I just started another bag of cuttings ~2 weeks ago on an ancient local unknown.  After two weeks, most are showing no progress, but a pair of them have good sign of ~1mm initials, and then I have this one - with a single pair of ~3/4" initials coming out of the same spot, with about half a dozen 2mm-3mm initials nearby.

Questions: 

Should I keep this one in the bag for another week or two, or is it still too soon to transfer this single cutting to a cup and drop in my mini-greenhouse? 

Does the turning brown of the root mean it is dying/dead?

Are most of you folks using bag method covering the terminal bud with the paper towels, or does it even matter?

Thanks!

The point of the bag is 1) to provide and environment where rooting can begin, and 2) to ke progress (or lack thereof) clearly visible. You have satisfied both. You can move it up to a cup, now, or give it a little longer. Either way. The point is that it is in rooting mode (and you have verified that) so it should continue to grow roots in any suitable environment. It is currently at a point where it would be tough/impossible to verify the initiation of rooting, if it was in a cup, or pot. So by doing it this way (in the bag), you have better informsation, without having had to resort to removing the cuttting from a rooting media, for examination, and possibly damaging the root growth in the process.

You answered your own questions, some root well some take there sweet time has been my experience in past , i personally think the scion varies in there rooting power if they have a lot of stored energy just waiting to bust out or they do not have that much stored energy and are slower i have experienced both.
I have noticed that the ones that do well for me were cut just before bud break in spring indicating to me that they were just ripe but thats just me.
Oh before i forget to watch there root progress if so choose try putting them in clear cup when transplanting in due time you will see roots bust out of the middle of cup and its fun.

Thanks for the info!

Got new cups this weekend (clear).  Couldn't find any more of the tall 16oz clear cups, so had to go with the shorter "SOLO" brand 18oz.  I don't think the cutting is going to care, just means I'll have that much more of the tip exposed.  I'm digging around for some taller clear cups on the internet tonight, see if I can't get some shipped in at a cheap enough price.  I hit a couple of stores today, some superstores (Target, Walmart), and a couple grocery stores (Kroger, Food Lion) thinking they may have them.  I haven't checked Publix or Whole Foods yet.  With the gas you blow driving around, it almost makes more sense to order on the internet and save the gas $$$

Not only is every variety different, but every twig is different. No matter how identical you make the environments, the twigs will always vary. If you stick 10 in a pot of potting mix, and water. some will grow roots, some will grow shoots, some will do both, and some will never do anything. Part of the FUN of figs.

Jason, I started 17 cuttings on Oct. 5th., all the same, negronne.  Out of the 17 I now have 11 with roots in cups. Six of them have little or no action. I discarded 1 which was a bad cutting to begin with and it started look worse. Of the six still wrapped in paper towels 2 are showing what might be the beginning of initials. One has not change one bit and I'm thinking of getting rid of except I hard headed too. I just might wait it out. Once I put them in cups with initials about like you're showing, it only took 2 or 3 days for most of them to grow to the outside of the cup and be visible. I had a one node wonder that didn't want to do anything so I decided to put it in a cup and just see what would happen. I put in the cup on the 11/3 and today I saw roots in the cup.

To sum it up, I think Martin is right. Some cuttings have more go power than others.

Hi Jason, I use a 24 oz. tall clear cup made by Hefty. I used to get them at walmart, but they no longer have them. Check the other groceries in your area---surely one of them carry them. I like them because they're tall.  I have also used 32 oz take out soup containers. You can buy them by the case at a restaurant supply or maybe you could beg a sleeve at your local Chinese restaurant. Good luck with your cuttings.

I have a chinese takeout place right around the corner from me, that's a really good idea.  I'm sure they'll sell me a couple dozen cups for a 10-spot or something.  I have one other place I'm thinking to look, I figure...Starbucks gives me their coffee grounds for free....I think they have some tall cups as well, I might try to buy a sleeve of theirs.

Restaurant supply places are a very good source. Smart and Final, Restaurant Depot, etc.

I searching with Google earlier, but it was tough to find individual 50-cup sleeves.  Everything seems to be 500- or 600-cup boxes, upwards of 1000-cup boxes.  I plan to plant a lot, but not THAt much!  heh

If nothing else, I think the 18oz cups will work.  They are about 6" tall, but cuttings are about 9" tall.  Should suffice.  Just need to get some potting material.  I have perlite and vermiculite, but after reading Jose's post at GW-FF, I think I might give this Ferti-Lome Ultimate Potting Mix.  It looks like Hastings Nursery may have it, and they're "just down the street", so to speak.

If anyone hasn't seen that thread, I would say ... check it out :  http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fig/msg0421253211548.html?18

Pretty amazing pictures, if nothing else.  I'm sure most have already seen it.

