Lovely New Fig

My new fig tree is doing well.  It originally came with figs already on it.  A couple of them have fallen off but for the most part the figs have hung on.

To plant it I of course dug a hole.  I've done work with landscapers so I have a good idea of how big.  Typically you want a hole at least twice as big as the pot it came in.  I dug out a little more than that because our soil is clay.  If you don't know anything about clay, it doesn't do well with water and drainage.  It's also hard to dig in.  So, the dirt (mostly clay) I dug out, I mixed with a bag of potting soil.  In the end it was still a bit hard since clay will dominate a mixture down to around 20 percent.

Then I put it back in the hole until it was about deep enough for the plant with the soil ball to sit a little above the previous ground elevation.  Then I back filled the rest of the dirt mixture on top making a mound and watered it for nearly an hour, saturating the dirt so it would settle in.

I have since added even more dirt from an old pot to further give it nutrients and ability to absorb water and retain it.  I water it daily dissolving the bits of clay that I wasn't patient enough to mix in.  The resulting water slurry I'm sure it filling in the gaps that remained in the hole.

After visiting some friends a little south of us we got some mint that I planted on top of the dirt around the fig tree.  At first it was still wilting but now there are new leaves popping in on some of the stems.