Here's a service that I'd be willing to pay for - having someone else root my figs for me. I've had so many cuttings dry out, mold out get chewed up by tiny larvae/pests or simply sit and seemingly do nothing for months that I'm about willing to pay someone to successfully to root my figs for me.
I've had like three out of maybe 30 cuttings to thrive after potting up or even get to the potting stage.
It's been really challenging rooting indoors. Some of my cuttings love the high humidity but as soon as I potted them they stopped progress and went from green to brown in the buds.
Wah...wah...wah...
If I wasn't such a fig fan I'd throw in the towel. But no that won't do... How can I give up? They bring such joy when they grow and I love tending them.

I'm hurting over my Ronde De Bordeaux, my St. Rita, my Maltese Falcon and my Hollier, Celeste and some cuttings from Turkey and China. Hurting I tell you. They all were looking good while in the long strand spgahnum but went south after potting up. I painfully lost precious roots in the sphagnum tangled web I've tried to give them more then less humidity once out of the moss but to no avail. Now back to the drawing board...
Next time I'll give a try to using all perlite for my cuttings and wait longer before moving them. Uh the pain. I don't know if any cuttings that went brown will pull through. some top parts are drying but the lower parts of some seem somewhat viable-not dried out or maybe its just false hope. So I wring my hands and am hoping for miracles and am trying to scavenge the crumbs of my dashed dreams
Thanks for listening.

Sorry to hear that!  I will send you a PM.

I feel your pain!  I can't bear to look at the list of figs I had rooted and thriving in their plastic cups with humidity domes.  The list was long and I lost many really good varieties to fungus gnats.

Sad days indeed.

Suzi

I took 51 cuttings off of a tree in October, as of today I have 9 plants thriving in clear starbucks cups developing roots and doing quite well, that's about a 19% success rate so it can be difficult.  I had success rooting in green moss in a plastic container and then transferring them to 12 oz starbucks cups with 50/50 perlite vermiculite mix.  I took them and put them in a 16 gallon tuperware container and they have had success.  

Just by the numbers again:
51 original cuttings
11 successfully rooted and made it to the tuperware
2 failed
9 are still growing well

https://twitter.com/PopouDomFigs you can see the progress over time on here

  

I'll do it. 

If you want to keep trying look here at the page linked then the new bag method linked at the top.  The sphagnum moss can act as a sponge.  It does fine in the bag because you don't water it.  Once you put it in the pot it holds water around the roots and they die.  The same thing happens with those root riot plugs.  You don't have that problem with perlite.  Then, when you pot them up you need to do it in a fast draining mix like the 5-1-1 or gritty mix, both by Al Tapla.  Or you can use pro-mix HP.  What soil mix are you potting up to?  If you have viable cuttings I'd rinse the soil away, cut off any black or dark brown, skinny, dead roots, anything that smells bad and pot it up again in in one of the mixes mentioned above.

Use the plastic starbucks cups, you can see the root growth and track its progress
 

Thank you all for your support and suggestions. 

I'm going to rinse them off and cut away anything that does not look alive. 
I will try the moistened perlite in a cup method and provide humidity and warmth from another container.
I have pro mix hp I can mix that with some perlite to make it more fast draining once/if/whenever my stragglings recover and require repotting.
Thanks for your shoulders and for sharing your wisdom with me. You make this part of the world a better place and that's a good start. 

If I'd had that much trouble when I started last year, I'd probably not still be here.. lol..  I had about 95% rooting success.  I believe those that didn't root were just weak cuttings.  Of those moved to cups/humidity bin, all did wonderful until it was time to harden them off.  My humidity bin was kept at a very high humidity (probably near 99%) and I transitioned too fast.  But still have close to 65% overall success rate.  I've had quite a bit of success this year completely skipping the humidity bin.

The biggest killer at the cup stage is too much water.  They really really don't need much!  The amount of water they "drink" seems (to me) to be heavily related to how many and how big the leaves are.   A cutting with no leaves will hardly drink any water.  Once there are a few decent sized leaves, you'll notice it dries the media out quicker.

