How to Prune a Fig: Breba Crop, Main Crop and What Not to Cut

Two crops, two kinds of wood

A fig carries the breba crop and the main crop, and the difference between them is the whole of fig pruning. The breba crop forms in late summer as tiny green beads in the leaf axils of the current year's shoots, sits on the bare wood all winter looking like a dormant bud, and swells in spring to ripen in early summer. The main crop forms on shoots that grow the same spring, appearing in the axils behind each new leaf, and ripens from late summer into autumn.

So the breba crop is already on the tree before winter, riding on last year's wood. The main crop does not exist yet in winter and is entirely produced by growth that has not happened. That is why winter pruning is a choice between them: everything you cut off in winter is breba, and hard cutting drives the vigorous new growth that carries main crop.

Breba figs are usually larger, softer and less intensely sweet than the main crop. In cool climates they are often the only crop that ripens at all, so they are worth protecting even though they are the lesser fruit.

Decide which crop you are pruning for

Before you pick up the pruners, answer one question: does your main crop actually ripen? Count back over the last two or three seasons. If you were picking ripe figs freely from late summer to the first frost, the main crop is your crop and you can prune fairly hard in winter, accepting the loss of the brebas. If autumn always ends with a tree full of hard green marbles, the breba crop is the one paying you, and heavy winter pruning is exactly the wrong thing to do.

In cool summer climates and short seasons, the practical answer is almost always: protect the brebas, prune lightly, and treat the main crop as a bonus in a hot year. In long, hot seasons the reverse is true, and the tree can be cut back hard every winter to keep it small and productive.

Winter pruning: structure, not shortening

In a cool climate, winter pruning on a fig should be an hour of removal and almost no shortening. You are opening the tree so light and air reach the middle, and taking out anything that will never carry decent fruit.

1. Prune while fully dormant Wait until the leaves are long gone and the coldest part of winter has passed. Fig wood bleeds a milky latex when cut in growth, and cuts made in autumn often die back through the winter.
2. Take out the four D's first Dead, damaged, diseased and crossing wood. This alone usually accounts for most of what needs to go, and it costs you no fruit because none of it would have carried any.
3. Remove suckers from the base Figs throw vigorous suckers from ground level. Pull or cut them flush at the point they emerge, below soil level if you can reach. Left alone they take a huge share of the tree's vigor and fruit poorly.
4. Thin crowded branches out whole Where two branches compete, remove one of them completely back to its origin rather than shortening both. Shortening produces two new shoots per cut and the crowding gets worse each year.
5. Leave one-year wood alone Look for the smooth, pale shoots that grew last summer with small hard green beads at the leaf scars. Those beads are the early crop. Do not shorten these shoots unless they are genuinely in the way.

In climates where winter kills fig wood outright, do nothing in winter. Wait until buds break in spring so you can see exactly what survived, then cut back to live wood. Cutting in late autumn simply invites more dieback.

Summer pinching: the one cut that ripens the main crop

Pinching out the growing tip of each new shoot in early summer, once it carries about five or six leaves, is the most effective thing you can do for the main crop. Removing the tip stops extension growth and pushes the tree's resources into the figs already sitting in the axils below. In practice it advances ripening by one to three weeks and improves the size and sugar of the fruit.

It also works with the root restriction rather than against it. A pinched shoot does not run away, so the tree stays within the size the roots can supply, and next year's fruiting wood is short-jointed and easy to reach.

1. Count five or six leaves From the base of the current season's shoot, count the leaves. Once there are five to six, take out the soft growing tip with finger and thumb.
2. Do it in one pass in early summer Go over the whole tree at once, in the first half of summer. Pinch later than midsummer and there is not enough season left for the fruit below to benefit.
3. Wear gloves or long sleeves Fig latex irritates skin badly, and in sunlight it can cause a serious burn-like reaction. Wash any sap off promptly and avoid pruning in strong sun with bare arms.
4. Leave the tip on any shoot you need for structure If a shoot is filling a gap in the framework or extending a fan, let it run. You can pinch it next year once it has covered the space.
5. Do not re-pinch the regrowth A pinched shoot often pushes a side shoot late in summer. Leave it. Cutting again this late produces soft growth that will not harden before winter.

What never to cut

There is a short list of cuts that cost a whole season, and they are all easy to make by accident because dormant fig wood gives so few clues about what it is carrying.

A pea-sized green bead sitting tight against dormant wood is a breba fig. A dormant leaf bud is pointed, dry and brown. If you cannot tell them apart, leave the shoot and look again once the buds start to move in spring.

Keeping a record of what you cut

Fig pruning is a two-year feedback loop, which is exactly the kind of thing memory handles badly. Each winter, note how hard you pruned each tree, then note the following summer when the first breba ripened and roughly how many main crop figs you actually picked ripe. After two seasons of that you can stop guessing and prune to your own numbers instead of to general advice.

The most useful single measurement is the length of the longest shoot you remove. If it has gone above three feet (90 cm), the tree is too vigorous and the roots have probably escaped their restriction; if it is under eight inches (20 cm), the tree is starved or pot bound and needs feeding or repotting rather than pruning.