I have a couple questions about the roots on my cuttings.
My neighbor has a fig tree that's not very well taken care of, so I took some clippings about 8 or so days ago and they're rooting fairly good.
I tried a couple different methods to see which would give me the best results, bag, straight to soil and perlite.
Well 5 days after I stuck a 1" thick cutting with 5' long branches into soil I got thick roots coming out of it. Got perlite and inserted it there for better results.
Now 7 days later two cuttings that I used for the bag method are rooting everywhere, all over the stem or length of the cutting. The biggest roots are about half an inch, just this morning, but they were about 4 or so inches from the bottom where the cut was made. I took some roots off from the very top because they were obviously too high up, but I don't know that to do about the fast growing roots at the higher places. The roots at the cut or close to it are still very small in comparison.

This is my first experience with figs, although my parents grew up eating them back where they grew up.

You can plant those cutting extra deep, or even horizontally. When you say you planted in soil, do you mean outdoors? I am in Delaware where we can't just stick a huge cutting in the ground and expect it to survive. If you can post some pictures that should clarify things.

This is what I'm talking about in regards to the cuttings.

I will post a couple of other pics as soon as I get them out of my phone.

Learn to love roots where ever they are.

I had an Italian honey I rooted in water. A couple 1/4" roots came out at the bottom end. I placed it in my 70/30 perlite seed starter mix.  I went away for 3 days, not venting the bins. I came home and the 12 " cutting had roots about an inch long up and down the 7 inches or so exposed to air. The high humidity caused this.

I cut it off with about 2.5" exposed, pinching off any roots above soil ( I find that if I leave them, they can dry and mold in high humidity). I took the cutting and cupped it, same as the other. Now both are growing roots and leafing out- 2 for 1- Cha-Ching!

Just a quick update.

I started the two cuttings seen in an earlier post in a bag, both rooted out fast and looked great.
One of the cuttings started to show small leaves so I took it out and put it in perlite/soil mix, 40/60 because I ran out of perlite. Well this one seems to have gotten a little bit of transplant shock because the new growth wilted and fell off. Its still rooting because I can see the roots still growing.
The other I waited after I went to the nursery and got more perlite and this one is taking off, picture attached. Today the new growth is about an inch or a little more than when the picture was taken, and the roots are all over the place. I have both inside ziploc bags rolled up tight, and I have them both shut as best as possible to increase humidity.

I had a total of 6 cuttings this year and 5 rooted, one failed, the rootstock experiment because it didn't make good contact. One cutting surprised me a lot because it was just the very bottom of a 1.5 inch dia. branch that I took of because it was curving and I didnt want to plant it that way if it rooted. Well that small 4 inch piece rooted and it has very small growth all along the trunk. I'll post more pics later.

New myself, so have some questions to the forum...the cuttings that are showing rooting along the entire length, exactly how do you proceed if you decide to place that cutting horizontally? Does the plant establish itself, i.e. upright forming trunk, etc?

And chuckchuck, you said "One of the cuttings started to show small leaves so I took it out and put it in perlite/soil mix, 40/60 because I ran out of perlite. Well this one seems to have gotten a little bit of transplant shock because the new growth wilted and fell off. Its still rooting because I can see the roots still growing.."   My question: how long were the roots when you made that transition to 40/60?  I also, would love to see photos as you make your transitions from stage to stage.    Thanks.

Figs are phototropic.  They will always grow vertically towards light.  There is a ton of jargon behind why this is the case, but ... Long story short, it doesn't matter if you root vertically or horizontally, your shoots will always grow up and towards the sun.  When rooting horizontally, you risk more shoots forming along the length of the cutting, which (I believe) would probably lead to a "bush" form, rather than tree form.  You probably won't end up with a single-trunk tree form.

Okay here are some pictures of my other cuttings.

The other cutting, from the 'bag' that I had mentioned earlier, was taken out, it just had me running my mind about the soil possibly killing the plant all together. So I took it out from the 40/60 mix into a 99/1 mix, perlite/soil. I think I was still lucky because although a lot of the roots were brown, it had a lot new roots and there were plenty of lighter color roots still hanging in there.

The other pictures are of that piece that I stuck into a 100 soil mix which I later added some perlite. As you can see there is growth coming out of it. It was a total shock because it has been sitting inside that soda container for a while with little maintenance until I notice the growth.

Well I guess I'll post anything interesting in the future.

