This low level/limited time experiment has been quite educational for me. I appreciate the transfer of knowledge and experience. Recently, my plastic bin has been a routine source of something new to post. I have three direct to cup cuttings that have green & growing buds and a question:

Are they leaf or fruit buds?

From what I have read, if fruit, then I should remove them ASAP, right?

The one shown in your pictures above seems to be fruit embryo and should be removed otherwise it becomes a drain on the nutrients at this stage. The fruit embryo can be recognized by the spherical shape as compared to the somewhat pointed shape of the leaf bud.

Your first picture only.
The one on left is a fig embryo looking at same first picture the one on the right sorta has the shape of a bud narrow at the top but pictures can be  hard to judge sometimes as the other pictures it looks different.

Thanks Ottawan.

Pinch off with two fingers or use a tool?

Three different photos of three different cuttings. I will take a few more pictures from different angles and better lighting and label them...

Three somewhat clearer photographs of three different cuttings (Thanks Mimi!). I believe each is a fruit embryo and I just pop them off. Your thoughts?

Cutting #1


Cutting #2


Cutting #3

Pointed bud = shoot/leaf.
Round bud   = fruit (pinch it off - may want to wait a little
longer, just to make sure).

I am going to post a picture in a minute of some of my figs in a (not so sunny right now) window.  I have seen a couple of buds above the leaf scar which started round, but then broke out of this round shell, and is now unrolling a stem and leaf.

I agree with George...wait it out.  if it gets larger than a large BB and it's still round, consider plucking it off (I break 'em off w/thumb and pointer finger).

I err on the side of caution.  You can rip it off at any time, better to be safe than sorry.  The deteriment of fruit getting a little bit larger can't be too terribly great.  The detriment to breaking off a started branch, on the other hand ....

Thanks George and Jason...I am anxiously patient.

UPDATE: It is working. IT is a customization of Dan's Baggie Method of "cleaning, toweling, bagging, and storing" to start roots. Other than one lost battle with worms and two lost battles with mold, the process has been very successful. Success in this context means meet the short term objective: Shepherd the process that gets twigs, makes roots, cups, and watches leaves grow. I say shepherd because once you have some experience and/or a plan, figs root easily. They will root, the shepherd just needs to know what not to do.

Here's what I do for say four cuttings of a single variety:

Before I get started, using a sharpie, I LABEL the cuttings by name and MARK which way is up with an arrow.

CLEAN the cuttings (most of the time) in a bleach/soap mix in a single container. Make a ten percent bleach solution plus a few squirts of dish soap (anti-bacterial) in a single container. I drop in the cuttings, let them float briefly, and then I scrub them particularly the nodes and multi-headed tips. Rinse and dry (mostly). Note: I do not always clean the cuttings. I have several that I did not clean and they root just fine

Next, I usually write the name and arrow up with a sharpie (that has water insoluable ink) before I ...

Wet a paper TOWEL, squeeze out the water with firm hand shake pressure, and wrap the cuttings. Fold the paper towel such that the bottom node is uncovered and when possible, leave a top node or tip unwrapped.

Place the wrapped cuttings in a BAGGIE. Note: both storage or freezer have been equally effective. And place that baggie in a controlled environment. Check it for roots. In my case, that is every 3-4 days.

Like many of the other forum members has stated, once I get a few modest or one long or a bunch of small roots then I cup it. The cup MEDIUM is a 1:1:1 mix of Turface MVP:Perlite:Pro-MIX BX. For me, this mix provides the best moisture retention as compared to the original 50:50 combinations. Generally, I cup each cutting on top of a foundation of about 1"-2" of 'mix'.

Thanks to the helpful, generous, and knowledge members for the fig fun I have had to this point. Still work to be done but it always nice to take a few steps...even if only baby ones.

Some results follow.

LSU Everbearing

Mimi's Green Honey

MVS Black

MVS Black

Nonnie's Purple

Sal's EL

Sal's EL

Sal's EL

Sal's EL

Stallion

Stallion

Voiture

JD lovely results I too am using 50/50 Pro-mix BX / Perlite and seems to be the best medium I have used so far. Thanks for posting the results

Hi Jd
sure works good for you as your pictures tell everything.
Nice roots, recently i started writeing on cup such as you where they scion was obtained from.
Usually i just keep that information in my notepad with dates as well as folks i have sent them out to as well but i still keep the notepad too.
One day when you have extra scion and perhaps you want to experiment a little try putting a unrooted scion in one of them cups with the soil pre-wet already and stick the scion in there and tape a empty cup on the top and wait 4-8 weeks .
Its lots of fun .
Best Health

Looking good!  Your roots look better than mine, for sure. 

Question:  How are you handling your box?  Like, how long do you keep them in the box?  Do you ever remove them from the box?  I ran out of boxes and haven't made it to the store.  Removing from the boxes seems to have impacted me negatively, in that the fluctuation of moisture in my Turface/SM mixes dry out way too fast, and all of my roots are thin, thin, thin, like hairs.  Good root growth, but really thin.

