I'm in the process of rooting some portugueses varieties (mostly unknow fig varieties collected in the Northern part of the country)

I received more than 20 fig varieties to test and i didn't had the space to root them all at home as i normally do.

So i decided to place them in an improvised greenhouse i have ((by the end of February), with just some clonex added to each cutting and leave them to their fortune.

 

A week ago i took the following photo:


Almost all the cuttings have leafs and seem healthy (and some have figs i have to remove)

Meanwhile some of my other precious cuttings, that i am babysitting with coco coir, controlled temperature and so on, are fighting gnats, and several other problems - i even lost some of them.

In the future, if i receive enough material some of my rooting will be definitely done the simpler way...

Some more photos:
    

Is there some magic to rooting Inchário Branco?
I've tried simple: putting the cuttings in a sphagnum moss box at eighty degrees F since the first part of February. Nothing.
I've tried not so simple: putting them in cups of 50 coir/50 perilite, some with rooting hormone, bottom heat. Nothing. Most still have a little green dot of a bud to say they are still alive. But there are still no sign of roots on all five cuttings. It's the slowest to root of all my cuttings this year. 
An Inchário Preto cutting started at the same time rooted quickly, leafed out and now has moved up to a one gallon pot.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.  

Mara,

Funny that you should say that. I received both Inchário Branco and Preto as cuttings last year thanks to a generous member of this forum.

Inchário Branco rooted in plain soil with some rooting hormone and controlled temperature without any problem and has grown fast. I did not managed to root any of the Inchário Preto cuttings (both cuttings failed in the same conditions).

In February (Inchário Branco in the center):



In September (the one on the right)
 

I had a third cutting of Inchário Branco that i grafted (whip and tongue method). It was successful and has grown very well. In a couple of months it even had figs:
 

I received some green cuttings of Inchario Preto in August for a new try.

I grafted a few buds (chip budding method) and waited. Finally, last month the grafts started to wake up:

well done. Congrats. Hope you keep posting pictures and report on figs in Portugal

Thanks, Paul.

When i have more information on these northern varieties i will post them. I received some pictures of some of them and they seem very interesting and promising.
    

You've done some great work there. I tried sticking a cutting into the dirt last fall and it's still there just like it was then. 
The grafting is amazing too. I never thought of that for Inchário Branco but perhaps I could practice a while and try it next year.

Mara,

I have managed to save several varieties i received when the cuttings did not root or died because of the grafts.
Now, with the really precious one's i always graft, at least a couple of chip buds, to secure the variety. Its an easy graft to do (i may publish a few photos or a small video on how to do it, but there is plenty of information on the web).

You just need to protect it well for several weeks, so it doesn't dry out. If it takes, even if it seems a bit dried up and bad looking, they tend to break a new bud in the next spring.

The one in the next photo is a chip from Inchario Branco. It was grafted in March of 2015 and i thought it was dead. It seemed totally dried but the cambiums where fused so i left it alone. Last month, one year later, it's showing a new bud:

 

 

Thanks for sharing the pictures of those great grafts. It's so nice to see successful ones for a change. I'll have to sharpen my grafting knife and give it another try. 
One of my Inchário Branco cuttings was showing a few roots tonight for the first time, so there's still hope. One of the buds on another turned out to be a baby fig, so it's on the decline. One is left with a last green bud. I'm giving them bottom heat at night and perhaps that will make a difference. 

Mara,

Those Inchário Branco that i have rooted, had bottom heat during the whole process.

I am rooting a Violeta cutting (the last i have) and the only bud turn out to be a fig also.

 

But i left it alone and it's beginning to show a little bud on the side of the fig.
 
I will wait a while to remove the fig. At least until the leaf bud breaks.

It happened the same with a Bathenjani cutting i was rooting.

 

 

 With this one i already removed the fig.

Best of luck with your cuttings.

Update - Due to a health problem i had to leave the cuttings on the ground longer that was intended.

Last month they where like this - it will be quite a task removing them from the ground:
 

Meanwhile, we had a couple of very high temperature weeks and they needed to be up potted badly as they are suffering with the heat, in this improvised greenhouse.
I hope i can do that this week. I have several of each variety so, with luck, i may be able to preserve all of them.

That's a lot of digging and potting to do! lol Thanks for the pictures and I look forward to seeing how this ends.

I went back to my notes and i placed 64 cuttings in the ground of 29 varieties.

Even if a few didn't make it (not many at first glance), that's a lot of pots, appart from the careful digging to preserve the roots.
I will try to post some pictures when i am done.

Great job! Maybe I should also try rooting the cuttings straight into the ground. Now you will need a lot of nursery pots for your little trees :-)

I sure do, Timo. I may even have to resort to potting plastic bags for some at this stage.

