i read that black madeira might show slow growth, and it needs kick start. something about large amount of fertilizer. how much fertriflizer are we talking about?

my cuttings are all showing growth. one of them even has root coming above the soil level. they are in seeding soil/perlite both which contains fertilizer, so i don't think they will need any for now. but once i move them in to 1 gal pot, i'm going to start fertilizing them.

do i just double the dose?

pete

I never fertilized any of my cuttings until maybe after they were really growing strong in soil by mid-late summer.  I only used miracle grow at that point too.

I sure wouldn't double the fertilizer dose for any rooted cutting, even after transplanting. I'm planning on fertilizing mine fairly early too, but am planning to go slow using a fraction of what is recommended. You can always increase the amount, but if you put on too much at one time, you can kill your plant.

I never fertilize newly rooted cuttings.

The suggestion to "over" fertilize a Black Madeira tree was mine. It was a 5g, inground tree that had only grown about 1" in the previous 2-3 seasons. It got about 1# of 15-15-15 almost every week for a season. Do this at your own risk.

Most figs will do fine with regular fertilizing after a year from rooting. However, what I've read indicates that Black Madeira needs little more help. From what I have heard, they are slow growing fig and might require large dose of fertilizer to get it going. I'm trying to figure out how much is "large dose".

Pete

Edit: Thanks, Jon.

I fertilized mine a few weeks after being in a gallon container with fish emulsion, regular strength, then every two weeks or so, slowly going up to double strength then to triple strength, I got about 2 and half feet of growth last year so I am interested in seeing what it will do this year, I will start off with regular fertilizer and then as it warms up if the growth is slow I will then go back up to triple strength but I don't want to do more than that as I am afraid it might be too much.

Does the growth slow down as the years go on or if it is growing vigorously will it continue to grow quickly?  Also does it usually have a habit to not branch too much?  Mine is almost a straight pole, I broke off a branch last year by mistake and have a couple more but they are tiny so far and I will pinch the leader to force them up but do you really have to be strict to get a nice bush with it?

I bought an airlayered Black Madeira last spring. I put it in the ground and it gave me good growth last year. It is off to a good start this spring. I fertilized it as much as I fertilized the rest of my trees: a little diluted fish emulsion every second watering. I have not had good luck with overfertilizing very small plants. I've fried a couple of them before by doing that.

Mine has been fine after the initial "over" fertilizing. That seemed to shock it out of its funk, and it grows quite vigorously now, every year.

The original point was that it wasn't growing, sort of stock at about 30' tall, and had growth each season of about 1". I figured that I might as well force feed it, and if it died, no big loss because it wasn't really doing anything, anyway. I was at a kind of a do or die point with this particular tree. The year I fertilized I saw about 6" of growth. The following year it grew about 6 feet.

Again, this was not a rooted cutting, and not a 1g plant.

I should have stated, since I left it out, I had moved it into a 3 gallon pot before doing the double and triple fertilizer, sorry for that mistake, but to Jon's point I didn't have the same situation as him and I may have just been lucky I didn't do any damage by trying to be proactive with it.