Just an update to my fig growing experience.

The cutting pictured here (top):

Turned to this:

The bottom cutting grew three leaves then it suddenly went downhill, I believe it needed a little more water, but it never recuperated.

I've changed it from several mediums to see if it was just lacking something (nutrients, etc.) and it hasn't completely died, but it seems like it might start to desiccate any day now.

But out of all the ones I started a few months ago the one that survived was the short trunk planted straight to soil (pictured below)
This one actually started to dry up because it was under the sun all day long. I took it out of the soda bottle and mixed some MG and perlite 60/40 and it came back to life, the old growth died and new leaves started to come out from the old buds. Its in partial shade with a cup over it to keep direct sun and inc. the humidity in a 2 gal pot.

Now to my more recent cuttings that I started 3 and 2.5 weeks ago. There are mixed from my Neightbors, which I call Leadwell Unknown, which are dark figs with breba and Mobil Unknown, that I found near a gas station, which are also dark and had breba.

All of these are 100% weathered, they were started under my avocado tree and get early and evening sun, direct and indirect, been having some windy days and sometimes I find the box uncovered. I've had near 100% success rooting these, except for a Leadwell Unk as can be seen in the bottom right on top of the Hydrangea cutting.

And these are another experiment, all Leadwell Unk that I was force to start because the branch that I was gonna air-layer broke off. They are growing in very high humidity with some pomegranate cuttings, possibly Wonderful (80% sure). I inserted two straws around the bag and from there I spray water every 2 or 3 days. I used to mist all the cuttings, but I was getting too many roots on top of the 'soil' line and I only mist the pomegranate cuttings. They are covered with a clear plastic bag to keep humidity high, mostly for the punica granatum cuttings.
They have excellent roots, and where started 3 or 4 days after the cuttings outside. The only difference is that these have 2x the roots but almost 80% less green growth. two or three cuttings have 3 in roots spreading on top of the perlite.
The only drawback just like my experience with the baggie method is, mold, I mist all these cuttings with Hydrogen Peroxide every other day and it seems to kill it for a couple days, but this burns the edges of the leaves.

And a side note, I found this little one in the back of my yard, took it out, was as careful as I could to get roots out and planted it into a 3 gal pot.
It looked like this only for the first 12 hrs or so, then it drooped and drooped and its so wilted now that two of the bigger leaves have fallen off.
The pot is covered with that MG bag in the background and I water it every other day if it feels dry if not I add another day. I just feel sad for taking it out and putting it on the path to die, but where it was growing there was hardly any sun and it was heavily outnumbered by heavy landscape shrub roots.

I found another fig tree with no breba, but with plenty of main crop growing almost across the street from my house on a sidewalk, I'm going to start some cuttings of that in the coming week.

I don't know if anyone is reading this, but I would like your help ID'ing this.
I found it in an empty lot driving around, it was a pretty big tree, maybe 15 or 17 feet off the ground, 25 or so branches coming off the ground. One of the branches I cut off had a single fig, it was dark so I couldn't tell just how many or if it had any other figs.
I was surprised by the size of these leaves, the two other trees I've taken cuttings from and another neighbors orchard has no tree with leaves this size.

Either way these are going to be cut up and rooted.

Is it possible to root an all green sprout that got knocked off of the tip of one of my trees?  I've had it in water for several weeks now and nothing has happened.  The leaves (tiny) haven't died either.  I removed a large leaf, but left three tiny leaves on the tip of the sprout.

The stem keeps getting that white stuff on it, not mold.  If I should ask this on another thread, I can do that.

Chuckchuck, I wish I had your "problems" with rooting.....  :)

noss

The little white bumps on the new growth stems are roots. I had a branch with old and new and just for the heck of it I took the green branch and stuck it in a milk container with just water. One week later I had bumps all over the stem.
I've gone ahead and changed the water to a soil/perlite mix and I now have a bud coming out.
I've decided to do the same with all the cuttings I got yesterday that were green this time im putting it in a tall container and im enclosing it in a bag to help with the moisture lost. Because that is the main problem with new growth cuttings they lose water faster than year old wood.

noss this is my experimental cutting I was talking about.

The BLACK arrow show where I saw the greatest number of root bumps and the RED shows the bud that I used as a soil line.

As of today that's what I have. The top dried up a little more, because its not covered. But the bud its well on its way.

The white material on the cutting is pasty and doesn't look like any kind of roots.  It wipes off if touched, but it definitely isn't mold.

