I was away from home for 6 weeks and I had all my figs on drip irrigation. I had double/triple of the same cultivar so I decided to put a tray about 2" tall under 3 of them so they will have water between watering times.
To my surprise those 3 grew much taller than their peers 
Here are the pics for the 3 cultivars ,the ones on the left were sitting in the tray

The brunch for the one on the left, grew side ways but is much bigger than his peer
   

Congratulations on a successful experiment!  Getting so big you might have to put them in bigger pots!

Suzi

So some constant bottom watering caused greater growth for you? Is your drip irrigator on a timer? What if you had constant drip irrigation? Can we assume they were all in the same soil?  Any fertilizer during this period?

I've found in my limited experience that figs love a ton of water too.

My sip figs seem to be growing about a foot or so a month and I even had to top water some to keep them from drooping.

My first year plants from cuttings in November are soaking up about 1.33 gallons of water each a week at this point.

Yes, Dale it seems that constant water on the bottom was making them grow faster. All of them had the same soil and they were on a timer about 20 min 3 times a week. There were no fertilization while i was away, nobody attended to them. I fertilized them when I left. All the others who were only on drip irrigation did not grow at all or just a little. I could not have constant drip irrigation due to the drought condition in California. I was happy all of them survived.

I noticed that i have one of my syrian figs in a regular pot and one in a doller general pot that you fill with water from the side. It is way bigger.

Hi figaritta,

Good photos and an interesting result with such a large difference in growth.

Theses pots look quite small and likely to dry up quickly in a hot environment. They would definitely not last 3 days between waterings over here. Perhaps the soil has become hydrophobic? Or perhaps it is not the ideal mix for your watering regime. Adding some water retaining ingredients may lead to a different result.

The risk with saucers is if they don't dry up between waterings they may promote an environment for root rot and similar problems.

It would be very interesting to try saucers of different volumes to find out how much water is the optimum.

Mic, the pots are one gallon . I did not want to transplant to a larger pot before i left. It would have been to early. I lost quite a few cuttings before i left transplanting them too soon. I was happy they survived.
When i came home i took them out of the tray. I guess that for a limited amount of time it is ok to have constant water on the bottom.

Thank you for the results, Pat. I am setting up the outer sleeves for an ebb and flow watering system for my trees. I have been considering putting the drain slighly above the bottom of the inner container so the growing mix is always sitting in 1/4-1/2 inch of nutrient solution. My growing mix is quite fast, so I do not think this will raise my water table too much.

Any thoughts?

I did a similar experiment last year with the same result.  I had seven hundred 3 gallon figs that I was hand watering with a hose 1 time a day, taking about 4 hours to complete watering.  I thought what if I put them in trays of water 2 inches deep 1.3 gallons of water per tray.  I put half of them in trays and left the other half.  Besides saving 2 hours of watering time, their growth exploded, the ones in trays grew 2x faster then the ones not in trays.  A few of them grew 2ft in a month!

Figarita,

Yes, I think so too. I suspect I have been under watering as well. Looking forward to spring to try this out as a simple alternative to a SIP.

Figgysid,

700!! That's a serious addiction you've got there!

How many pots per tray? Did the trays dry up between waterings?