marcantonio, My guess is the cap (clear blue plastic bag) created a high humidity situation which created the rot. All other factors being equal, if you found success with a non-transparent material (black plastic bag) and had a problem with a transparent bag, that light change alone may have been enough to create the current problem. Either way conventional wisdom is if you cap your wrapped tree it needs to be vented. I am still learning but I don't cap my wrapped figs and I stick with natural materials (leaves) to insulate my plants. I have wrapped my trees for 3 winters and haven't had any die back, mold or field mice issues. As Vasile indicated a little die back on the tips can be beneficial so I think you are in good shape. Good Luck! Vinnie

Foolishpleasure, root pruning will solve the problem. I've got 2 brown turkey trees in containers. Like yours both are 3 years old. The first year, I left them both in their same and no fruit. The second year, I repotted them both in 3 gallon containers and just watered them all year. They grew fast and fruited but the fruit just fell from the tree over the summer. So, this year I removed it from its container and it was very badly root bound. I root pruned it dipped the roots in some liquid root horemone and repotted in a larger container. Its been 2 weeks and the trees look healthy and growing strong. So, I recommend root pruning it and repotting and see what happens. Good luck! cheers, Dennis

Sorry for the late reporting. The July 4th holiday schedule in my house was quite crazy. I'm happy to report that my fig tree started to grow again! It was absent for the last 3 months. I have attached a picture showing new buds on all the tips. Terry, thanks for the tip of using sun shade. I actually used this trick when planting a young guava tree, which worked really well. However, the fig tree is facing a canyon, where the wind is very strong. I haven't been able to get the canopy staying in place, but have some other idea to try this weekend. As the old leaves continue to curl and drop, I think I have to try this trick with the watering change. I agree with you on the compost vs. chemical fertilizer. It's quite clear to me now that I'm guilty of over-fertilizing the fig tree, so I stopped doing it except some coffee grounds outside of drip line to amend the soil. BTW, my soil is ph7, very uniform, so not sure if I should use agricultural lime. HD, thanks a lot again for the great tip of coffee grounds. That's a lot of information on coffee grounds from your link! I'm not a coffee drinker, so instead of getting coffee grounds from Starbucks, I've been getting about 1/2 lb daily from my office for more than a week. I actually have a question following your mulching tip. The fig is sitting close to an edge of a slope. I did pull up ground cover and extended the mulch area away from slope, but kind of debating if I should do the same toward slope since ground cover is there to prevent soil erosion from rain. The ground cover seems improved the soil quite a bit. For the places without ground cover, the soil was really dry and barren, while the soil under ground cover were moist and rich. I've found fig roots as far as 2.5-3 feet away from trunk. Do you think I should replace more ground cover with mulch? One thing I don't know is if ground cover will compete with fig on water and nutrients. However, in places where ground cover and fig roots co-exist, the soil is better than those with fig roots alone. I've been using dripping from buckets to better water the tree, which seems to be working well. I also plan to install automatic dripping converting my sprinklers. The challenge I am not able to solve yet is ground cover and fruit trees need to be on two different schedules, but I have only one zone covering that space. Here is a link I found very informative to calculate how much water fruit trees need, which I miscalculated really badly before. I realized that I was giving my fig less than half of what it needs! http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/The_Big_Picture/Irrigation/ Bud, your tree is in a much better shape, as it grows really well. My tree after 3 years is less than 5 feet tall. However, I wonder if both of us are guilty of over-fertilizing the tree. From my reading, too much nitrogen during its fruiting time will lead to premature dropping of fruits. Does it apply to your case?

do you know what cultivar it is? I don't see why you couldn't plant right now inground. but if you're not comfortable with that, then in early spring would be fine for sure. Would be nice to know what cultivar it is as some of those little trees turn out to be huge and placement becomes an issue. I grow some in pots because on the first try they did not do well inground and I also grow a couple of cultivars inground. One is a monster (Celeste) another, not so much, Kadota, which is still small and young. Don't know if that is its nature or if placement wasn't best. Just know that research goes a long way towards happy planting AND happy plant.