I use only 16-24 oz FOAM cups for rooting figs.
Roots are NOT visible there; untill they come out
of the drain holes. They work good for me and are
much cheaper and easily available. After rooting
hundreds of fig-twigs, I acqurired a good
(visual) sense if the twig is going or dying. I do
not know how to explain it, so please do not ask.

One other thing I strongly beleive in; is NOT to disturb
the fragile roots while transplanting (others may differ).

However, a while back I did find & buy a small pack of
(rare/large) 24 oz very CLEAR cups from Wallymart.
When required, I use them as a (holed/vented) upside
down dome on the foam ones... 

Guys:
Re the rooting cups: 

I use the 32 oz soft drink cups put out here by Quick Trip convenience stores.  I save the ones I get drinks in, but they will sell all the extras you want for about sixteen cents each.  How many does a fellow need--

I  would be willing to bet that any convenience store that sold drinks in the clear plastic cups would sell empties.  They all have a bit of printing on them somewhere, but not enough to spoil the view of emerging roots.

I put a stop on my table saw, run each cup up against the stop so that it cuts a slot about a quarter inch into the bottom edge of the cup in four places, twelve, three, six and nine o'clock, and I am good to go.  I have used a soldering iron to burn in the drain holes, but that is slow and stinky work. 

Oxankle,
I like your (table saw) way to make drainage holes in
those otherwise hard (to hole) plastic clear cups.
For the record, all one need to drain the foam cups is a
screw-driver; just punch it in...

I also like Gene's idea

(http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3773705)

Taking old soda bottles, removing the labels and top and drill some drain and air holes.

Last season i had a forum member send me some clear cups ( thanks Cecil )
They come from Dairy Queen, also if clear cups is what your looking for i also believe 7 eleven sells some of there drinks in them as well.
Yes there nice when first starting out to get a handle on things , like Gorgi when you get more experience type of cup does not matter anymore.
No more scion for me to root but perhaps i will do an airlayer here and there for myself as extra insurance , airlayer has yet to fail me except when i experimented and tried it on a leaf stem which was no go i just had to try it and just may do it again for the heck of it im stubborn as i figure that leaf stem just might have the cells needed to do something who knows without try no once but a few times to find out.

Like Gorgi said, I've used foam cups too. They work just as well. Before you know it roots are poking out the drain holes. Don't you guys laugh, but I heat an ice pick on the gas stovetop and quickly make holes with that. Easily pierces any cup. Have to do it when Sherri is gone because it does stink up the house. Ha!

I converted to 1/2 UPM 1/2 Coarse Perlite last spring in the cups and it worked like a charm. 

Well, I guess I messed up, I think I missed my planting window.  I was trying to get all my supplies (mix, cups, etc.) together, and I did so last night.

However, my root initials turned brown and started to shrivel.  I did not change the humidity in my bag, they are in a no-light environment (as they have been) and just generally....flopped.  Nothing much changed.

I may still put them in the ground and see what happens.  I am seeing a leaf busting the side of one of the cuttings that previously had no root initials.  None of the cuttings look dessicated or dry.

At least one or two other initials are starting on another cutting and I saw some buds at least trying to break, or starting, and some promise of other initials....so I went ahead and got this started.

I built out my greenhouse box using an old cracked box from the office.  I used 1/2" metal grid on tome 2x2 boards.  Flipped the box upside down, measured two pieces of wood to fit the bottom sides, then the other two boards for the short side, in order to use all four to frame out the bottom.  I laid all four of them on the floor, and screwed the mesh to the four boards to make a steel grid floor. I put the grid in the bottom of the box as you see in the first picture below.

I took some Fafard 3B potting mix (http://www.fafard.com/?p=139) and measured out an un-packed 18oz cup full for each cutting, dumping it into a large cooking pot, again, in first picture below.

I drilled several holes in the bottom of the cups, and for S&G drilled a couple of holes in the sides of some.  I carried everything upstairs as you see in the 1st picture below.

I then took the big pot full of Fafard 3B and used the sprayer from my sink to spray the top of the soil with less than a cup of water, and mixed it in by hand.  I repeated this process repeatedly until the soil was mildly damp, but fluffy, to the point that it was just starting to clump together in marble-sized balls.  Very similar to what I would be aiming for when crushing butter into flour to make biscuits or a pie topping or crust. 

I do not think I added more than 4-5 cups of water (actual measured cups).

When the soil was at (what I felt is) the right dampness, I used the cups to scoop out cupfuls.  I would scoop, shake the cup, then top it off to just over the brim.  Repeated this on all of the cups and put them on top of the mesh raised floor in the box, as in picture two below.  I found that, for whatever reason, I had about two cupfuls left in the bottom of the pot.  I guess this is because I (purposefully) didn't tamp down the soil into the cup.

