I planted a fig tree a few years ago. Now it's just two 10' stems with a few leaves on top. One neighbour has a more mature tree which looks just like mine except with more stems. While another neighbour has a short tree with a tick stem? Are we growing different sort of fig trees or is there a way to encourage (trim) my tree to look more like a short/thick tree? Alternatively, what is the ideal sort of fig tree to grow in Vancouver that will be short and produce lots of fruit?
You can prune fig trees. If you prune it now, you won't get a breba crop, but that's probably not a problem if you plan to be there for a few more years. You could still get the better summer crop. While there are different varieties of edible fig, Ficus carica, your description is not an indication that they are not all the same. Your neighbors may have pruned, in fact the one with the short tree and thick trunk almost certainly has. Some people grow them as a loose cluster of stems, which usually means radical pruning at some point. I would probably take off a couple of feet on both branches and then encourage an uneven number of shoots between the two of them.
