As a livestock and natural resources advisor, I don't expect to get questions about fruit trees such as figs. As it turns out, I recently needed to know just enough about figs to provide information on how to kill them - a west Fresno County landowner contacted me to ask how he could get rid of some fig trees that were threatening his belowground water pipelines.

Before writing this post, I did my due diligence and confirmed that no one has already discussed fig trees as the target of weed control on this blog. The only mentions of fig trees in the UC Weed Science blog history are a listing of approved herbicides to control weeds in California subtropical crops as of 2 years ago¹ and a mention that fig was one of...