By Jake47
west midlands,
United Kingdom 
Hi hope you can advise me .i Had a 5 foot fig against the back wall of the house it was about 4 years old and grew from a small 6 inch plant.I have had to transplant it yesterday ( i realise it would have been better to wait til its dormant) ,it sort of naturally into 4 plants with roots as i lifted it.So i have replanted it in the garden by my dividing hedge.I did prune it before digging up but need to know if i need to prune harder to aide root growth or leave it in leaf as shown in my picture.can you advise thanks.
25 Jul, 2016
Answers
Remove a third to half of the top growth. Its usual to do this when transplanting larger plants so that the plant is able to concentrate on putting out new water seeking roots rather than trying to support lots of topgrowth. Keep well watered until winter arrives.
25 Jul, 2016
5 feet isn't large at all for a fig. Trimming 1/3 would add more trauma to a tree trying to recover from transplant shock. I would just leave it until it comes out of transplant shock. You will know this when the leaves are firm. This should only take a week or two. The branches touching the the ground are liable to pick up pathogens so I would only trim those.
25 Jul, 2016
Pruning heavily is a trade off. Removing leaves removes energy from the roots. On the other hand, if you don't remove a percentage of the leaves, they will keep evaporating water faster than the roots can take it up, and may dry the plant to death.
Obviously a fair amount of drying has already occurred, so it is now an emergency situation, and I would cut off enough twigs to remove about a third of the leaves that I am seeing. Thinning cuts are better this time of year, since they stimulate less new growth, and set the hardening off process back less.
Normally, I would have cut off about 1/5 to 1/4 of the foliage just before digging it up, maybe more just after with unexpected root damage, such as you had.
25 Jul, 2016
Good points Tug. Another point I meant was that the trees should be kept well watered/fed continuously.
25 Jul, 2016
Hi all well many thanks for your advise its really helpful to get a helping hand every now and again.
I should have said about 2 weeks before i dug it up i pruned some of the sideshoots ,i have now trimmed some of the branches touching the ground and thinned out a little of the twigs,i am also watering well and have fed with a tomato feed ,hopefully this will help it along ,fingers crossed it will pick up.
Thanks again.:)
26 Jul, 2016
I'm sure they will be fine in about 2 weeks.
26 Jul, 2016
I would cut off any branches touching the ground as evident in the 3rd photo. Otherwise, I would leave it alone until it comes out of transplant shock.
25 Jul, 2016