I'm trying something that should not work anywhere but in the DEEP South. I mixed equal ratio Coarse sand, Find Pine bark mulch and Shredded Peat moss. I drilled four 3/8" drainange holes about one inch up the sides of a five gallon bucket. The mixture was barely moist and I mixed it in a concrete mixer to homogenize the mix. The buckets were filled 2/3 full and then I took cuttings that were scored and had  Clonex lightly applied pushing them into the mixture in the bucket leaving only one or two buds above the surface. As a side note I have varied the lengths of the cuttings so that some are just an inch below and some are five to six inches below. Each bucket will have around twenty cuttings in it. I will cover the top and wait. The buckets can be kept in my garage, outside or in a closet in the house. Not sure what to do yet.

Anyway. What do you think will happen and where you you store them initially and then later assuming there is a later!!!

I tried a similar method and it worked well in September-October but when the temperature became unstable later in the year, I lost a lot of cuttings. I put the container outside in the shade. Now I keep them inside where the temperature is at a steady 78F in container stored in a 71 quart storage totes to maintain the humidity high (I spray the interior sides with water using a spray bottle).

If you don't water until you have three or four large leaves on each cutting I'm gonna guess over 70%.
There is going to be plenty of moisture deep in those buckets, enough for 2 or 3 months if you cover them.
Once the weather warms up for you, and the dominant cuttings take off, the slower ones may rot.
It might also be damaging to free up the 'graduates' to up-pot them.
There will be a MESS of roots.
Are you trying this with different or valuable varieties?

Charles, to my opinion, if you keep the buckets in dark yet warm place the success rate of those cuttings will be very high. if you deep both cut end and the growing tip in melted paraffin the chance of success will be higher ;) close to 95-100%

I may try dipping some, it's just that I am short on time and it is taking a while to do it now as is. It would be nice to have all of them make it but If I can just get 70 - 80 % make it I'll be happy. My plans are to try and give away many of these to families that may have some permanence to their living arrangements hoping that they can learn to appreciate the ability to grow their own fruit. Habitat for Humanity homes come to mind.

I'm guessing you will have good rooting with this method. The problem I see is like Ruuting mentioned, the roots will be a tangled mess. How do you plant to separate them when you pot-up?

That is more than a rhetorical question. If you have a good way to do it, I might try more than 1 cutting per pot. But I am worried about untangling the roots.

 

Rooting could be good, but when they throw the leaves they will need some light to sustain the new leaves.
Figtrees having rather big leaves, they will shade each other. How are you planning about that ?
Well of course I don't have a photo of the bucket so perhaps they are not so close as I imagine it and they could do it .
If I understand well, the bucket is not filled up to the top ?

I did sort of such a setup but putting a 1 Liter pot in a 10 liters bucket and the bucket in an empty dark trashcan bag so the cutting ( a sucker with no roots in fact ) was in darkness.
After two or three weeks, it now started to leaf out, so I took the pot to put it to the light - Don't ask me about its roots as my pot is not transparent.

I think it will work just fine.  I have had good luck just burying cuttings in partial shade on their sides in plain old dirt.  They never mold or rot that way, and they surprise you with shoots and leaves.  Sometimes I forget where I put them!

I have battled fungus gnats so much that I now cover my pots with an inch of sand.  Seems to help.

Separating roots shouldn't be too hard if you separate them early.  I have several in pots with multiple cuttings, and I have been waiting for them to go dormant so I can separate them without too much shock.

Good luck!  Keep us posted!

Suzi

It is my intention to pot them up early, as soon as the roots are about an inch long moving them into one gallon pots. I believe the larger deeper pot will help with soil moisture control (I believe this was Gene Colins idea) and allow faster growing out to a plantable size. I'll start checking for root development in a couple of weeks. Once I start seeing sufficient root development I will be a busy man. I'm thinking I'll end up with about 400 - 500 cuttings. I can't stick all my cutting in a single evening (after work) so hopefully it will stretch out a bit and give me a breather!

I have an idea that I can take a clear tube about two inches in diameter and use it plunge down over the centered cutting. By doing this I think I can remove the PLUG of soil containing the cutting. Since it is clear I should be able to see any roots. I'm not concerned about severing any roots as they should just fork and grow a stronger root ball after up-potting. Any thought on this? There shouldn't be leaves at this stage.

It should work good.  I would not put 20 cuttings in a 5 gallon bucket, maybe 7.  I started about 20 in a 25 gallon container and transplanted them to 1 gallon pots when they started rooting.  The ones I dug up with no roots I potted them too and most of them rooted and grew.  I would not worry about root damage since they should recover and grow more roots. 

I hope you good luck.  To me, I think Dr Johnson is describing the callusing process before potting them up.  I'd like to know how much roots he allows to form before potting.  This link describes one way of callusing cuttings before potting up.  http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/2012/12/13/fig-propagation/
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/2013/04/04/fig-cuttings-growing-a-follow-up/

If I get the opportunity I ask him to expound on how long he lets them "root" before separation. I'm sure he was talking about twenty five sticks placed for rooting as we had the discussion about the problem of separation and how he uses a student with lots of patience to tease them apart.

It may be that he does the opposite of what I think and he lets them develop an exstensive root systrm that while entangled would also not be brittle allowing the use of a little more force to pull them apart. Definitely something we need an answer to.

Thanks for the links. I have never done the callousing part and I'll have to look at it more.

On a side note Dr. Johnson said that IF there was a Fig Field day in 2014 it would most likely be at the begining of July. He said that the university has given him some additional duties at out lying research fields and he may not be able to do it but would try. I hope that he has time. I learned a lot and it gave me the opportunity to meet some really nice people.