Yes, it's nice to track your cuttings' progress. Thanks for keeping us posted, and good luck figuring out how to root Hardy Chicago.

Welp, no leaf droop after spendign a night repotted in bins.  I guess that's high potential for 6 more trees to make it.

@Ken, I still have a log of HC I picked up from a figfriend in KY which hasn't gone south, along with two other pieces that look OK.  I just have two cuttings in particular that looked promising, but started looking as if they may be taking a dive the last day or two (droopy leaves, no root growth, etc.)

It could just be that they put on too much up top before putting anything on down below to support them.

I'm still amazed that some of these cuttings can literally put out a good 4"-5" of growth (via a shoot) while only having little hairs for roots, and sometimes nearly no roots at all.

Ok, here is a Sal Corleone I acquired this year.  It's going crazy.  It doesn't have a ton of roots, so I am not really sure how in the heck it's sustaining all of this growth.  There is a cluster as thick as a pencil coming out of a drain hole, but they're stumpy and short.

Here's a pic of the growth.

What size pot are you using when you are potting up from the little bags you are using?   I am a little torn about whether to use a smaller pot first then going to a bigger one (to try and cut down on losing it since i've had trouble with overwatering etc at times). 

As an aside, I tried using small snack size ziploc bags and trimmed the side and the other side with the drainage holes and it's been pretty good.   Definitely like the nice bags you and Jon and the others are using but my family would think I'm even more bonkers than I am now about the whole fig craze:).

@Eun, I am jumping straight from these baggies to a 1-gallon (about 8"tall with a 6.5" mouth or something).

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Not sure if it was covered in an earlier post, but where are/did you keep them, once they were bagged and bin'nd?  outside, inside, what type of temperature?

Nice job!

After bagging, inside in bins, indirect sunlight, room temp (76ish).

Once potted, in the bins with lid cracked for 2 days, then lid off for a week, and that is about where I am now.

I had to switch it up. Out of town last two days, leaving again for 5 more. I lost two bagged cuttings while out two days, hope I don't come home to a disaster this weekend.

I returned from a 2-day trip to Florida immediately followed by another 5-day trip to Florida and just looked over things after 7 days away. I left my bins 90% closed during the trips to help prevent moisture escape.

Two 1-gal transplants lost all leaves due to leaf drop, I am not convinced they are dead though.

I trashed five cuttings (this includes the two previously mentioned) that were desiccated or on the verge of root death: 

1 x  Black Mission
1 x Hardy Chicago
1 x Dotatto
2 x unkown from Bari, Italy

Tally:  Started with 66.  21 repotted.  5 trashed.  40 still rooting.

I have backups of each that are doing well, so I am not overly worried, just wanting to accurately report my losses (for future reference... this thread is my notepad "scoreboard" for now).

I have been invaded by our enemy, fungus gnats! It's not great but it's not overwhelming yet either. One bin with cuttings is worse than the other.

Big surprise for this week was two Grantham Royal cuttings that put on some nice big spaghetti roots in the last seven days! I thought they were going to fizzle, similar to how my UCD St Jean, Monstueuse and Calvert cuttings at looking.

I would take pics, but went swimming with my BlackBerry this weekend.... maybe tomorrow if I get a new smartphone?

HAHA....Smartphone?

When you do extremely dumb s&$@! like me, you require a phone with some smarts. Lord knows something or someone needs to think for me sometimes! ;)

Has anyone else had a lot of FMV on their UCD cuttings this year?  This is the only year I have ordered from them and I notice a lot have heavy infections, the worst are DiRedo, UCR 291, White Genoa, VdB, and surprisingly the Black Maderia has very little if any.

My UCD Black Ischia is heavily, heavily afflicted by FMV.  It seems like I can't get half of my UCD cuttings to do much this year, to be honest. 

The only UCD cuttings I have which are kicking ass is my Black Ischia and Hative de Argentile.  The HdA was pretty explosive with roots, way more than last year's batch.  BI was explosive on one, and two weeks later, the other is catching up.

Both the HdA and BI from UCD are showing the early young-start traits of FMV.  I had the same experience with last years' cuttings also, but they're putting on a might fine bit of growth this year.  So, I propose that maybe FMV is most noticeable in newly rooted cuttings, and affects the growth of varieties much less as they are more and more established.

