Being new to rooting cutting last year I set out on a new adventure of rooting fig cutting indoors with homemade LED growing shelves I had built to grow strawberries indoors the previous year. I am a reader and proud of that fact, so to research a new project I spent many hours reading about rooting methods. I tried many and found what worked for me and am now confident in getting an 80-90% success rate.
To not go broke I also looked at where to get inexpensive cutting to learn what works for me. But the purpose of this post is to make others aware of the wonderful world of "unknowns". I have also become good at creating unknowns by losing tags on cuttings!
On Ebay you will currently find several real deals on cuttings on such gems as "Louisiana Brown", "Louisiana Yellow", "Ashland Unknown" and I have some I have named such as "Irish Bayou Yellow" (New Orleans) and many others. You can also find bundles of 20 or more cutting of the more common Celeste and Brown Turkey figs. So in reality you can find cutting for less than $1.00 a cutting. After all the failures I had in learning what works for me and my environment I still have probably 25 unknown plants now.
So what do you do with your "experiments"? Sell them in your local newspapers or online listings for $5 each picked up. Give them away, I have a fondness for Celeste figs from childhood so I like to give them to friends and neighbors because I know at least in the mid and Gulf south they will be great performers and tasty figs. If you offer free trees to your friends and neighbors it is good to offer to help select a location and plant the tree you will get more takers. Many people have had bad experiences planting things and getting them to grow before so help will go a long way in spreading the wealth!
As to selling the plants and shipping them I am not sure there will be much of a market for unknowns or the more common types to make it worth the time and effort to ship. Become "johnny" fig tree and plant them in common areas like powerline easements, along rivers and streams.
The real purpose of learning how to root figs is to enable you to propagate the more expensive and rare figs without going broke. But experiment to find what works for you and I am sure you will find a simple method that suits you. But I caution you it is addicting to hatch your own and baby them into productive trees so you will find yourself with lots of "babies" to find homes for.
Random things I have found
The method of planting the whole cutting does produce better first year plants in growth but my success rate was only about 30% either indoors or out. So that was a no go for me.
Rooting cuttings outdoors was about 50% successful for me. The constant changes in temperature and moisture levels were the problem.
Indoors works best for me as it is a constant routine, controlled temp, humidity, light and watering is the key here for me.
Rooting hormones did not to my eyes make a difference with my cuttings.
Yes, I have fought the little flies, and fought and fought......and finally turned to chemical warfare. Once every two weeks a very diluted liquid Sevin is added to the water/fertilizer mix. As they are years away from fruit production any residue will be long gone. This is also what I used in my garden for my Raspberries and Blackberries to combat the grubs and root eater that will devour plants in E. TN by pouring a Sevin solution on the root areas in the spring. There are many organic methods available but I did not find any as easy or effective for me another one of the many things we have to deal with when you do cuttings.
There is no right or wrong way to root cuttings, what works for one may not work so well for others, so if you are new to this make friends with the "unknowns" and learn what works for you then pass them along and maybe make new fig nuts!