I am testing media and methods (M&M) on cuttings of equal size, same variety, and same protocol. The goal is an 'on/off' comparison hoping to vary just one variable per test. Clearly, consistent cups would increase integrity and reliability but this is the best that time and resources allow...for now.

M&M #3: Sphagnum/Pro-Mix BX & Turface/Perlite
Four cuttings of Martin's Unknown went directly to cups on W 16 December 2009. From left to right:

Two pencil think, branch tip cuttings (with tips cut off); Cup 1 = 50/50 Perlite/Pro-Mix BX and Cup 2 = 50/50 Perlite/Chopped Sphagnum.

Next two index finger thick, mid-branch cuttings; Cup 3 = 50/50 Turface/Pro-Mix BX and Cup 4 = 50/50 Turface/Chopped Sphagnum.

Nice pics and good healthy roots. In my opinion I would still wait another month or two to re pot into a larger pot. Regardless of what zone you are in.
But there are a few other members that live closer to your zone that should have an answer to your question.

I have quite a few cuttings rooting just as well as yours but I'm in Michigan so I will wait till early May before I transfer them into at least 1gl pots.

By then the danger of frost would have passed and the growing season would kick into high gear.

Keep us posted.

JD, great pic's & must be fun with those experiment. Thanks for posting.

With such good roots exhibited, I have done the following --- I will cut the bottom off the container and allow the roots to run into another container or pot. Thus you have an existing pot sitting over a fresh pot of dirt until you are ready to move it in spring. This is what I did to 3 newly rooted cuttings on Friday night. The manner I cut the bottom off is using a torch to heat a scraper like tool. The end of the scrapper is 1'' metal and it heats up fast and it will melt the plastic like butter. Just be careful not to burn off too many roots. Of course a hacksaw will do but it would be messy.

Rafed & Paully22,

Thanks for the information. Given what you both have proposed, I have two questions: 1) Rafed, there are about 2 inches between the roots and the top of the cup. Have you ever had the roots grow out of the top of the cup? If so, what did you do? Repot? and 2) Paully22, since there are quite a few roots at the bottom, can you give me an idea where you would cut?

Establishing a proven, successful roots to tree process (rooting is my focus at the moment) is my prime directive for the next several weeks. Thanks to the core group of experienced fignuts on this forum, I have a handful of one of this or two of that cuttings from highly touted varieties, and a small request from UCDavis that should benefit from this M&M testing.

Thanks,
JD

Jd,
I'm no expert but from my personnel experience and from what I've read the fig roots grow towards the top and spread. Just like what you are seeing now.
On my larger potted figs ( 15gl. or 25gl pots ) I lay large rocks over them to keep the wind from blowing them over. From time to time I remove the rocks for what ever the reason may be and there would be heavy root cover at the surface. I don't consider this being a threat of any kind and some may grow into little trees themselves.

Paully22 method works well too and it is a very good idea if you don't want to disturb the roots.. But if I may add ( Not to hijack Pauls answer, Sorry ) I use straight pruning shears, The blades are about 1.5 inches long and narrow.
I would start from the top and carefully cut down along one side while I keep a close eye on the roots to make sure I don't hurt any. As I reach about an inch or so from the bottom I start to cut around. I remove the bottom cut/cup and leave the top of the cup intact.
I fill the bottom of the larger pot with the potting mix and carefully place the cup inside with the top part of the cup still intact. I fill the remainder of the new pot with the mix and then I very carefully remove the top part of the cup and water thoroughly.

Again,
I would still wait till I get more roots established before I re-pot. With proper care these trees can live hundreds of years. Another month or so would not hurt.

Good luck.

Hi JD
your last 2 pictures have roots wanting to spread out as on bottom there starting to go in a circle looking to spread.
Now i tend to do things diofferent and bu no means is this the right way or wrong way just what i do.
When mine look like those 2 last pictures i get a pot of similar soil used to root them but a LITTLE BIT more potting soil not much in gallon container i make a nice size hole to fit the cutting in. I try as best as possible not to disturb it when sliding it out of cup and i gently put it in the gallon pot and hand or sppon sprinkle to fill in the voids. Then depending how moist the original rootball is dictates if i add water or not because the roots can take up very little water still and can still rot ie turn brown then mushy then dead. The surroounding soil helps to soak up excessive moisture from the rootball if its damp which is good, when i do water i do so very little at a time at this point.
For me depending on how fast plant grows in spring and early summer i move to a 5 g pot . Now you will get many different views on how folks do things on the forums and like i said this is just what i do and by no means is a guide just something to give ideas as we all do things different !
Best Health
Martin

