Fig - Limb Blight

Sounds awful doesn't it?  Well I think our fig got it as I watched two of the stems go blackish and withered before deciding to cut them off.  I wasn't sure what it was for ages but I looked it up on the Texas Plant Disease Handbook and what they describe as limb blight sounds like what we've got.  It says this..."The fungus enters at a spot along the main or secondary limbs, and all leaves die beyond that point. The fungus enters at a dead fruiting spore or at some other injured spot. All dead twigs and limbs should be removed by pruning so that they will not serve as infection sites."

On the left you can see the limb of the fig going black at the top (this was in the start of April just as it was waking up after winter).  It's in close up on the right and you can see that the bud at the top never developed it just stayed a pasty shade of greeny brown. 

You can see the general shape of our little fig below with its one healthy branch, on the right, and two branches that are doing very little in the way of growing, on the left.  These two branches are the oldest ones so that may have something to do with why they have become infected.  One of the branches had started to grow some lovely new leaves and a little fig. But unfortunately it took a sudden turn for the worse and just started to die.  At this stage I decided that action needed to be taken and I cut the whole branch off.  I found it quite hard to actually cut the whole thing off (psychologically) but I knew it had to be done.  The fungus should not be allowed to spread to the other branch which has 8 lovely figs on it.  Also I read that if  you prune a fig branch low to the ground that it encourages growth from the base of the plant.  This means you get a multi stemmed bush eventually which is one good way of maintaining a fig in a containers.  In other words, lots of stems grow up from the ground rather that just one or two.  We'll see if this actually happens.  It's a little hard to see where I cut the branch in the photo below but you'll get the idea. I didn't have the heart to cut it right to the ground so I left about 4 inches intact. 

At the moment the fig looks relatively healthy but overall it seems like a complete mystery to me.  I'm still confused about the fruiting, but over the next few years I will just have to watch it carefully and try and get my head around it.  If anyone out there has any experience of growing figs please pass on any tips that you have.  For now I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that the eight remaining figs don't drop off.  They did last year :(

 

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