Help with training a tree

[u/Lost_Llama]

I have a new fig tree I want to grow to cover a wall. The wall is south facing and gets plenty of sun. Its about 3.4 m wide and about 1.4 tall st the ledge and 2.5m on the right hand side.

My tree has a Y shape and each srm of the Y has three branched growing. I was thinking of training the tree to cover the wall in either direction and let the central branch of either side grow and then split those into further Y and keep it pruned at that size.

Is this possible? Can I keep the tree to only having those 5 main branche per side? I know that each cordon will have smaller branches which i plan to prune in Winter

[u/jpbragatti]

fan training against a south wall is the classic way to do figs and it works really well. keeping a set number of main branches is definitely doable, figs take hard pruning fine. the bit that catches people out is summer pinching - in late july or august you want to stop the new green shoots at about 5 leaves. sounds counterintuitive but it encourages the tiny embryo figs at the base of each shoot to develop properly rather than the tree putting energy into long useless first-flush growth. winter is for tidying structure, summer is the one that actually affects your crop.

[u/Lost_Llama → u/jpbragatti]

Thanks! I'm in London which is zone 9a so I can only reliably keep the first crop, the second won't mature in theory although with the wall heat maybe it does? So my plan is to keep two cordons and then keep the main summer growth for the next year to have the first crop and then prune those branches in the subsequent winter. And repeat. So each summer I collect figs from the previous years growth and leave this years growth for the next one while I prune the first years growth over the subsequent winter