Brown Turkey Fig Tree Freeze Damage

April 30, 2016 2:42 PM

How can I rehabilitate a brown turkey fig tree with freeze damage?

We have a potted brown turkey fig that normally goes in and out of our garage during shoulder season when the nights can get below freezing. The other night, mistakes were made. Despite the weather report saying temperatures would be in the upper 30s, we very clearly got a freeze.

Now the leaves on the tree are shriveling up and some have fallen off. One of the branches is also leaking a little sap where the leaves have fallen.

Is there any way to fix this and help the tree recover, other than keeping it indoors for a while?

posted by fremen to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

For what it's worth, where I live people grow them outside, even though we get frosts in winter. They drop all their leaves, and recover in spring. Which suggests to me that warmth and time will fix it, as long as it isn't actually dead.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:47 PM on April 30, 2016

I've had a fig die back to the ground, and come back the next year, though mine was in the ground.
posted by gregr at 7:51 PM on April 30, 2016

When that has happened to our fig tree, we wait and see how much of the tree dies, and cut it back (sometimes aggressively) to leave only living branches. It seems to bounce back pretty quickly.
posted by waldo at 7:52 AM on May 1, 2016