My best/healthiest cutting in my second round was rooted in a Trader Joe's coffee canister, which has a silver lining.

Here is a comparison of 3 cuttings from the same unk. variety, the cutting on the left was rooted under row cover with afternoon shade and the other two sat out in more than a half day of direct sun.  The canister fig had less perlite so that may account for some of the color difference, but the cup shown and the others in the shade have even had some fertilizer and are still kinda pale. Also the container volume is different; canister-44 oz. cup-32 oz. tray-16 oz. It is also hard to tell from the photo, but the two grown in direct sunlight are much bushier and face their leaves 360 while the shaded ones only faced SE.


The canister had the firmest root system out of these 3, and all the others I potted up today, and probably ever!


The silver lining in the coffee can is very slick and there was zero root damage during removal, unlike the plastic cups which usually have fresh fleshy roots stick to them. It was a little harder to get the fig out, the ring around the top had to be cut (you could cut it off before) and it took some good upside down shaking to get it out because the container is not tapered towards the bottom. The canister is also still sturdy enough to use again next year.

I guess the silver lining has thermal properties much like space blankets because this fig never wilted from heat stress even though the side of the canister was exposed to direct sun

Keep an eye peeled for silver linings in your life, and your containers, they are worth saving for sure.

sure is worth a try - thank you brent

Even for protecting other rooting containers as an outside sleeve it is worth a try. I also noticed that qt. soup cartons have the same liner in them. And, my cat's food comes in a big silver lined bag that could be cut up and used to wrap larger containers or groups of cuttings. Being able to handle the sun really helped this fig out, and while the ones in the shade are still in some shade, the ones used to sun are now moved into full sun.

Alan- the canister is actually constructed of cardboard, I should have specified.

Cardboard would certainly conduct less heat. Interesting that the roots didn't stick to the sides. Whatever works!

Ken- I was pleasantly surprised about the condition of the roots, especially because it was such a tight squeeze getting it out. It is always such a disappointment when they tear off because they are stuck to the sides of the container, and that usually happens with the large HDPE beverage cups.  You inspired this experiment by the way with your post about rooting in full sun . I made sure to use cuttings(rooted in sphagnum moss) that had roots but not leafed yet so the leaves were not stressed and that was crucial to my success.

Alan- There is also a shiny side that faces the carboard, I saw during the removal of the rim, but it is not shown. The reflective side bounces infrared light/heat away. People actually use this stuff in extreme environments for insulating their houses; reflective side in to keep heat in, out to keep it out. Metallized film.

After reading many member's posts about rooting in hot and/or sunny conditions, I'm convinced that figs are pretty tolerant and often do quite well even when the situation may not be optimal. For example, here's a shot I took this morning of a 2-liter bottle air layer I "potted" in a crystal-clear plastic pretzel jar just 12 days ago. The jar is sleeved inside a white 5-gallon bucket in full sun, with no other attempt to provide shade or cool the roots. While I expect the roots would do better if I were to wrap the pot in cardboard as I sometimes do (and as I will still do if they start looking stressed), to my inexperienced eye they seem to be doing pretty well. I've even wondered if excessive surface heat or light, as long as it doesn't penetrate deeply into the root ball, might not have a somewhat beneficial effect by discouraging root growth right against the pot wall, and instead, forcing the roots to develop back inside the soil where it's cooler and dark. Probably not, but it does make me wonder!

Is that pretzel jug just full of "leaf duff" Ken? Looks good to me too.

Brent--both the air layer and the larger pot were filled with 100% compost, the vast majority of which began as chopped up cactus pads from my yard. I've heard varying opinions about rooting in compost. So far it seems to be working reasonably well for me, but others report having excellent success with other methods, and some advise against rooting directly in compost. I don't know if that warning extends to air layers, but mine have done quite well in straight compost; however, I don't think that's so much an endorsement of using compost as it is of the easy success of rooting air layers.

Well, if you were to seal the bag, it wouldn't be able to lose any heat through evaporative cooling, so in that case the soil inside would get extremely hot. I sometimes use a similar principle to kill unwanted plants in the yard--I cover them with clear plastic and weight the edges down, and the greenhouse effect literally cooks them. But, for a plant growing in a fairly large, clear container, filled with moist soil and a with a continuous supply of water coming from below, you might be okay--but I'd still hedge my bets by shading the pot. This sun can be absolutely brutal.

It looks like some great stuff Ken. For this use here it seems great because you are only using the compost for a short amount of time so it will not have time to compact on your roots. And an air-layer is much better set up to use the nutrients present in the compost than a cutting with no leaves and only a few roots. You might see if pre-leaching some compost for next year's cuttings helps out. And maybe add something twiggy and stable for aeration, I thought maybe  mesquite but I just read it is allelopathic so i am out of ideas.

The mix used for these did not have any compost but did have some hort. charcoal, less than 5%. It absorbs nutrients and possibly stores them for the plant's use later on, i added no extra fertilizer. It also regulates the ph in acidic mediums like peat, which is in the promix I bought. Not sure if it would do your soil or compost any favors but I am going to try it with mine and if I can get a retort built that's one less thing to buy. I was one of the one's having trouble rooting with compost, but everyone's compost is unique and trial really is the best way to find out.

It might be a great approach. Rooting is something I don't really know much about--particularly when it comes to the finer points of soil chemistry. The decent success rate of last year's UCD cuttings I've chalked up to beginner's luck--coupled with advice from forum members once I started running into problems. I like the simple methods because they make intuitive sense, such as rooting directly in the soil, burying most or all of a cutting to prevent desiccation or mold, rooting in a glass of rainwater, providing lots of oxygen to the soil and not letting the air get too humid or stagnant, moving a cutting outdoors into some sunshiine if good roots develop well before any foliage, using sphagnum moss to inhibit mold, using peat pots in a glass to prevent condensation and hold the soil together when it's time to re-pot, etc. People keep coming up with new suggestions, and I love to add the ones I can understand to my menu of options!