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Gardening in Oz

Fig Tree

20 years ago

A lovely woman I met at a gardening club who has been an avid gardener for many many years gave me a small fig tree to plant on a bank in my garden. A couple of people have since told me that I could have problems with invasive roots from it. Where I planted it , it is at least 10 metres from the house and lower than the house down a bank. About 8 metres from our concrete inground pool.

Any advice about problems I could face would be gratefully received. I dont know what variety of fig it is.

Shelley

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Comments (3)

sunshine_qld
20 years ago
Shelly The only places I would plant figs are in pots or in the middle of a paddock. They make great shade trees but the roots are very invasive.
meggs
20 years ago
Sorry Shelley, my adice would be to take it out immediately. You will have problems in not so far away future. I gave a friend a little tree in a pot with a note NEVER TO PUT IT IN THE GRADEN. However she did not listen, she planted it about 15 m away from the house, it grew beautifully and after 3 years blocked all her drains. It came out but the cost....!!!! We have a 15m fig in the neighbourhood, it cracks the road and the house on the other side of the road, yes, it took 20 years to do it but ... :-(((.
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I have a well established fig tree that produced good fruit for 20 years. The last two years has yielded few if any figs. This year the tree has just one fig developing. The plant is otherwise very healthy. The trunk at base is about 2 inches in diameter. Is this plant a good candidate to be used as root stock for grafting new fig scions? Or will whatever has caused the drop off in fruit production affect the production of the new grafts?
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shelleyvw
Original Author
20 years ago
Thanks Sunshine and Meggs. You both have convinced me and I have put it back in a pot and that is where it will stay. They are beautiful trees but I dont need the hassle with the roots.

Shelley

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