Hi everybody! Just received some of Frank's beauties in the mail & of course I had to try rooting one now :) Hey at least I stored the rest until spring right? Hehe.. Anyways I noticed these big round things on the cuttings.. Are they little figlets? Potential future leaves? Help!

Im basically wondering if I should remove or keep them on.. If they are figlets my guess is to remove so they don't take away energy from the growing plant.. But if they are leaf buds then I probably want to keep them I would think.. But Im certainly no expert, so thank goodness for you guys/gals! Would anyone give me some direction? Thoughts?

I wouldn't remove anything at this point.  If later a fig starts to develop what I do is take a sterile razor blade and cut it in half.  The part of the fig still attached to the cutting will shrivel up and fall off in a matter of days.

Yah I was thinking it's probably not a good idea to cut.. But then again I wasn't sure. I've never seen such big either figlets or leaf buds on a cutting before.. Im hoping this is an indication of ginormous figs in the future! Lol but I have to not kill the cutting in order for that to happen! Have you ever seen these before?

Okay so if it does turn out to be a figlet down the road, take a sterile blade/exacto knife and slice down the middle you're saying?

Typically the one on the right is the bud... so you definitely don't want to touch that.

Since they're dormant I wouldn't do anything.  Repost if green starts showing  :)

Hi Jamie,

As Steve mentioned, no need to hack anything up unless a fig forms.  Once you get into spring, any fig that forms has a good chance of ripening, assuming you have a strong root ball.  Good luck!  :)

Thank you everyone! I am definitely sold on "not hacking anything up" lol :) In my limited experience with growing figs I have learned one thing for sure.. Beyond providing them with the basics, just ignoring them for the most part seems to be what they need the most! Which sounds soooo much easier than it actually is in practice (ie "just one more peek to see if there are roots yet!" Or "they look thirsty, just a little more water.." & so on)

Thank you everyone for the tips, you may very well have saved the life of a special cutting to me! I will post pics if anything begins to green up :)

6 weeks ago, My coworker, He gave me some high productive "Desert king" 3 unwanted green cutting tips about 8 inches with figlets exactly like your.

I cut them in half, put them in bag/wet paper for 1 week, Due to afraid of mold problem and high fail rate of new green cutting, I pot them in soil cup without any root.

After 5 more weeks, Cutting of bottom part of tip without figlet grow some roots and leaves and look very healthy, but cutting of tip with figlet, nothing at all, so I removed figlet near tip, after 3 days, leaves on tip of cutting open up quickly, still no roots yet, it still need sometime to see that it will grow or not.

Very interesting Ricky! It seems like it may have been that lil figlet diverting energy away from the roots then.. It would make sense since 3 days after removing the figlet, roots appeared on your DK cutting. I was considering cutting this particular cutting in half because there are at least 6 nodes on it, maybe more. I think I will just keep an eye on for now & see what the future brings. It's only been in the moistened coir for a couple days, so it's still early on. Thank you for sharing your experience with it, that is very helpful to know that you are having a very similiar thing going on now too.