Hey all,

Have been reading this forum for a few months before joining and have learned a lot from all of the useful information all the forum members brought to share with the fig community. Thank you all, the short time spent interacting with members has been marked by generosity and encouragement.

I have been collecting other cuttings to root out this winter from forum members and will be looking out for any future cuttings that pop up for sale, trade, or postage. Soliciting cuttings comes with an unspoken acknowledgment that the grower try with care to coax life from the sticks and promote the new life diligently, continuing the line and spreading the reach of the fruits. That said, a certain amount of guilt abounds when I stare at the poor moldy cuttings in the bag here on my kitchen table, hoping that all is not lost.

All of my trees are young and are enduring their first winter dormancy in large pots outside, wrapped with burlap and paper bags sitting under a canvas tarp on side of our building. Four of the seven plants were large enough to yield 2 cuttings each this year. I am experimenting with those cuttings now, so if you recently sold or traded me some, fear not, yours will not meet the same fate as all the kinks will have been worked out this time around. Right?

So, initially these poor cuttings were thrown into zipper slide ziplock bags with a fair amount of soggy sphagnum moss and left near enough a base board heater to keep warm. That started a rot situation on the bottom of the cuttings that were wrapped in the wet moss. Too wet, too hot. Catching that early enough, transferred the cuttings to moist newspaper at room temp. But now I am having a molding issue that is worrying me. I've read that cuttings can be tough and come back from maltreatment, so I am approaching the community for guidance as to what to do next.

I've seen some success with bleach solutions talked about here. Should that be the first thing to try? I'm open to any suggestions or techniques to get them through to the cupping stage and on. Thanks in advance and appreciate the feedback!


Kyle in RI

Welcome Kyle! This is my first season in the Forum, and I share your sentiments. 

Once they get that shriveled, "sunken in" look in the bark, I would presume they're goners (like your middle pic). The others might be salvaged with antibacterial soap or a light bleach solution. If you have enough nodes to spare, I would recut the ends to try to remove any wood that might have absorbed spores....otherwise the mold will travel inside the stem and kill it from within. Some members have suggested wrapping enough newspaper around the cuttings so that it never touches the plastic baggy. Personally, I stand the bag upright in a big mason jar so they aren't sitting in or on water. Seems to help. I would probably also discard or sterilize the baggies, newspaper, or anything else contaminated with the mold spores to reduce re-contamination.

Best of luck!

PS> Did you use rooting hormone? I ask because my first experiment rooting cuttings with powdered hormone made the cutting shrivel/rot like your middle pic.

Kyle it doesn't look good, hopefully you can save one, What I do, if I have enough of a variety, I just trash them and start over....if it was a Black Madiera, I would do everything possible to save......Good Luck and hopefully you will get a lot of cuttings this year and next to get your success rate up.

Ok, yup. Pretty desiccated. I cut into one and saw it was still green but I suspect that it is fully colonized by the fungi. Would you say that that is not pith on the interior? Looks like the one that is going to get a second chance are the Brown Turkeys (wop wop). Reco, did you mean like this? Put the cuttings in damp paper towels after washing them and stood that in a mason jar, bottoms up, then bagged? Thinking maybe of the sphagnum in a plastic container method I've seen on New England Gardeners YouTube videos. Listen, I got into baking bread a few years ago and was over thinking that as well. Humans have been doing this for eons, why am I so arrogant to think I know better? Ha, anyway, more comments are welcome!

Dang ol' Brown Turkeys! Well, maybe you'll have a few champion rootstocks should you choose to try your hand at grafting...  :)

BTW I put mine in the bag first then sit in jar; then try to sort of suspend the cutting in the jar so that the bottom end isn't touching the bottom of the bag where moisture collects. Sideways is fine, too...main thing being not to let the end sit in water. The end needs to have airflow around it to harden/heal over enough that it doesn't rot out later. Let the ambient humidity in the bag do the work.  Sphag bins work great, too. Just wring the sphag out REALLY well. It should look rehydrated rather than soggy. Otherwise your cuttings will waterlog and rot out.

Too much water in the sphagnum.
Folks around here call it "too much love"!

You have to squeeze as much water out of the sphagnum as possible, then fluff up half of it, line the bottom of a (bleached and washed) plastic bin. Cut the bottoms of the cuttings to within 1/4" of a node, give the bark 2 or three scrapes, lay the cuttings in the bed, and cover them with the other half of the sphagnum. Every 3 days or so, take the cuttings out, air out the bin by fluffing up the sphagnum again, adding water only if it has dried up.

