Many years ago, when I first became interested in gardening, I planted a fig tree. That wouldn’t be notable, except I was living in Madison, Wisconsin, where winters regularly sent the mercury plummeting to minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a lot to learn about figs—and gardening in general—but I did have the wherewithal to plant that tree in a large flowerpot indoors.
In the decades that followed, I’ve learned a lot about gardening and growing figs “out in the field” as a fruit researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Cornell University.
I never did get fruit from that first fig tree, but thanks to what I’ve learned from my research and work, I still grow them here in the slightly less frigid winters of the Hudson Valley of New York, and I’m able to harvest plenty of fresh figs.
Figs in the Cold
Aren’t figs tropical plants? Yes, figs do thrive in and are native to warm winter climates, specifically the arid, sunny climates of western Asia. But they’re subtropical plants, so they can tolerate winter temperatures as low as 10 to 20 degrees.
Besides having the ability to survive cold, but not frigid, winters on their own, fig plants have a
