To protect the figs during the winter, I bent them over and mounded topsoil over them. It didn't work very well, though: all of them died down to the ground except for the Hardy Chicago, which had about 18" of trunk survive. I left a couple of Dwarf Orinoco bananas out to see what would happen, and they died all the way down to the corm, so they didn't even send out pups in the spring.
Thankfully, all of the figs have grown back. The Hardy Chicago, Marseilles Black (MBVS), and Celeste are all carrying figlets that are on pace to start ripening in mid-September, and a couple of new additions (LSU Tiger and Vista, which is an especially vigorous strain of Violette de Bordeaux) are loaded with figs, too. Bananas are a lost cause out there, so we're growing sweet corn in that spot instead. Here's what the area looks like now, with the season's last planting of corn currently around 4" in height:
(the smaller/paler figs were just planted last week)
