I mean this in a good humored way: Bend them to your will. I have seen everything from fig trees pruned like a speading oak to fig trees pruned to a bush. IMO the bush type pruning doesn't look good when they lose their leaves during their dormant stage but that is me. I'll volunteer my general rules: Cut out all suckers. Cut off all branches that go straight up or straight down. All branches that cross, pick the one you want to keep and cut off the other one. I clean out the low center branches too. I like to end up with 3-5 large limbs branching from the trunk with none in the center. No small limbs anywhere within ~3' of the ground at the trunk. Outside of ~5' diameter circle around the trunk cut all branches within 4-5' of the ground. Lot of wiggle room here. You want working access to the trunk area for everything from fertilizer to raking leaves. On the other end, I have grandchildren so now I can see someone intentionally growing fruit low to the ground for young hands. If you can't get to it, it goes. There are techniques like a bamboo pole with the end split and separated to get high fruit and ladders of course. You can leave the high fruit to the wild things but know that once they get used to feeding on your tree they will not discriminate against your lower fruit. You end up with trees shaped like portobello mushroom. All the energy that would be spent on suckers and growing high goes sideways. For me it is much about convenience over style. Rick

Michael, For the remainder if the season, water the trees when the growing mix begins to dry out. If you intend to keep the trees containerized, you will need to periodically do root work on the them. The longer the trees stay in a container, the harder the root ball gets, and that is not good for the tree. I bare-rooted a Mission tree earlier in March which had been in its container for at least three years. The root ball was so hard, when I tried to push a chopstick into it, the chopstick went in about a half an inch before it met with so much resistance it broke instead of going in any further. I had problems giving the tree enough water as it would just run down the side of the container and out of the drain holes. When I did get around to bare-rooting, it took me almost 3 hours just to get the old growing mix out. If you use a peat based growing mix, you will want to bare-root the tree more often than if you use a bark based growing mix. Peat breaks down faster than bark, so it looses it's structure and the growing mix collapses sooner. There has been a lot written in the forum about the issues surrounding growing fig trees in containers and the many different ways people have solved them. A quick search should provide you with some answers to your questions. ~james

I have 3 fig cuttings from last year, they are about 12 inches tall. They dropped their leaves in the fall and I wintered them in the garage. I watered them about once a month in the winter. I just looked at them today and noticed there were some new leave tips at a the very top, which have dried out and the stem is dried out also, Should I water and trim off the dried out stem. Also when is a good time to put the pots outside. I don't plan on planting them in the ground but want to keep in pots for awhile. Any suggestions or advice is appreciated.

If you decide to do any trimming, I would love to have some cuttings.. Let me know and I can sent the money for shipping. Appreciated.