Pruning Fig Trees

You’ll be happy to know that fig trees need very little pruning!

NOTE: This is part 6 in a series of 10 articles. For a complete background on how to grow fig trees, we recommend starting from the beginning.

Pruning Tips

Dormant pruning in late winter with minimal pinching and light pruning in growing season for shape and size control. For best fruit quality, a tree-form, single trunk should be established and maintained to provide ample sun exposure and air flow. By nature, a fig grows in a multi-stem bush form. To maintain a tree-form, establish a single trunk, remove suckers at the base, cut out crossing branches, cut off secondary branches with less than 45-degree angles from main trunk that are not strong enough to sustain fruit, cut out dead, diseased or damaged wood and use open center pruning method, like a peach tree, to encourage wide and full growth.

If left unpruned, the fig will return to its natural bush shape. We provide a single trunk, tree-form for the best fruit production and recommend maintaining the tree-form with proper pruning.

Maintenance Pruning

  • Weak, diseased or dead limbs should be removed each dormant season.
  • Thin the blooms on older fig trees (which grow very little each year) to increase fruit size and to stimulate about a foot of growth per year.

In This Series

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Care & Maintenance

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