Once you put it in a cup, before watering it, get a feel for it's weight.  Or actually weigh it.  my 16oz cups with cutting and perlite/vermiculite usually weighed about 5 to 6 oz.  After watering (probably too much), they weight about 9 oz.  And I'd used the scale for a while to determine when/how much to water.

If using a humidity bin, harden them off sloooowwwwlllyyyyy..  I've found some cultivars do better than others with reducing humidity.  Peter's Honey didn't really care what the humidity was.  I was able to take them out from 90% humidity directly outside to about 50% humidity. No problem.  LSU Tiger and Texas Blue Giant on the other had were very difficult to harden off.  Only 1 of my 4 LSU Tigers and none of my 4 Texas Blue Giants survived.

I have never had an issue with planting cuttings with remaining peat moss on the roots. Maybe because I don't transfer to cups until there have many healthy long roots. After I transfer to cups I will keep a sealed bag over them for a few weeks and then I will slowly acclimate them.works well for me. I do still lose cuttings though.

the other option is to keep cuttings in the frig until just before spring, then start them in a outdoor bed with a simple cardboard box and plastic greenhouse over them. That will still give you a one month jump on the season, but with a higher success rate.  

What do you all think about using perlite in a ziplock bag? Would I have more chances of mold using the bag than if I used a clear plastic shoe box filled less than halfway up with perlite?
I'm short on space and still trying to keep things "simple". 

I didn't have much luck with pure perlite last year.  I still like the long fiber sp moss.

hey tater, 

always start with basic and learn the rooting step by step. you can jump around with latest methods out there, but that's not going to get you results when you can't see what's going on and adjust things as needed. 

you want to make sure that cuttings have at least 1/4" roots before moving to the cups. that means, you can use shoebox, or ziploc baggie to initiate the process. the whole idea is to monitor what's going on and adjust to the need of the cuttings. once you get used to the whole process, things will just become routine. 

put the cuttings in 1 gal freezer ziploc with well squeezed out paper towel wrapped around them, i like viva, and place it in a location that has more or less steady temp of 75-80. in 2-4 weeks, you will see the roots. you can use s. moss if you don't like paper towel, or can do jon's improved baggie with soil mix. air them out once a day or 2 days. 

once it has root, carefully move the cuttings to a cup with 50/50 perlite/seedling soil. make sure to pre-wet it, but just like the paper towel, make it just moist enough to provide needed water to the cutting. if it's wet, it will rot the cutting since water has no where to go. 

same as before, cup goes into humidity bin like your set up, but at a location where there is some sun light and constant temp of 75-80. 

once the roots have reached the cup and you can clearly see the roots, it's time to consider moving them to 1 gal container. more roots you see, better your chance of that cutting turning into a tree. 

in every stage, you have to learn how much water is good for the setting, and never more than it's needed, unless you are using some sort of system to drain the excess water. check regularly to prevent mold and to air out the cuttings. 

faster you move from stage to stage, better chance of avoiding mold and rot issue. spring rooting is the best idea for the people doing this for first time. once the outside night temp is above 50, 1 gal can be left outside. 

Is a little bleach toxic to cuttings? I'm wondering if long strand sphagnum peat moss soaked in a little bleach water solution would be less prone to mold and not too toxic to cuttings as they begin grow roots. I may try it on some less fragile cuttings to see what happens.

bleach won't help. the reason why the cutting is failing is more than likely due to too much water. even if you add bleach, the water is not going anywhere. the idea is to provide just enough water so it won't drawn the cuttin and provide air. moist soil mix without standing water is what you are looking for.

Read the thread on cinnamon.  Better than bleach and does the trick!  Plus, makes whatever drawer you have your cuttings resting in, smell good!!  I think the thread is titled "has anyone tried this?"

Hello Potatochips101,
I agree with Pete (Bullet08), but I have a few questions..
What was your step by step rooting procedure?
What was the rooting temperatures?
How long were the cuttings kept in the "rooting stage"?
Thanks.

There is not enough information about your initial rooting procedures. Even if you start another method, the same problems may occur again.

