I am no expert, so when I started reading posts on here I had never had reliable success rooting fig cuttings or much else. Some rooted, many did not. I tried the newspaper wrap, lasagna style processes, etc. It wasn't until I found Jon's Uline bag post [ http://figs4fun.com/Rooting_Bag_New_Style.html ] that I could count the number of cuttings I was going to start and know the number of pots I would need once they all rooted. Discouraged by other methods, I had resigned myself to air layering only. Needless to say, that requires time and money to travel (at least twice) to make house calls on the mother tree -- often in other states.
Using Jon's Uline bag method has worked literally perfectly for me. That said, I am in a part of the world where things grow extremely well anyway (Southern California), so my beginner's luck might not transfer to your (anybody else's) situation.
It works particularly well with slender young cuttings but I've had success (eventually) with the thick sticks as well. I find that the thick stick cuttings, when rooted using this method, are particularly robust and are ready to go into the ground much sooner.
Off-topic: CAGES !!!! For years I had not experienced gopher / mole / vole? etc. problems with my fig trees. For some reason (we can pretend it's global warming if we're so inclined) many of my young fig trees have been killed by having their roots eaten. I had always provided the new fig tree plants with an above ground wire cage to protect them from rabbits, deer, etc., but I never had an under-ground destruction problem. Now, I never plant any fruit tree without first lining the hole with wire mesh. Needless to say, I don't use hardware fabric or anything with too tight a weave, as I want the roots to be free to go beyond the mesh. What I found that works really well (and is very cheap) is the rolls of paperless stucco wire. It rusts out in about a year or two and doesn't inhibit the roots from going wherever they want to go. By that time, the gophers may nibble a bit but they can't destroy the entire tree (so it seems to me).
I think I'll post this as a new topic as well.