Thanks Nelson, Martin and Jason.

Jason,

I am handling the boxes carefully. There is less information regarding what to do after you have roots and leaves so I am being methodical and retentive...like a rambling wreck should be. During the day, boxes are 'vented' with an empty 4oz Mott's Applesauce cup and closed at night.

The cupped cuttings stay in the boxes (I have four) even those with leaves. My eldest cuttings (two Stallion) were out of the box and I lost control. The plan was cover the roots and provide sunlight but that didn't work. The mix began to dry out almost daily which meant daily watering and that was an intractable problem. I put them both back in a box exclusively for roots and leaves kept near a window that gets direct and indirect afternoon/evening sunshine. Note: same routine: vented during the day and closed at night. That mitigated the drying out/watering concern and although  growth has flatlined, it is no longer declining.

For root development, i.e., short term objective success, I am not sold on Sphagnum. But root development is not the end game. I need to get a better handle on the cup to 1-gallon pot process and so on to first fig.

JD

Fig Box A

Fig Box B

Soemthing I've noticed, your leaf fringes will start to burn/brown a bit if you constantly go wet/dry.  Looking forward to seeing what you figure out.

An update and a BUMP:

I lost the MVS and LSU Everbearing to the "wake up and they are wilted" syndrome. Everything else is outside and thriving. I potted up quite a few last week. Since then I have noticed that those tip cuttings that developed first leaves from lower buds are now leafing from the tip...interesting.



Also, I put this Panachee in a cup only nine days ago with primordia ~ 1/4":

Nice very nice, they are so cute at this size especially when the leaf will first emerge.

I have noticed much faster root growth now that temps are quite warm outside as well.  I assume that's the cause.  I've had most of my UCD cuttings strike and root significantly in a period of 4-5 weeks vs. the 8-10 weeks everything else was taking during the winter.  Go figure? 

Maybe I'll just stick everything in pots outside all winter next go-round.

I just got a good deal on 50 1gal black pots like you show there on eBay for $12.  I plan to start potting almost everything up next weekend.

Although I  am new to figs I have been growing plants for a long time. I always use liquid sea weed to water and mist cuttings and seeds to prevent fungus problems. It seems to prevent dampening off of seeds. When I stuck my fig cuttings I used a liquid sea weed solution to water in the cuttings. So far I have not had any problems with mold on these cuttings and many are rooted at this point. I should also mention that there is mosture on the sides and bottom of my boxes. (knock on wood...)

I also purchased some cuttings and later read posts suggesting that I may not have gotten the cuttings I requested from this guy. Kind of lost interest in these cuttings and really ignored them. A couple of weeks ago I took them out of their plastic bags, a few tiny roots and lots of mold. 4 or 5 out of 40 were so rotted that I threw them away. The rest were stuck in 1 gallon pots with plant mix with extra perlite. The cuttings are stuck almost to the upper tip. They all seem to be rooting with no mold. I don't have a way to post pictures right now but will let you all know how it goes...

Great thread.  Thanks!

UPDATE. I settled on what has been a repeatable, scalable, and transferable way to root cuttings...for me. I put them in a baggie with moist sphagnum moss, place them in a dark pantry, and check them in a week and then a week after that. Here's what they can look like in 16 days. Once the cutting explodes with root growth, I transplant into a 1-gallon pot and tag it.

Lesson Learned #1: Roots are fragile. Do not attempt to detangle the root from the moss. Shake off what you can.

Lesson Learned #2: Read #1 again.

Lesson Learned #3. Correlate to #2. Roots are "tangly". It is tedious to detangle more than one cutting with roots like this. Although not optimal, I would advise a newbie to limit the number of cuttings to one per bag if you let the roots explode as I have.

FYI. The photographs are cuttings from the Willow St fig tree. The bag also has cuttings of Branca and Macaulay St but they have not (and maybe will not) such similar explosive growth. And Yes. I have used the same bag and same moss for more than 12 months.

Are you shredding your SM before putting it in the bag?

Just for reference, what time of year did those cuttings go in the bag?  (i.e. was the cutting fresh in the summer, when growth was vigorous?)

Jason,

I don't shred.

I have three bags that I've used since my very first cuttings. I have only added a little to one bag...the bag in the photo because this growth was a little more than usual and we were gone for Thanksgiving.

The cutting was bagged on 7 November.

I would never remember that but the 2nd block of writing on the first photo tells me so. This Willow St cutting was in the fridge since my Fig Trek with Sue V on 20 October 2010. The tree was actively growing, and putting out and ripening new figs. It wasn't summer but it was San Diego!

Have you had any additional problems with worms (fungus gnat larvae, ya?)

Nothing. I traced whatever those worms were to the source, i.e., the scion. It was - and still is - quite odd.

FYI. I started a couple mango seeds and pineapple tops in sphagnum. Works well. Mulberry (60 days) and black raspberry (30 days) seeds require a cold stratification (fridge) and a moist medium (sphagnum moss); it's day 10.