I have had rotten luck with cuttings this year. Last year was the first year I tried to root fig cuttings and although I lost quite a few, mostly after  I up potted, I lost none to mold, and ended up with well over half of my cuttings growing into little trees. This year I used compost with perlite instead of the seed starting mix with perlite that I used last year and have lost most of my cuttings. They start out looking great and starting to root but then die at different points along the way. Some die before they root well, some die after they have rooted but before they are up potted, some die after they have been up potted. I am  down to my last Sal Corleone and my last Ronde de Bord. and this morning the RdB is starting to look wilted. It was up potted almost a month ago. The pot is pretty dry but not Bone dry - now I am afraid to do anything - afraid to water and afraid not to water. All of these cuttings have been in the house and otherwise cared for the same as last year except for soil and I used Myco Grow from FungiPerfecti. Also, other cuttings that I have rooted this year, rose, lilac, crab, wisteria, have loved the compost mix and rooted better than ever...Any suggestions?

No suggestions for the situation with your current cuttings.

Personally, I would NEVER ever use compost for rooting fig cuttings. Too much bacteria can remain in the stuff that will produce carbon dioxide gas which is detrimental to "newly" formed and/or emerging fig roots. Even if you aerate compost for a prolonged period of time to OXYGENATE it and to RID it of excess gas before you use it.....CO2 can still buildup in your rooting mix from continued bacterial action. You DO NOT WANT CO2 gas to buildup in the fig rooting zone......that causes root damage, wilting, and eventual death if that gas is not removed.

Next time try rooting them by the Peat Pot Method that I have recently written about. You should not lose any fig cuttings when you up pot them.

Dan
Semper Fi-cus

same here susan.....but i will give it a try again soon....i think as per dan's method

Hi Susan,

If you can get Ultimate Potting Mix by Fertilome give it a try.  I used it this year and had great success.  Also when I potted up from cups to pots I waited until the cups were in the need of water, they were dry and light weight.   I remember reading that figs don't like to have their roots disturbed so I waited until the potting mix had almost naturally separated from the cup.  If the mix is the slightest moist, the potting mix will fall away from the roots when lifted out of the cups which you don't want.   I moved the little plants into their pots and then watered the heck out of them right after.  It was several days before they were watered again.   I only lost 2 plants this entire summer when potting up hundreds of figs.  
Good luck.
Cathy

On a few occasions this past rooting season, I substituted compost when I ran out of my other mix.  The results were not good.  Thankfully, there were just a few that I did this way.  So, at least for me, compost was not a good idea for rooting.

........another HUGE FAN of Fertilome UPM here. Ditto what Cathy said...by all means use UPM if you can find it. It is specially designed for rooting. It produces a SUPERIOR rooting mix when cut with perlite.

Cathy that's a very interesting observation to let the rooting mix go dry before removal. Thanks for sharing.......

Dan
Semper Fi-cus

Yes:Compost is good but to only apply as a top layer,not for starting plants!

I will look for the fertilome for next year. But for now, I wonder if I should try and repot what I have left - risk disturbing the roots vs carbon dioxide death ?

If it was me, I would take the chance of re-potting now.  Depending on how compact the soil is around the plant, it might be possible to replace the mix on one side of the plant, carefully removing as much soil as possible without doing too much damage to the roots and then do the other side a couple of weeks later.  

I think it was a bad year for many of us.

Two of the most important ones didn't make it for me. What a heart breaker.
But, we will get up and pat the dirt from our rear and try again next year.

We will keep trying till we get it right.

I had a bad year also. About 50/50. I wish you were closer, I would give you a Sal C. I had great luck and most of them started a couple months ago are over a foot tall.

Thanks everybody for the encouragement. And Rafed, you are right, we will try again next year. I learned a hard lesson this year but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Jason, maybe you will be able to spare a Sal C. cutting sometime in the future... I was so excited when I won mine on Ebay. Still have one left so I will cross my fingers - it looks great today but could die tomorrow.

The compost was just a very bad idea. I mixed it about 1 part compost to 8 parts perlite. Many of my cuttings did really great at first. Some have been up potted a month ago but are wilting now.