And i have to move quickly or i will risk loosing many of them. I checked them now (almost 4 weeks since the last photo) and the situation is worse.
I have been away (health problems) and even with the automated sprinkler system, they are suffering bad from all the intense heat and neglect. Some are showing signs of heat stress, lack of nutrients, rust and some fmv (that many fig trees only show when they are stressed)

But i think they will bounce back soon enough in new individual pots with some attention and care.

 
The bottom line is, they are still alive. Many of my other rooting cuttings in pots, died a couple of months ago, very quickly, with only some minor neglect.
This "do nothing" system, directly into the ground, takes them a bit longer to root, and also has a few problems (like fighting snails in the first months) but it seems much more forgiving with even gross errors. In this conditions, full sun, we can't be fooled by the first leafs, even a couple of months down the road. I uprooted some cuttings with 2 months in the ground that seemed very healthy and had many leaves and there was not a single root, so patience is a must.

 Now, if only we had the confidence and boldness to apply it to some of our most precious and hard to get varieties.

Update on the Inchario Branco graft that was dormant for a year (grafted in March 2015 and woke up with a new bud in March 2016) .
Here it is in July 2016 (in the center of next photo):

 

I believe while trying to root figs indoors under controlled conditions we sometimes create our own problems.  There is no balance and conditions often favor the negative microbes, so we lose cuttings.  In nature there is balance, favoring the beneficial microbes, so the cuttings live.

This year, starting in Winter I set all my cuttings into one gallon root pouch grow bags, outside on the patio and porch, in 100% compost straight from the compost pile that was made from wood chips and leaf for three years.  It was full of all kinds of bugs and worms.  Some rotted but still i ended up about 75% successful and have given away many of the trees from it.

Yes even Black Madeira and Galicia Negra wintered on the front porch.  I gave them no special protection and be it they were slower to take off than some of the others, they did finally take off.

Here is an idea you might want to try for your in-ground cuttings.  Air layer at ground level with open top containers. Just set them around the stems and water as you would normally.  They will root well very quickly and you should be able to remove them in a few weeks.   

   

Thanks for the suggestions and tips, Charlie.

I agree with you. In natural soil we have less chances of unbalance regarding negative biotic factors. Also, many sterile conditions we try to implement at home to avoid fungus and other problems don't give plants the resistance they need when up potting and we end up loosing some in that transition.

Last year i have also rooted a few cuttings directly on the ground in late winter. They took forever to root, but soon they began developing very well, seemed more healthier and even surpassed the one's rooted at home by mid summer.

That's a good tip regarding the air layers at ground level. This time i probably won't be able to use it, because i have to move quickly removing the plants. The heat wave we are having is so intense (and unusual for this location) that in the improvised greenhouse, the plants are "cooking" even with shading (i almost covered the entire greenhouse with shade mesh). With all the watering i have to give them to survive the heat, the fungus problem inside this confined space is also beginning to became a big problem.

I hope to be able to solve this problem in the next few days.

Great thread guys very informative.

Have you guys tried using a hydro cloner to root these difficult figs. I used it last winter with mixed results, however, several others swear by the process. I'm still working out the "bugs".

No i haven't, Dave. But it does seem an interesting option. At least no more gnats during the rooting process, but that's not my main problem. My cuttings root very well in coco coir without gnats or fungus.
The problem is adapting them to the soil mix afterwards. This year i lost many in that transition, so i have to change my method.

As i have said before, with difficult to obtain varieties, i now resort to grafting one of the cuttings. I am that confident in grafting figs (much more than rooting them). 

So, now, when i receive a hard to get variety, I always graft one of the cuttings to be on the safe side. 

Before making the first cut toward the base, i remove a chip with the last bud in that area and i do a Chip Budding graft with it. Then i proceed with the cut and do a Whip and Tongue graft.

That way, even a very small cutting gives me 2 grafts. They are my best backup and it is working like a charm. I have many occasions where i failed to root the other cuttings (like with some rare Turkish one) and the grafts were successful so i didn't loose the variety.

For instance in March i received a single cutting of Black Bursa. It was so small and fragile that i decided not to root it and instead i made 2 grafts (one chip and one whip and tongue). I had success with both. The chip was much more slow to develop (it stood still during several months), but the other, only 4 months after the graft, is more than 6'' tall.

A sequence of photos of the whip and tongue graft - since April when i removed the protection until now:

    

And some of the Chip Bud graft (bud that was removed from the same cutting as i explained above). Oddly, this chip took but stood still since April until June when he began developing.
This situation is not very common. When they take they begin developing in less than a month or they stay dormant until next season:

      

 

Hi Jaime

Congratulations

This is a great post! very well illustrated with great pictures.
A solid contribution  to the art of propagating plants.

Understanding and practicing budding and grafting is as important as learning the various ways of rooting the more or less stubborn scions.

Francisco
Portugal

Thanks, Francisco.

A couple of years ago, my first attempts at grafting figs failed miserably. I used to do it like apples or pears and fig grafts are much more sensible to loss of humidity from the scion, so they all failed.