If I'm doing something wrong, I would like to know because I'd like to save that cutting.  It's a White Triana and Mike accidentally broke it off when we were inserting wicks into the bottom of the pot.

Is that stuff roots?  It really doesn't look like roots, but what do I know?  :0

That's interesting the large piece rooted so well for you.  It must be the energy the thicker wood has stored in it.

noss

I have learned way too much about those white bumps or fuzzy stuff. They are pre-cursors to roots.  Roots will emerge from some of those bumps ( about 5%), but you are still about 2 weeks from actual roots emerging. I have put cuttings like that into moist soil mix with success, just not alot of it ( success). High humidity for me is what helped. If the soil touching the cutting drys out as opposed to moisture in the cup overall ( like droplets on the inside of the cup), then the cutting sits still.

I have experimented with at least 5 different methods of rooting this year and the greatest success has been with Sphagnum Moss in a cup with the cutting in a closed perlite container, then into cups of soil/perlite.

Ok, I would like to chip in.

First off, notice that there are two things:  pure-white fluffy stuff and off-white bumpy stuff.

* The pure-white fluffy stuff has been discussed in other threads at great length, it is an excretion which will never form roots (search the forum for:  white fluff)
* The off-white stuff is "Barking", which isn't roots (yet), but may be a site for roots.

This is my understanding of the two based on prior threads (Dom is correct).

I also agree with Viv's assessment that "It must be the energy the thicker wood has stored in it."

There is latent energy stored in cuttings. The fatter the cutting, the more energy is inside.  They can be harder to root successfully for some people, though.  It's easier to work with smaller cuttings.

The other thing is that if you get alot of the white fluffy pre stuff, it can dry into the brown spots.

I have revived cuttings that still had stored energy after putting in water, getting fluffy white stuff then into soil.

They are not dead until the cutting shrivels up. As long as the cutting still has internal moisture, it has the potential to root.

I just finished going through SteveNJ's rooting experiment which included much of what I've at least seen with my current growth cutting. I definitely did not have any white fluff, but instead those 'root caps'. As soon as I saw budding I decided to put in in rooting media.
By no means was my environment controlled or monitored like SteveNJ's, I just threw it in water under my avocado tree, with different temps and humidity, unprotected, etc.

I started quite a handful of cuttings this week and I started to document my procedure, if I see any good from it I guess I can share it here.

The white fluffy stuff, barking etc or what ever the average gardener calls it is
called  root primordia.

Here is picture i took of 1 of mine .

If you look really really close you can see in my picture how on some that just made the connection an elongated point forming out of the so called white stuff which then further keep on growing to be nice roots.
If no connection is made the root primordia will turn brown.

Its explained in this post and worth reading for those curiouos.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/fig/msg0219043917735.html

Well just a little update on my Leadwell Unknown that I started inside on a small 'bed' with some pomegranate cuttings:

I took two of the cuttings because it had a good healthy amount of root coming out from the perlite.

This is how they looked like out of the bed:




I used about equal parts MG mix and perlite, but added a little more peat moss too help with moisture.
I was gonna transplant a third cutting, but I ran out of my mix and was too lazy to mix some more. :)

Like I had noticed before these cuttings started a few days after some that I have outside rooted not only faster, but much more density, although the ones outside have considerable amount more of green growth. I attribute this to the amount of sunlight they receive, inside cuttings were next to my desk in the middle of my room, and the ones outside are under my avocado tree.

Another curveball.

I went to check on my air layer of my neighbors Leadwell Unk, and notice a few brebas has dropped. I picked them up, they were soft and they had a nice color to them. I wasn't expecting anything amazing because they were all chewed up by squirrels, but I was still curious because I haven't been able to ID this tree.

This is what I found;













Where do I start?!
Well I can now admit that I am somewhat discourage by this crop to anything good that might develop in the future. The pictures show what clearly are syconia of male and short female type, I could not see many long style syconia that would lead me to believe this might be a female fig tree but rather a caprifig.
The more mature female syconia turned out to have almost mature fig wasps in them, within the fig there were also mature male wasps. Another characteristic that shows that it might be a caprifig.
The second picture showed the freshest fig, the taste was mildly sweet, not bland, or sour. It had the most wonderful smell I must admit. This is the only positive I can find from this new discovery.
I am almost 75% sure this might turn out to be a caprifig, edible? Well that is still to be seen.