Pete, 
I'll try to keep it short. 
I'm not exactly sure of the temp of my cuttings. The room that I had the cuttings in was around 65 degrees at night and maybe 70 in the day. 

I kept all of the cuttings on a plant heat mat night and day until I saw that some of them were beginning to grow mold. 

On my more important cuttings I used moist, long strand peat moss sprinkled with cinnamon in a ziplock bag with the rooting ends covered in the moss and the top side just slightly covered by the tops of the bag. Whenever the bags looked to be holding too much condensation I'd leave the bags open otherwise, daily, I would air out the bag and the close it again with air trapped inside to keep in the moisture. When I left the bag open I would spray the top parts of the cutting to keep it from drying out. I used a mixture of water, hydrogen peroxide and a little liquid kelp and sprayed only the tops of the cuttings. 

The named cuttings that I mentioned in my first post seemed to enjoy this moist warm environment and they all began to sprout either roots or root initials. Unfortunately, mold began to grow and I was not able to keep it at bay as time progress so, I rinsed off the mold gently for the last time and potted the bagged cuttings in pro mix hp also sprinkled liberally with cinnamon in an 8 oz plastic transparent cup. 

At first the cuttings seemed to be fine but as time progressed then they began to look a bit like they were dehydrating so I put each cup in a ziplock bag and would mist it a little, air the bag out daily and then close it back to keep the humidity up. I lightly watered only when the soil felt dry but again, the mold came so, I took them out of the bags. 

Some of the cuttings still showed a bit of green throughout the process but, some of them showed signs of I guess transplant shock. In repotting some cuttings that had larger roots some tore in the process of untangling their roots from some of the moss. 

When I checked the cuttings maybe two weeks after repotting  by pulling back some of the soil I noticed some teeny tiny insects on some of the cuttings around where they were submerged in the soil. Not a host of insects but like two or three. They were not fungus gnats. They look a bit like mites that you might see in a worm bin. Some of the cuttings that were planted in the pro mix had bark get loose like you could squeeze it and the skin of the bark would easily come off. Some of the cuttings were hollow in the center likes something eat the insides of the bottom inch of the cutting. 

I cut off whatever felt mushy and cut away others that had the hollow insides rinsed and repotted. 

This was getting to be a headache and I already suffer with migraines. 

From what I noticed. Some cuttings- like the RDB and the Maltese Falcon like to be kept in very moist/ conditions but, mold was hard to control using the bag and moss with bottom heat method. 

Some seem to like being in a bag with nothing else but a little air and humidity like the ones from abroad but, again, mold always came up as an issue. 

I added some rock phosphate, snipped and dipped all my cuttings in clonex and even added a little myro. fungi to see (myro and rock phosphate was suggested by a plant supplement retailer). All to no avail. 

The cuttings now look somewhat dry along the branch but, moist closer to the root zone area. The soil is dryish like a wrung out sponge. I'm at a stale mate. I have not snipped anything else off recently or tried to repot anything. 

In desparation I took some of my more prized cuttings and stuck them in outside pots and covered them up with thick layers of row cover material. So far, they look better than the ones that I kept inside. 

Now, I'm thinking that it might not be such a bad idea to just stick my cuttings in the ground and mulch them up and cover with material or plastic pots and hope for the best. At least it wouldn't be so much work and so little gained. 

After talking with a few of the higher volume guys I found that they are using a mix of perlite, vermiculite and sand to grow their fig clones

sand is too heavy, and vermiculite holds too much water. 50/50 perlite and seedling soil works well. add water into the mix little at a time until it feels moist, but it doesn't collect water or drip when you hold a handful in your palm. it should still feel "fluffy". 

The first year I tried to root cuttings I had a miserable record. This year it is much better. Its not just technique its the cuttings themselves as well.  As someone stated the faster you get them rooted, the less the exposure time for problems to develop. In addition to the suggestions that others have made, I would suggest selecting some of the easier to root varieties to practice on before diving into the varieties you really want to grow. Also if you have access to a tree locally from which you can get a good number of "guinea pig" cuttings, use these to practice on. Some of the easier I have found are HC, LSU Purple, Kadota and Dominick takes off like a wild weed.