UPDATE 4/25 (43 days after bagging cuttings with no roots, freshly cleaned)

Here's a pictorial update of where I am right now in my rooting.  I will be repotting the five cuttings shown below during the week or this weekend.

TALLY:  Started with 66 cuttings.  21 are transplanted.  40 are still rooting in baggies.  5 were thrown away (7.5% loss so far).  2 transplants are looking bad.  2 more bagged cuttings are a footstep away from the garbage can.

Out of the 21 cuttings I've transferred to 1gal pots.  4 of them (1st pic below) have no leaves.  Two have limp green stems (looks like bad news), two of them still have not broken bud yet (but they had great roots on transfer, I'm optimistic).
 
As indicated in the last post, 5 bagged cuttings went to the trash this week after what I felt were signs indicative of failure. 

Pics are worth a thousand words, so ........

Here are my 21 transplants so far - most have been in 1gal pots for 2-3 weeks now



Here are the remaining 40 cuttings.  In the 2nd picture, inside the bottom-middle bin, the nearly leafless bucket contains five UCD cuttings St Jean and Calvert, which aren't doing so hot (one has a start, but none have roots).




 
And here are the more promising cuttings that have leaped in the last week, in no particular order....


Barnisotte [RW]


Brooklyn Dark



Grantham Royal #1



Grantham Royal #2




Hardy Chicago (fingers crossed this year!!!)



Hative de Argentile [UCD]

Jason those are looking real good. One question for you, do you find that you disturb the roots a lot when moving the cutting from the bags to the pots. The ones I rooted in the little bags did well but I didn't like handling the root that much. I have since gone back to rooting in paper towels and moving them to my inverted bottomless cup with potting mix which means when I move them up to 1 gallon pots the roots are not disturbed. I have not lost any after moving them since I've done this.
"gene"

On average, it's about the same win/loss ratio for me.

The problem I had with baggies and paper towels is something you've mentioned in another thread recently - the roots tend to stick to paper towels if you fail to see them starting, then you rip them off when transferring to cups. If I left fragments of paper towel, I risked mold on the roots. That was way more invasive for me than letting excess perlite fall away and carefully filling soil around the root mass.

If you think about it, the method I'm using here is no more invasive than the baggie, maybe less - the cutting is still being transferred out of a bag into a pot when it has young roots. The major difference is, the roots are better developed with this method and there is no intermediate cup involved, we go straight to 1 gallon. It is perfectly fine if the perlite sticks to the roots, and perlite is sterile so it won't mold or rot the roots if left intact like paper towels.

I have had zero issues with roots sticking to baggies using this method, for what it's worth. I should take video of the transfer to show how simple it is.

This has probably already been asked but where do you get those bags from?  And what is the advantage of using bags over plant pots?

See Rooting in a bag, new style for info on the baggies, part# S-1331 @ Uline

"The second important principle to remember is this: roots and leaves have no relationship to each other. If you take a dozen cuttings from the same tree and grow them in the same rooting media in the same pot-as close to identical nature and nurture as you can get-some cuttings will grow roots, some will grow leaves, and some will grow both.  You cannot presume root development from observing leaf development. This is why I use clear cups; they allow me to actually see whether roots are developing."

All that spaghetti and no spaghetti sauce?! looking really good, Jason. Guess I won't have to send you one of my Hardy Chicagos now!

I transplanted 6 cuttings today, many pictured above, then I ran out of potting mix :)

1 x Barnisotte [RW] (it's the one w/no leaves)
1 x Unknown Meridian
1 x Italian Honey
1 x Angelo's Dark
2 x Hardy Chicago

Tally:  Started with 66.  27 repotted so far.  5 trashed.  34 still rooting.

I transplanted the Barnisotte because the roots had tripled from the picture two posts up, I feel like no upper growth == less chance of transplant shock.

I trashed four more cuttings today due to dessication and mold (visibly dessicated, see pic).

1 x Calvert         (dessicated, rot & mold)
2 x Monstrueuse    (dessicated & rot)
1 x Dottato        (dessicated)

After tearing these open, the Monstrueuse, which were rough from the getgo, the bark smeared right off, and was saturated with fungus gnat maggots.  Great.

TALLY:  Started with 66 cuttings.  27 transplanted.  30 still rooting.  9 thrown away.  (13.6% loss so far)

Somehow, my numbers are screwed up in my tally.

