlanta a couple of figs last year. It will be interesting to see if her figs come back out this spring. I also sent some to S. Texas--Those will be seven feet high by June.
Ox

Good point, SH. I wouldn't have expected it would get that cold there. All the best .....

Al

It didn't used to get this cold here!! The last two years have been wacky. Extreme hot, extreme cold, extreme drought followed by extreme rains. It's been bizarre. But, I can't complain because we used to be zone 7b, now zone 8. They say a single half degree of warming can cause massive weather patterns and oddities like this, one decade they call it El Nino, the next global warming...

Maybe I need to move to California...the weather out there is pretty stable ;)