Ok, so, just curious - you mention that you found a method that really works for you, but didn't mention what it was ;)

I have been experimenting as well, and I've found that all of my mixes, whether Fafard3B/Perlite, Turface/Sphagnum or straight Fafard3B, seem to work OK.  I took singles of each cutting, equally showing rootlets, and put them in the different mixes.  The 3B-only cups actually took longer to take off than any other mix.  3B/Perlite were the strongest growers.  Perlite/Sphagnum were only a day or two behind them.  The 3B-only were about 8-10 days development behind that.  Bottom line, all healthy tip cuttings from the same tree, all healthy rootlets from baggie method with soap and bleach solution, and when used in a Perlite+something mix, they did great, but in a straight potting mix with all the typical UPM-ingredients, development was a bit more retarded so far.

I did have some initial mold problems with the sphagnum mixes, but it may have been user error: too much water initially, too fine of a chop, or a little of both.  Dropping on a low-set heat pad in a sunny window for two days led to moisture release, and I'm showing roots on all of those which were drenched before.

From the 7th pic, I will make a big hole at the bottom. I have a small propane torch and I heat up my small putty tool & used that as a cutting tool.

With a big hole you can guide the roots out. Rafed & Martin's suggestion of larger pot works great.

Roots growing out of the top of a cup/pot usually air-prune themselves when the humidity is decreased.

I have the feeling that the last three pictures show over-watered pot. There must be some good reason that is keeping the roots alive in these pots and not becoming brown and rotting. With my kind of 'luck' these would have browned up and died.
What do you think?

Thanks for the advice.

Rafed, Paully22, and Martin, I will...do something. I have four days to think and then on the fifth day...

Jason, Two things: 1) Direct into a cup coupled with 2) 1:1:1 Perlite:Turface:Pro-Mix BX seems to work best for me. I can correlate each incidence of mold to cuttings that were not directly cupped. It makes sense because my time, diligence to clean, and attentiveness to airing the cuttings daily is limited. However, my time, diligence, and attentiveness have increased since my first sphagnum-newspaper-baggie excursion was greeted with an assault of mold.

Thanks Jon!

Ottawan, You must be reading my mind! There is some brown on these roots but it does not appear to be anything more than what I seen posted by others. Meanwhile, I recently re-read Dan's Improved Baggie Method in search of more insight on rooting. Concerning your point, Dan warns of the dangers of condensation but does not discuss likely causes. Of my 14 cups, ALL show what you have described as an over-watered pot. Prior to potting, however, I squeezed out all of the water that I could (for the sphagnum and Pro-Mix based cups) and I have not watered since. Note: I do not mist or spray water on the walls because when closed the humidity reaches 93% consistently. A few members have opined that that may be the source of my mold 'problem'. Fully open, the humidity is ~57% on average.

JD

Ottawan, The moisture you see on the cups is not necessarily over watering but possibly caused by temperature changes that causes the condensation to form on the cup. The first reason for using a storage container is to increase the humidity, the second reason is to buffer the temperature changes from the air surrounding the container. I had similar moisture build on my cups because of the night time cooling and day time heating. I solved it by keeping the temperature between 70 and 75 day and night and not changing my watering scheme.

For what it's worth, I have these cheapy gauges stuck on the inside wall of my boxes.  I read a pretty constant 68ºF and 75% humidity on the wall about 6" up from the top of my cups and everything is rooting fine with no mold.

I stopped having mold issues when I did the following:

- Wiped up the occasional condensation inside the box walls
- Consistently kept the floor of the box dry
- Monitored my cutting cups for overwater (by appearance and weight)
- For cuttings that were too wet, I placed on low-level heat source to dry them out

With these steps, I have curbed all mold, and all of my roots are nice and healthy white.  When there was water condensing all over the sides of the box, and water actively in the bottom, humidity stayed at 95%!  No wonder mold was present.

In retrospect, I believe my initial watering was too great.  I have not found a good way to water my cuttings before placing them in cups.  I am sure you can soak turface, and soak sphagnum, then mix, but it ends up with too much water.  The last few that worked well, I took my faucet and set it to "rain" mode, then drip-fed the cups from the center out, and when the water penetrates to mid-cup, I turn it off and leave it in the sink to drain.  It worked OK.

