Alright fig lovers this is Ross the fig boss. Today's video we're going to talk about a common question that I get which is can I cut the top of my fig tree off and I think that usually means hey I really want to burn my fig tree but I'm not sure if it's going to respond well and I think a lot of people will probably struggle with having a too large of the fig tree it's just too big for them it's either too wide it's taking up too much space it's growing into their pathways it's growing into a fence or a wall or they have a problem where the tree is too tall and they need a ladder to harvest their fruits and so for a lot of us we don't want to be on ladders we don't want to be dealing with that we also want to have a tree that's smaller so that we can net it if we need to smaller trees are easier to net it's easier to protect typically in general in most cases for us growing fruit trees in a backyard setting smaller is usually better so what I'm going to offer you guys is some suggestions here about actually topping the tree because we can't actually burn the heck out of our fig trees we can burn them a lot but we're not really going to see good success they're going to respond well in fact you could have the winter time kill the entire top of your tree and the following year will respond by growing 10 to 15 feet so it's not like burning is a bad idea or let's say the end of the world for your fig tree however definitely burning a lot is going to make your fig tree grow even more so a lot of us don't want to be doing that whether it's an inground fig tree or a potted fig tree we're going to look at two different scenarios here first for the pot the inground figs like you see here this is a rendez-borded oak fig tree I have and if I wanted to control the size of this which you could see the branches up here are definitely the largest branches on the tree the best thing I would do is I would come in here all the way to the base where the soil line is find the trunk of that branch and cut that off and I'll do this probably once remove one or two of those big branches every year every other year that way the tree is constantly being recycled because what's going to happen is once I remove this whole system of branch back here a new branch is going to come up and take this place and grow into that light and so if I just keep doing that keep recycling essentially where I remove the bigger branches the little ones come up and take their space I'm eventually going to have a tree that's size controlled but if I were to come in here and actually top the tree and take off a lot of growth up top it's not a good idea people have really bad experiences of the mention because what's going to happen is the hormones in the trees are going to change and the hormones are going to favor growth and not favor-fruiting and what's going to happen is the tree like I said could grow 10 to 15 feet in one season and so instead of you actually making your tree smaller you made it grow bigger I know that seems counterintuitive but that's what happens to our fig trees and other plants when we burn them in the winter time heavily so if we're going to be doing burning I would recommend guys in general doing a thinning cut rather than a heading cut so don't head back the branches don't top the branches take out the entire system of branches at the lowest point possible that way we're thinning out the growth and encouraging our trees remaining in that hormonal balance but we're also encouraging this recycling process to happen now these two trees next to me are potatries I have them in three gallon sized pots it's by the way a really great size for container fig trees and I would argue that a lot of you guys might be wondering well if I can top can I top the my fig trees that are growing in containers and the answer is yes and these two trees are actually did this to during the growing season actually only about a month a month and a half ago where I took the top off the highest growth point and I broke it off with my thumb it's called pinching it's called topping it's called nipping it's called summer purning we can even use our purring shears by doing that we remove the apical bud which again changes that dominance in our fig trees and changes the hormones in our fig trees and allows them to then fruit encourages them to fruit and also encourages them to start branching out and these branches will always try to form after after we remove the apical bud because the trees are always looking for the hormones are telling them to always look for the highest point to grow to the highest it can so that it can get the most sunlight it can sunlight's given the tree energy so why wouldn't it have that hormone within it so that's exactly what happened here as I taught it and now the tree has formed about four scaffolds on this one and this one here is formed three scaffolds which is great for the permanent structure and training our fig trees that are in containers while they're young now some people may have just a fig tree that grows as a single stem width you didn't get the memo you didn't top it during the growing season to encourage this branching to form and so now you may have a tree that's a single stem width that's quite tall in a container it could might even be six feet tall in that first growing season figs grow very quickly guys so if that's the case you can definitely top your fig tree and I would recommend it because if you have a six foot tall fig tree it's then going to form its scaffolds the next growing season at six feet tall so you're gonna have a very tall fig tree that's gonna be very susceptible from the wind blowing it over knocking it over and you're gonna have all these problems so the best thing to do is actually if you have that six feet tall fig tree at the beginning of the next growing season or enduring dormancy bring it back and bring it back to about three or four feet you can even go lower if you want that'll induce the scaffolding like you see here on these trees at a lower height we have a lower tree and therefore we won't really ever have a problem rolling these fig trees and containers and having to worry about size control here's the main trunk and then here's the scaffolds that are formed we got one two three and this is just exactly what we want that beautiful structure we're looking for this is basically training fig trees one on one even though we're talking about can we actually top cut the top off of our fig trees thank you guys here for watching this one please hit that subscribe button for me hit that like button and check out my blog figboss.com it's an incredible resource for anything related to figs we'll see you guys for the next video take care