Anyway, I transferred 10 cuttings today because they had some root development and I'm afraid they're not going to go any further in baggies.  I have 9 bagged cuttings remaining which aren't looking very promising (all the same varieties), which is unfortunate, I really wanted to have some luck with my Calvert from UCD.

Based on numbers above, I transferred some without documenting.  Right now I have 48 transferred, 9 cuttings discarded, 9 cuttings still rooting.

I will be trashing at least 6-8 more repotted trees in the coming 2-3 weeks.  The Atreano trees that looked so amazing earlier have taken a turn for the worse.  I pinched both of them; one produced no sap.  the other produced a considerable amount of sap.  The one that didn't produce sap is probably dead already, the other may be on the way (we will see).

Today I transferred:

1 x Italian Honey
2 x Tarantella
1 x Bailey UNK
1 x Ischia Black (UCD)
1 x Morley UNK
2 x Votata
1 x Bari UNK
1 x San Pietro

Here are some pics - I had my first case of mild transplant shock on the two with large leaves (Morley UNK & Bari UNK).  After sealing in a humid bin, the leaves are staying up, we will see what happens.

Here are some pics, with titles at the top.  I'm getting lazy and not shooting root evelopment, etc.  Sorry about that.

The ten baggies that got transferred today:


After transfer, note transplant shock on two plants, the roots were hair thin.


Blurry pic of my remaining 9 cuttings:

PS - I think one of the tricks to using this method is to transplant when rooting is active, but not very far along.  The trees that had the worst results after transplanting (death or leaf droop/drop) were the ones that had massive roots in the bottom of the bag or roots coming totally out of the baggies.

Interesting, but I'm so far along, I can't test the theory at this point.

I noticed the same thing, if there are lot's of roots expanding it is best pot up before they branch. If there are not many roots I have been letting them sit in the baggies much longer to harden their roots before potting up. Fat roots seem to create a channel, by pushing the plastic out, that other roots end up growing into as well, then they choke each other somehow.

I also have been withholding water after potting up and using moistened mix, been working great, thanks for the tip.

I guess this could be an argument for using much bigger chunky perlite so there are larger spaces for the roots to grow through, this way they don't need to shove up against the wall of the bag. 

I have noticed also that there are ridges created by fat roots pushing against the bag, and how all of the other roots seem to use the channels that makes.  When they all bunch together down the same channel, the cuttings seem to have a greater chance of failure - I believe I have lost BOTH Atreano cuttings pictured very early on in this thread due to that.  One is looking like it will be dead by end of week, the other one with the 8" shoot started going limp till I pinched the leaves off, then cut the shoot down to about 3"...everything firmed up again after pinching back to bare shoot, but I have yet to see if it will generate another shoot. 

Which brings me to another observation.  I have tried this pinching strategy with a couple of failing cutting when leaves and shoots are present, and it's worked in two cases (Atreano test is #3).  It seems pinching may be a way to combat drooping death (from transplant shock/root damage on transplant), assuming the drooping is not caused by rot.  We will see if the Atreano survives, if I go 3/3 on the trial, that's good enough for me to suggest it's a strong possibility that pinching has other purposes when cultivating cuttings as we all do.

With that said !

I had to move all of my plants today and put them in grow racks in the basement until I can build some shade on the south side of my house to acclimate them to the outdoors.  We're starting to hit temps up in the 90s this week.

Below are pictures of 5 trees I believe I'm about to lose:  A local Black Mission (don't care about it), Black Yugoslavian (have one more potential "good" backup), one of my Unknown R#, UCD Col de Dame (have a spare and another 1gal tree), and a Sal Corleone (have another potential "good" backup).

I tried using coarse perlite with very mixed results. It seems the cutting cannot absorb as much water due to the decreased contact with the perlite. But the ones that did root right away produced tight rootballs. The ones that didn't got pulled out of the bags because they were dessicating. I think a good mix of the two is promising, just coarse perlite would need much more water and I think that would lead to rot. I should also note that I have been using fine perlite, which looks a bit smaller than yours and has more of the channel effect visible.

I had similar success with pinching. At first I tried just removing leaves, but the fresh stems continued to wilt and killed the cuttings. Pinching back till a point where the wood is starting to harden has worked a couple of times for me, I have even stripped all growth from a cutting and cut rot off from the bottom to save one. Although the new roots and growth are much less than they were the first time.