How far are you from the CT border?
If you're close enough, or willing to take a drive to the Lyme area, I have some extras.
Welcome to the forum.

Kyle,

I think your the Kyle that stopped by my place and picked up a few small trees? I have a hoop house in the back and we talked about family farm in NY?

Anyway, yes, way too much moisture. If your in the RI area, I have some VDB cuttings I can share with you, along with some other stuff in the shed I haven't cut back yet. Just send me a PM if interested.

Hi Kyle, welcome to the group.
I like the way you wrote your post, are you some sort of a writer? Anyway, welcome!

take the cutting out. dry it. see if there is any rotten part. if so cut that end off. once dried, clean with anti-bacteria soap. wrap in barely moist paper towel, or newspaper, or s. moss. barely moist, not soggy or wet, place in siploc bag and monitor daily. if the bark start to peel off, it's done. can't save that one. 

Hi Kyle,

Nice to meet you! This is my first season as well so I understand the trials. Thankfully members have given me great advice and I have been able to root every cutting with this method I use so far. I would suggest watching New England Gardening fig playlist on YouTube. He shows his success and failures both which are good to learn from. I use sphagnum moss in shoe boxes as well. You can get these for 99 cents each and are found in the storage isle at home depot. while you are there I would also pick up vermiculite, perlite, and a fast draining planting soil. also a spray water bottle which can be found in the cleaning isle. This will ensure you have everything minus the clear plastic cups ready to go once roots form. I will take the moss and soak it shortly in one storage container and then squeeze ever drop possible out before putting the moss in another container. I use slightly warm water. Then if it still feels really wet either let it air dry some or add dry moss. After that put your cuttings in. I bury mine in the moss about half way(others will leave on top). Put lid on. Wrap container in black trash bag and sit on top of fridge or inside a TV table or warm closet. Not hot but warm. You can check every day, twice a day, or a couple times a week. Once you get a few good roots put them in cups and you should be good to go. No mold ever for me and 110% success. 110 because a lot of times I put one cutting in and roots come out in two places so I cut in half and get two fig cuttings rooted! Soon you will have more rooted cuttings than you know what to do with!

Pics attached

Thanks everybody! Yeah it was a little disappointing having to discard a few of the worse ones, and I bet some were salvageable, but being a test run I'm allowing failure. Mike in RI! I was hoping we would run into each other again! Yup, the guy you sold his first figs to has caught the bug. I also was lucky enough to pick up a few more from Robert Harper in Connecticut. You both really should be ashamed of yourselves for fanning this spark of affection. The sphag container method looks like something more my speed as the baggy method seems to trap too much condensation in bad spots. But, we all know both methods work, it's just what will consistently work for me? The ideas listed here and on the forum are great tools to take the second attempt to success. 

Ruuting - I'm never too far away for a nice drive, Lyme is about 45 minutes on 95 for me. Thank you for the offer, I'm interested!

Norhayati - No, not a writer, but a long childhood of book reading gave me mastery of printed prose.

RIMike- Heck yes I want those VdB cuttings! It's just I've killed anything to trade you... Spring's coming!

Thanks again everybody! I hope that this forum continues to form into a physical social network of friends and mentors for me as many here are already shaping my knowledge of fig cultivation.

Here is a list of what I am working with - Adriatic JH, RdB, Ukn Brooklyn White, Corleone, Sal's EL, MB vs, Brown Turkey (Bayernfeige?)

hang in there with your cuttings.  Last year I had very low success in rooting cuttings.  This year almost everything has rooted although I lost a couple of plants due to under watering. I had 4 cuttings go moldy on me but 3 of the 4 have since rooted and leafed out nicely.  I used a weak bleach solution on a Q-tip to clean the cutting and rinse it (they were rooting in cups inside a rooting chamber using a perlite/potting soil mix) I opened the top to allow more air to circulate around the cuttings for a few hours each day. Figs are more resilient than we think and many will respond to a second chance.  Also, welcome to the forum. You will find lots of friends in the group as well as tons of good information which will improve your rooting skills dramatically. Very hard not to want to start growing hundreds of varieties after seeing  pictures of all the fantastic figs different members are growing.  Know I started a lot of new varieties this year and am pretty sure I will continue to do so for several years to come.

Well, I put in for an order of UC Davis cuttings that will probably be for Spring 2015, so I need to get ready for the big leagues!

Welcome!  Best of luck.  If the sphagnum doesn't work for you you can try Jon's new bag method.  I use agricultural perlite.

Read this page first then click on the new alternative method at the top.