Excuse me for being oblivious to this issue and I am confused now.
But isn't that the idea of using the plastic tote boxes as mini greenhouses? To build moisture and humidity to prevent the cuttings from dehydrating?
Mold is going to be present no matter what you try, That's nature.
Few times I took the cup out and there would be mold right at where the leaf used to be and I just wipe it off.

To me, I don't care what color the roots are. Just as long they are healthy and growing.

As a matter of fact, I placed a plastic drop ceiling light cover inside to place the cups over and placed a couple cups of water to create moisture.

Everyday I have the top cover removed for a couple of hours to have the condensation dry off the leaves and plants. and seems to work well for me.

Recently I had removed a few cups out and places them by the window.
The leaves are not as green as I would like them to be but they seem to thrive.
As for the color of the leaves I think that's just another issue that can be resolved.

Jason, those look good and I'm tempted to get a couple at that price. I love the more sophisticated one I have as it keeps a record the highest and lowest of temps and humidity allowing me to know what really happened while I sleep.

"After a prescription of daily doses of 3% peroxide, 10% bleach solution, and cornmeal solution, the pencil thick group still had an uncontrollable case of MKS (Mold Keeps Spawning). On a whim, I piled some moist Sphagnum at the spawn site on the troubled cuttings and lo and behold, to date, the mold has been halted. Hooha!"

If the moss has some ability to inhibit mold - I wonder what would happen if you put the moss in a blender with warm water, blended, strained out the solids and used the resulting liquid as a spray directly on the cuttings? Might be the new "moldicide".

I prefer such a digital gauge, but I couldn't find the ones you and others had mentioned at a local source, and I needed to monitor my box immediately due to a mold outbreak.  Luckily, snakes and other reptiles are very similar to fig tree cuttings, and require a very specific temp/humidity, so I went to the pet store to get these gauges for under $10.  Reptiles requiring such an environment is also good information to consider, because the pet store carries miniature low-temperature heaters for reptiles also, which could be adapted for usage inside a box during the winter times.

Ideas like this are bad for me, because I have a habit of "going overboard" with things like this, so I really needed to resist my overwhelming urge to go to the store and spend $500 buying plastic bins, reptile heat rocks, multi-zone digital temperature gauge with humidity reading, and lots of other fun toys!  I decided to take it easy this time, stick to what is simple and cheap, and save some money for plant purchases later.

I considered how "simple man" has been doing this for ages, and decided to pay $10 for the simple gauges, installing them in one of my boxes just to get a "general" idea that I am providing the correct ambient environment that will meet the requirements of the cuttings in most of my boxes.  It isn't perfect, but it gives me a round idea.

Ideally, I would like to have a gauge to test humidity in each individual cup, but again ... $$$$!  Trying to keep it simple ;)

Jon,

That's creative thinking!
Find the solution by accident, Just like Viagra!

I think your idea should work.
Better patent it!

This has become an informative thread for me. Thanks for your input. Rafed I appreciate your directness on the plastic container greenhouse; I have the same thoughts. Jon, once I return, I'll try to SMS some mold (Sphagnum Moss Spray).

Continuing my education...

On a day trip from work to home for my daughter's recital, I peeked in on my rooting experiment to find the tip of my best rooted cutting drying up. Upon closer inspection, it appears as if a new tip is about to push forth. Is this how it works or cause for concern?

On a very happy note, what follow is the very first bud break and leaf from a cutting. And now the work begins...

Does anyone have a suggestion as to why I can't see the photos in this thread?

Not a clue.  Maybe your computer or network is blocking pictures from Flickr?

Jd,

It looks like it's starting to branch out. I wouldn't be concerned at all.
Looks healthy to me. Looks like it's working for you. You'll be eating figs before you know it.

Good luck

Bill,
As Jason says you may have a firewall that is blocking Flickr. I can't see any Photobucket images at work, have to wait until I get home. Photobucket seems to be the only image site blocked at work. I see those from Flickr and other sites. Can't watch videos either until I get home...really shouldn't be anyway! ;-)
Sue

Thanks Jason and Sue.

I'll ask the wife. She may have set something up as a protection. My 4 (just about 5) yr old son is fully capable of signing on and navigating around to all his favorite sites. Nickjr.com, gamehouse, yahoogames, spongbob games, you name it. The boy can't even read yet but he recognizes many sites in the dropdown menu just by the letter they start with or just by the way the word(s) looks! He just clicks away and figures it out as he goes. Started when he was about 16 mos and hasn't slowed down since. I have pics to prove it. Smart little booger. Kindergarten better be ready for him not the other way around :-)!