Hi every body.
I know growing figs from cuttings is a nice way of propagating but it's long before you get them producing fruit.
And being in zone 5 that short summer season, I would like to give the best chance to the plants .
So, I've decided to do some grafting for the type of figs I have just one small tree to go faster.
1st question.
Wich type of grafting do you guys prefer,bud,chip,whip and tongue,bark graft, V graft or cleft.
I know how to do most of them, Just not sure wich time is better.
2nd
 Do you graft during dormancy,during brake bud or during full growth?
Thank you all.
God bless. 

I've had good results with T budding during active growth when bark is slipping. Near 100% takes. But growth can be slow after forcing the inserted bud.

Cleft grafts have worked when bark isn't slipping. Haven't tried too many so far.

Results have been 50% takes with chip buds. I find chip budding much more difficult to line up cambium layers than cleft or splice grafts.

Figs are pretty easy to bud or graft it just takes good technique at the right time.

HarveyC has some nice videos:

https://www.youtube.com/Figaholics

The Rind Bark graft delivers the quickest growth after grafting that I've seen from the many different grafting techniques that I've used with figs. 

For me the quickest growth is Whip and Tongue. Many varieties even produce some figs in the first year of grafting. I use it since March until August with dormant cuttings in growing branches.

It's my prefered technique followed by Chip Budding which i use from March to August/September with dormant or green buds.

This year i even made a few in October with green cuttings that i received - i never made such late grafts with dropping temperatures at night so the jury is still out on the success of these. I will know if they took in a few weeks.

Thank you Conrad and RunsSlow
I checked Cleft grafting from HarveyC probably will return to watch the other grafting videos from him .
Very well explained and I saw the date he filmed it April 8.
So I`m going to do it in spring seems to be the good time.
I will try some in late spring too.
Just to see how they perform.
Thank you again.

Here's some very good tips on this technique:

https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hort494/mg/methods.alpha/WTMeth.html

V graft has worked the best for me... IMO, it's easier for beginners too...

Hi Rio,

I did 5 t-buding grafting using cuttings I got from the good folks on this forum.  The t-buds came from the cuttings I got from the good folks on this forum (couple of months old, stored in the frig).  The root stocks were: 1) a good size fig tree I got from Ottawan (early violet, but not so early for producing figs apparently) and 2) a mature fig tree grown from seed.  I did my grafting early April.  Unfortunately none took.  I never saw any t-buds showed any sign of life.  They failed perhaps because the rootstocks were yet actively growing.

At the same time, I also did six whip and tongue grafting of Asian pears (cutting also stored for couple of months in the frig prior) on dormant rootstocks.  They all took and have been quite thriving (except one, which I mowed over with a lawn mower:( ).

BTW, this was my first grafting exercise.  I will try tongue and whip on the figs again come next spring.

Good luck on your grafting and please update on your progress later.

Bill,

Fig trees are more difficult to graft than apples and pears. Not in the sense the technique is more difficult, but they are much more sensible to humidity loss.

They have to be well protected during the first weeks. I use perforated bread paper bags and aluminium foil for the whip and tongue and parafilm and aluminum foil for chip budding. When they begin showing leaves i remove the aluminum foil but leave the paper bag for a while.

The first year i tried, before i did that, all my fig grafts failed. Now i have percentages of 80-85% (whip and tongue) and 70-75% (chip budding) and the ones that failed are mostly from cuttings that are in bad shape to start with.

I also believe that t-buds in figs are more prone to fail than chip-buds. I use t-bus mainly in peaches and plums.

Rio,

You can graft throughout the whole season. The growing flow of sap doesn't have to be a problem.

As i mentioned in another thread you just have to make a few superficial cuts below the point of the graft. 

The cuts should be superficial but deep enough to reach the vascular tissues. This allow for the excessive sap to escape the branch you are going to graft. 

You can do that some time before the graft if the tree has a great flow of sap or minutes before, if the flow is medium. This avoids the drowning of the graft. 

This season i did grafts in March, April, May, early June, late August, September and (for the first time), October. These last one's i will have to check next week, but even the September one's took. I just avoided the hot days of July and August.

Curious thing... Sometimes the chips begin developing in weeks and sometimes they take but keep dormant for several months. I even had chips that i thought were dead and after more than a year they began developing.

Here's a chip grafted about a month ago:



And here's one grafted in June:






And this one was grafted in August 2015. To my surprise last week it has awaken from it's dormancy:



To be fair this last one was grafted to very old wood that had been cut down and the fig trees are very quick to take sap from a zone that has no leafs.

A few more photos of different types of grafts here - Grafts 2015_2016

Thank you Jaime
Nice job and it sure is good to see the result,s gives me confidence to try it your ways.
Allthough the season here is different I can manage to calculate the difference so it is about the same equivalence.
I'm confident it will work with all the information provided by you.
Thank you again.
Best wishes

You're welcome.

If you adapt to your region and protect well your attempts you should be fine. 

As i said before, I've learned that important lesson the hard way. Then i saw a video of a guy in Palestine doing one of the worst grafting jobs i ever saw (rough cuts, poor alignment of cambium, etc), but he protected his fig grafts like i never did. It's probably the most important part of the success of grafting figs.

Here's the video - Grafting figs in Palestine

Best of luck for your grafts.

Jaime,

That's an amazing video, and the guy does a lot of the same things
that I do, except I cut off the corners of the bags for ventilation. I
don't know his success rate, but I believe it has to do with the length of the
cuttings, and how he shoved them down as deeply as he could into the
very long cuts that he made into the host branch. I've never seen anyone use
pruning shears to make cuts into the host branch. His method allows for maximum
cambrium coverage, which makes a lot of sense. It's unusual for someone to send
you cuttings that long.  It also makes it possible for him to be as rough
as he was in covering the graft with grocery bags and then paper bags. Since they're
so deep, he doesn't have to worry about misalignment. I wonder how long he leaves
the bags on the graft.  Thanks for posting the video.

Ray

Hi Francisco.
The man has the odes on his side, well estabillished inground trees. 
Here the trees are in pots and overwinter for 6 full months.
It is safe to assume they come out of dormancy in a less than ideal shape so, it is hard to decide to take chances like that.
The grafts could take but, if not well aligned, I guess the healing process would not take place completly  before the end of the short season.
I might try it on one graft though.

 

I also noticed that his root stock was totally dormant, which is unusual in my experience.
I wonder, if he uses this method with other fruits too.  

And thank you everybody for the usefull coments.
Best wishes to you all

It would simplify grafting a lot (for me) if all I had to do was get some tiny amount of cambium contact. I spend considerable effort to try and get perfect matches along most of the cambiums in my whip/tongue grafts. It's easier to just angle the scion so that contact is made at some point. It's hard to believe that a tiny amount of intersecting contact is as good as a lot of contact but maybe it works out the same. Anybody ever experiment with crossing contact in figs?