Here is a question:
If one would want to ship a just nicely rooted cutting in a cloner, what is a quick way to do it ?
It is better to pot it up, wait and ship it after it is established? It is better to place the roots in a plastic bag with soil/coco and tie tight and ship it right away?
Or else?
How long does it take for a cutting from a cloner to start growing in the soil?

i have never done it but wouldn't it be ok to wrap roots in newspaper saturate the paper and put in ziplock.  Since I am a newbie to figs I do not know the sensitivity of their root structure but I would be willing to pay shipping if you wanted to experiment.

Dale

Dale,

The roots are quite fragile, they may not like it hence an idea to ship in a bag with soil.
But I am not an expert on the cloners

Greenfig,

In my experience, all newly rooted cuttings are very sensitive to movement and have rather fragile roots.  The more experience fig rooters will tell newbies to leave the cuttings alone for a reason, whether they are rooted via cloner, perlite, water or soil, all the roots are fragile.  And breakage will result in either a halt in all growth and/or death of the cutting. 

As far as sending something so newly rooted, to me it's like sending a raw egg.  If you can secure the egg in a way that leaves no movement (remember the drop the egg from ceiling experiment?), and you can do it with the newly rooted fig cutting, there might be a chance of survival. 

I think it's better to pot it up and wait until it's established before sending.  My postal people have a habit of drop kicking everything sent to me, so well established plants are the only way I would accept a fig tree.

How long would it take for the cloner roots to get adjusted to the soil?
Do they keep growing after you pot them up or there is a period of them doing nothing visible above the soil line?

From the cups with soil, the cuttings seem to have a very short stall period.

I usually wait until I see new leaves before I consider it adjusted. Some cuttings take as little as 1-2 weeks or as much as a month to adjust, just depends on how much disturbance the roots endured.

Hi greenfig,
I'm no expert in cloners. But I've been rooting for some time now.
It depends on what we consider a rooted cutting.
If you're speaking of a cutting with 4 1' long roots... Just forget about it. Last October, I had a damn Panaché cutting, still green but not doing much. I thought , before winter can kill it, lets check what it has done.
It happened that the cutting had one root. Of course while putting the dirt back, the root just snapped ... Damn fragile and precious those things when there are few ...

If you're speaking of a cutting with a root-mass like a (small) ball of wool. Then bag the root-mass in a zip lock and put 2 wet paper-towels in the bag.
You should be good for a 3 days trip - well that would be ( now ) when the temps are neither freezing nor cooking-like.
I wouldn't add soil, as soil will help break the roots when shook on the postal-trip.
If I would use some soil, I'd use perlite as it is light weight .

That wouldn't be the safest trip, but I think that it could be reasonably achieved. - After all, nurseries send bare-rooted trees (at the right time and that is now or sometime in the following weeks), and your cutting would (have to) look and act like a bare-rooted tree.

I would acclimate to soil for several days and ship it than with soil mass.

JDS Hi, I hope you got the panach to root finally?

At least 2 months after up-potting to soil mixture.