Hi Cathy,

Did you mix the UPM with perlite?

Susan,

I hope your little treelets you still have will like their new soil and thrive for you.  The soil can make all the difference in the world to them.

noss

Alan,

James Robin roots his figs in 100% perlite and his rooting success rate is pretty high. So..... too much perlite IS NOT an issue when rooting fig cuttings. They will root just fine in the pure stuff.

Dan
Semper Fi-cus

@Alan, Perlite is not dangerous for plants. I have always used more than 60% perlite and some of my greatest rooting successes have come from using 85% or more perlite.

@Susan, give me a shout in the fall when temps drop below 75 in the daytime.

Hi Noss,

I just use Promix -HP and I had great success, only lost a few to pythium and rot, but that was more my fault for keeping it too wet.

Well Sue. IF it were me and I thought my soil mix had killed all my plants but the last one. I would Carefully repot into a high percentage of course pearlite mix with pine bark or good potting mix. Then TLC , Shade maybe under plastic, then dappled sun  . 
I just feel I can't kill a plant that is dying anyway.
Just my way of thinking.
Good Luck either way.
Dave.

Thanks, Dave. I think the same thing and repotted everything that I had left except for a few that are older and seem to be doing really well. I think that leaving them in the compost mix was just about sure death - at least this way they may have a chance.

With figs its a hit or miss with the mix composition, I've had some luck with soil mixes and better luck with rooting mixes like (SPM and perlite). For me it was the practice and experimentation, accompanied with a lot of patience. If compost works for you with figs then by all means you should go that route, for many of us enthusiast we've come to find a particular percentage of certain rooting mixes that work.
I had a terrible start with a few local trees (mostly look like capri's :( ) but they offered a great learning experience for the future. I've found one or two trees that I suspect to give good looking fruit that I can now employ my skills found through much disappointment. 
I've had very good success rooting with SPM and perlite mix at around 50/50 and potting at around 40-50/50 perlite/potting soil. But I also have a few cuttings that are under 50% shade cloth that are growing great and where rooted in 100% perlite.
But in the end it comes down to what works for you.

@alan, I wouldn't even necessarily say that, although what you're saying may actually be accurate (I'm confused).

In short, a uniform high-perlite-content mix is great for rooting never-been-rooted sticks.  On the other hand, I've had bad (but not "dangerous" nor "detrimental") experiences with putting a solid layer of perlite on top of any potted-and-already-been-rooted trees; for some reason, the trees I did this with liked to root into the nice, gappy, airy perlite.  Go figure, this is the same reason it's great for rooting sticks.  The layer of perlite has worked pretty well to keep squirrels at bay, though.

Jason,  I think Alan "got" it well.  Roots will take the path of least resistance to grow into.  Makes sense to me.  My fig roots will always grow easily up into any mulch I put on it.  No matter how deep themulch is, the roots grow into it.  It's nice and loose and easy for the roots to navigate.

Viv

I think the real problem with compost is the salt content and the "beneficial bacteria" along with poor aeration properties. I had trouble with it and switched to Promix Organic mixed with perlite and a little hort charcoal for rooting in large cups. It has a better success rate than the compost and perlite but I still lost some.
The bacteria in compost can become aggressive to weak plants when other food is not available, usually the base of the cutting rots or the roots just dessicate. high salt content also inhibits water absorption by the plant and can really stress cuttings. The old perlite would have some mineral build up too. That is why i included about 5 percent charcoal in later rounds of cuttings; to absorb salt from the potting mix.

I have not lost a plant after going up to one gallon pots from cups using the same compost in that mix. It is just very young cuttings that are vulnerable. I found some composted pine bark that really helps to add aeration to the compost because of its size.

The only problem I had with Mycogrow gel was the mixture was very thick and damaged some roots by making them heavy. I thinned it way down and it was fine, I and am just going to use the stuff for vegetables or the soluble formula from now on since figs only associate with endomycorrhizal fungi anyways. I was also worried about the gel because the TDS/PPM of the solution was through the roof and i thought it would burn for sure, but it didn't, and those that got it did well.