The "secret" is protecting the grafts against dehydration. I saw a video of a guy in Palestine grafting some fig trees. He was opening the scions with pruning shears! and doing some cleft grafts.
One of the worst jobs in grafting i ever saw. He even tied the grafts with simple plastic strips from plastic bags instead of the more modern materials we now have.

But then, he placed a plastic bag over the graft and tied it with the most care. And placed another paper bag over the plastic one and tied it tightly also. That video made me think about protecting my fig grafts much better.

Axier, that was one of the guys that i read with most interest in this forum, several years ago, was grafting figs at the time, but used mainly Chip Bud grafting.
He even recommended not using Cleft or Whip and Tongue because, according to professional grafters he had spoken to, it had a very low percentage of success. Sometimes even 0%!

Next year i tried a few Chip Bud grafts and more than 60% were successful. But i also tried 6 Whip and Tongue in March, April and even June. I protected them well for at least a month with paper envelopes - the kind that has a plastic bubbly interior.
They all!! where successful. So, now, when i need to secure a particular fig variety i received, my first bet is grafting.

If you remember, several months ago you sent me a couple of cuttings of Sofeno Preto. I began rooting one with coco coir. It took some time, but the roots developed well. Unfortunately, when i placed it in a soil mix it began to wither and died quickly, despite all my efforts. The same happened to lots of precious other varieties i received. I blame it on the coco coir (too much of it went stuck to the roots and when i watered the soil mix, it acted as a sponge and the humidity excess killed the roots.)

At the time i had all these cuttings (mentioned in the first post) in my improvised greenhouse, apparently doing very well, so i decided to place all my up potted surviving and remaining refrigerated cuttings in the same conditions and use the "rooting directly in soil" approach.

Here a photo of this "ALL IN" move directly to soil with all my remaining and surviving cuttings - Like in a big poker game with high stakes, i didn't sleep for a few days...



It went well for most of the refrigerated cuttings, that are now in pots doing fine. Almost all the cuttings that had been in the coco coir before, died.



 

But some of the refrigerated ones seemed reluctant. A few showed one or two tiny green buds, but with no development for several weeks.

I dug up a few of those and they had no roots - some 2 months after going directly to the soil.
These stubborn varieties, that develop roots more slowly, were not impressed with the rooting in soil approach.

One of them was the remaining Sofeno Preto cutting. Two green buds since the start, but no movement for 2 months.
It seemed frozen in time. Here's a photo in late March:

 

Here's another photo in late April:




I removed it from the soil and there was not one root in site and the 2 green buds where beginning to turn brown)
Without other options and determined not to loose this precious variety, i decided to graft it, even after 2 months in the soil (since March until May).

I removed a bottom chip with a dormant bud and grafted it. With the rest of the cutting i did a whip and tongue.

It was a desperate move but, 4 weeks after the graft (done in May/7), i opened the paper bag and was rewarded with the site of small leafs appearing.
Here it is, one month after the graft (June/6).

 

I kept the protection and shade for another few weeks and the graft is doing fine.
Even the FMV it showed in all the leaves in the first month with all the stress it suffered, is much better now. 

In June/30:
 

Here's a recent photo:

 
  
The chip also took but is still dormant - it may wake up next season.

So, to sum up, you are completely right. Without some grafting experience, this cutting would be inevitably lost.

I now regret insisting on rooting some of the others varieties that i ended up loosing (4 or 5) - if i had grafted them, even only a small chip, i probably would now have a "backup".

Every fig enthusiast should consider adding grafting to their bag of tricks.


       
  

Update on removing my cuttings from the ground...

I thought it would be more difficult to do it. Due to the problems i mentioned before, the cuttings where too much time on the ground. Being too close to each other there was a possibility of the roots being all entangled and almost impossible to remove without heavy damage. 

I was able to remove the first row with some care and the next one's are easier. I'm digging laterally and then use a shovel to uplift the whole row.



The roots are not too deep and afterwards they separate easily.

 

 

I will probably finish the job tomorrow.

There are some cuttings that dried up (probably due to the excessive heat in the greenhouse in the last few weeks) but not many and they were spares, so i think almost all the varieties are safe. 

Some of the plants are in bad shape from the heat, showing burned leaves and some rust, but they should bounce back in a few weeks.

 

All things considered, i think i can say that this method of rooting was a success and, with some improvements, it's a serious option to consider, in the future.


A few more photos:
  
             

I've been researching Portugal as a place for possible retirement in about 5 years. I've heard really very nice things about the people, country, food, climate, medical care etc. etc. etc. and the south coast in particular and hope to visit in the next year or so. Are you originally from Portugal? I like gardening and fishing and country living. Any area's near or on a river you'd recommend researching for a retired couple on a budget of about 1,700 euro's a month who love to garden? Loved seeing your pictures as well.

this was a wonderful thread and post