FWIW: There is a rumor I read once, that Black Jack is just a sport of Black Mission. The main difference between the two is the growth of the trees, Black Jack being a more natural semidwarf, black mission eventually getting rather large as figs go. Or so I understand. My personal experience with Black Jacks and Black Missions is that the fruits look and taste exactly the same.

I would not think of growing it in ground in our location which is Zone 5. I am not saying that it is impossible but the efforts required to insulate it from extreme cold is prohibitive. Some experts in NJ try different ways of covering the plants from cold and others just take a chance in Zone 6. Some day I may try in the ground but just to see if the roots will survive (and shoot later from groun) because I am sure the wood above the ground will not survive in Zone 5 winter here. Also, if you are keeping plants in pots and take them to safety in the winter then there is no concern for the plant hardiness and your main concern is early/late ripening i.e. before the frost.

Here is my method that I posted in my city's Rose Society. So the times are suited for here. :) I have a 100% success rate with 54 potted roses. :) Carol's Method of Overwintering Potted Roses in Garage • Keep deadheading until it's time for the roses to go into the garage. I give my last dose of fertilizing around the 2nd week of September. • In October, start watering a little bit less so the roses can experience some dryness. • When the night time temperature gets to about -6C it is time to move the pots into the garage. If it’s just one or two nights of low temperatures, I usually leave them outside…but you can get a bit of blackening of the canes. • Do not cut the plant down. Leave it as it is, but remove the leaves right to the cane. Give the rose one last really good water before using a dolly to move the pots into the garage. • Cover the roses with old thick blankets, layers of old flannel sheets or old sleeping bags when the outside temperatures get to about -20C. • The roses should experience darkness. If you have windows, then cover them with. It doesn't matter if the garage door is opened and closed. • Around March, check to see if the pots have dried out. If they have, give each rose about 1/2 cup water if they’re in a big pot (55 L are what mine are and about 22” across the top). If they’re in a smaller pot, then you should probably check them earlier – maybe early January and only give them ¼ cup or less of water. Once you start watering, you should continue once every month. • As the weather starts to warm up in the spring, the blankets can be removed. • Once the temperature gets to about 5C outside on a regular basis you can move the rose outside during the day, and recover with blankets to give protection overnight, or move back into the garage for the night. Moving the roses back into the garage is preferable to covering them…but if you have too many roses to make that feasible, then covering will do. • Water well once the pots get moved outside. The water will help protect the roots from cold. • Caveat, my garage is dry walled and probably insulated. Hope that helped, Carol

The browned leaf edges do look like overwatering. Were they there when you bought it? If so, all you have to do is to continue to monitor soil moisture like you did today, and hold off on watering until the dowel is dry. Do be sure to water slowly and thoroughly when you do water. For the rootbound plants I still have in their old soil, I water once until water begins to drain from the pot, making sure to go slowly and wet the whole surface of the soil evenly. Then I come back with my fertilizer solution and water again about 15 minutes later. If the pot was very dry I usually find that the pot takes longer to drain the second time, probably because peat that had become hydrophobic was allowed to slowly moisten a little so it could absorb water again. My pots have holds around the perimeter of the bottom, so tilting after watering works great even without a wick. When I found these forums last September I was ready to repot all my plants, which were weak and rootbound in very old soil. Fortunately I was persuaded to proceed more cautiously and to improve their growing conditions instead, the idea being that it's better to wait until the solstice to repot unless a plant is, as Al says, circling the drain (and I did repot the one schefflera that was doing just that in 5:1:1, with good results). I flushed them thoroughly with room temperature R/O water; bought some 100 watt, 5000k (bright white) LEDs and CFLs, put them in cheap clamp-on fixtures, and mounted them on a shelf above the plants on a timer so they'd get some light; for rid of a spider mite infestation; started fertilizing with a weak solution of Foliage Pro every time I watered; and diligently monitored soil moisture and watered properly when needed. All of my plants responded by perking up, and after a few months they'd gained enough energy and their root systems had recovered enough that they started putting out new growth. I don't have FLFs, but my ficus benjaminas did the best (I listed a few before and after photos in Dave's recent "Then and Now" thread), and they were much improved by the time the weather allowed me to put them outside. Here's where things went sideways, because some nagging health issues prevented me from actually reporting this season. I was really upset when I realized it just was not going to happen, but frankly none of my plants are in better shape than they've ever been, and I've really fallen back in love with the ficuses, which love their half-day of bright high altitudes sunlight so much that they've filled every branch with shiny healthy leaves. I'm sure they'd be even happier with pruned roots in gritty mix (I'll use a modified ratio to compensate for the desert conditions), but I've gotten good enough at compensating for it that they'll keep looking good for another winter, and now that I already have my ingredients and a lot of prepared mix I'll be able to jump into it next June whenever I have a little energy to spare. Al says that if you have two plants in the same condition, repot one in the fall, and repot the other one on Father's Day 2018, the second one will have more growth next fall than the one you repotted now. Some folks will say just go ahead and repot anytime, but your plant looks great despite having a couple of slightly damaged leaves, and they'll respond much better to repotting if you care for them properly and allow them to accumulate the energy they'll need to get through it smoothly. BTW, Cassandra's description of repotting is spot on if you're not going to prune roots. If I had your plant I'd wait until the plant's energy production was at its highest to make sure it will bounce back with some vigor, but Cassandra's method sounds like it would work great. Lenore