Hi folks,

A friend's household (in SoCal zone 9b/sunset zone 18) has a 3 year old volunteer fig tree. It's about 10 feet tall, with a very nice upright structure they'd like to preserve, and has just produced its first ripe figs.

As you might expect from a volunteer, the figs are terrible. They are quite large, resembling brown turkey figs in appearance and flavor (not good ones - the watery, flavorless ones you find in the grocery at times). They are sweet (as sweet as the grocery store brown turkey figs, anyway), but contain large branching structures full of nasty-tasting bitter pollen. I regret that I didn't take a photo, but they are very distinct from the female parts of the synconium.

We're discussing the possibility of grafting this tree (not now - next year), and they say they would prefer to retain the upright shape and single trunk. I know people seem to prefer to propagate figs by rooting cuttings, but it would seem a shame to waste a 3 year old root system.

I'm pretty new to grafting and have never grafted a mature tree before (so please forgive me if I get some terminology wrong). Do we have options that would allow us to preserve the tree's overall shape? Do we really need to chop the trunk off down low, or could we just cut off and graft all the scaffold branches? I know that if we try to go the latter route, we'll have a devil of a time with suckering, but if they prefer being really vigilant about removing suckers over risking loss of the structure they like, would this be an option for them? Would it create problems in terms of graft acceptance?

I would appreciate any sage advice, as would my friend's household, who are understandably disappointed after watching the tree for two summers and netting it this year, and would love to be able to make lemonade (...fig-ade?) of this situation.