I then took each cutting and pushed it down into its own cup.  I lightly pressed around the edges of the cutting to get it to stand on its own, but without really compressing the soil, end result....pic two again.

I put about 1/8" of water in the bottom of the container, just to have wetness, and hopefully generate humidity.  Of course, this will not contact the cups, because they are on top of the wood + mesh, about 1" above the water level. 

I took the container, and put it in front of our gas fireplace in a room that gets lots of sunlight, but not direct light as pictured.  The fireplace never gets turned on, but the pilot light does trap and radiate heat behind the glass.

I cracked the lid open slightly as you see, locked it onto itself.  All cuttings fit underneath just fine.

If any of you veterans have any advice on ways I could have done things differently, please let me know!!  I'm all ears and butterflies ;)

Jason, just one thing I noticed on my starts. The ones with the tip bud were the last to root and grow the bud out. I took a couple of them and cut them back a node or two just to experiment and they started both roots and buds before the one with the tip bud in place. Just my observation, I don't know it to be fact yet.

"gene''

Hi Jason, instead of pushing the cuttings down into the cups, put a little soil mix in the bottom and hold cutting with one hand and crumble the mix in around the cutting. Those new roots( I know most of them browned out on these) are very fragile at this point and you have to be extremely careful with them. Hope this helps you. Good luck with your cuttings & thank you for sharing the pictures.

Definitely good advice!

I hadn't thought about the way I worded that.  I lost the initials you see in the first picture of this thread, and any remaining "potentials" are just bumps (the dream of a root).  The soil was fluffed, so they went in easier than a hot knife through butter.

I hadn't thought about how I would have done it if those roots you see above had still been viable, so when the next batch of cuttings gets done, I am going to use the crumble method.  I think I also might need to make shorter cuttings ;)

Hey, here's a question:  For those of you who do cut off the terminal bud, do you usually bury your fig a little deep to make it bush out, and hide the blunt cutting termination point?  Or do you just let them grow?  What does it look like if you just let it grow?  Seems like your resulting plant would look deformed.

You write
Hey, here's a question:  For those of you who do cut off the terminal bud, do you usually bury your fig a little deep to make it bush out, and hide the blunt cutting termination point?  Or do you just let them grow?  What does it look like if you just let it grow?  Seems like your resulting plant would look deformed.

If i understand correctly here is my experience . I always let them grow .
When i root i like to use scion that has a bud at its tip and root it, then i place in soil normal not deep nor shallow.
See i try to grow mine in a tree type form not a bush . I then let it grow to a height i prefer and nip the top bud and after that i get more side branches and trim them as needed along with the top as once top bud is nipped you get some more around that part so not to make taller than i like i will keep nipping as time goes along.
Folks have there own little way of forming there plants this is how i do my plants.
Hope this helps.

Ok, good, this is what I want to do also.  I understand that growing as a bush you may have better chance of recovery if frozen to the ground, and more likely to lose a tree after it freezes to the ground (so this is what I read), but ... I prefer the tree form for my purposes.

I ask because I see many folks use scion with no [terminal] bud on the end, they chop the tip off, or use a "middle" piece of wood.  I wonder what they do.  For example, see Jon's starts here:



I just assume that the top cutting point will always be there if you grow as a tree.  But I wonder if most people do this with the intent to, maybe, plant it deep and use it in bush form to obtain cuttings (farm your shrub), or if they plant in bush form just to grow this way, or if they just leave the plant as it is and put it in the ground.  Or maybe a new terminal bud will shoot from the cut point, and eventually obscure the original top cut?

Maybe I am just anal about the shape of my trees?  Must be the bonsai guy in me ;)

I want to adress a couple of points here.

First, I am not anywhere near so fastidious in my planting methods.  I dump a sack of rooting mix in a bucket, stick some of the mix in the bottom of a Quick Trip soft drink cup, stick in a cutting and tamp in rooting mix around it, trying to get the cutting somewhere near the centre of the cup.  I then SOAK the whole thing in a pot of water and set it aside to drain. 

After than I put the cups in a box like Jasons, but mine have clear tops and I use a heating pad under each.  Like Jason I keep water in the bottom of the box. 

Second point:  A film I saw on taking cuttings for propagation stressed that the cuttings should be basal cuttings, taken from as near the origin of the shoot as possible. Tapla has explained to us in detail that this is the most juvenile wood and the most likely to root.   Everything I read says that tip cuttings are much harder to root but will fruit earlier than basal cuttings.  You pays your money and takes your chances.  My own short experience convinces me that the filmmakers and Prof. Al are correct. 
Ox