‘Chicago Hardy’s' first crop of figs ripening called the breba crop.
How to wrap your hardy fig for winter is highlighted in this informative video. However, any fig, whether hardy or not, can be wrapped and wintered over in the garden. This is very exciting that you can take any fig, hardy or tropical and winter it over with the right wrapping techniques.
At Logee’s, we continually try different techniques to winter over plants in New England. The ‘Chicago Hardy’ Fig in the video is three years old. The first two years, we let the fig die back to the ground with only leaves for mulch. It survived the New England winter but then each spring it had to sprout out and grow from the ground up.
This third year, we wrapped the Fig as seen in the video so the next Spring we will get a Breba crop of figs, which is the first crop of figs ripening in the summer and then we will get a second crop of figs in the fall. Take a look and see what you think.
A final comment on the fig video. We unwrapped the fig this past spring but we were shocked that the fig did not survive. What happened? It wasn’t the winter weather that killed the fig. It was the New England rodents (mice) that got inside the fig and made their home. The mice girdled the stems and the fig was dead by the time we unwrapped it. So, if you are going to use this technique and you live in the country, please think about using mice bait to prevent the girdling of the stems.