Posts by Joeturbo26

1401456747

	Subject: First Cuttings and their progress! Is it really this easy?	Replies: 8
	Posted By: Joeturbo26	Views: 503

Hello Fig Friends!

About a month ago, Ed and I traded some lemons for a Chicago Hardy. I pruned one branch off before I put it in the ground--it's doing incredible!

So I took that one branch, made about 6 cuttings from it... Also had some cuttings from a neighborhood tree that has been there unprotected for as long as I can remember, as well as some cuttings from my uncles unprotected tree. I actually suspected that both of those trees had actually perished in this brutal winter.

My uncles tree still shows no sign of life and all the cuttings rotted as I had suspected.

The neighborhood tree, I passed the other day and appears to be alive and fully leafed out!

So here I was with about 20 sticks... I began to test different methods including:

-rooting in plain water
-rooting in a clear shoebox filled with moist coconut coir
-rooting in paper damp paper towel in a ziplock

Each cutting variety was exposed to each method... There was a lot of labeling going on which had my OCD thriving LOL.

Here's what I found:

Every cutting was successful! The Chicago hardy was the quickest to root, in fact it took root within days in every method. The neighborhood tree did best in coconut coir also rooting within days. The ziplock bag was a bit slower and produced roots everywhere on the cutting even though only the lower half was wrapped in paper towel.

However, the water seemed to produce the heaviest healthiest looking roots and I was able to control the water level to where I wanted roots exactly. I also found that water produced the most even root to leaf growth ratio.

The Chicago Hardy by far has been the most vigorous... It's like a "super stick" lol.. Just a few days after the very first two cuttings showed root growth, I transplanted them together into a mixture of 50/50 soil to coconut coir in a 4" nursery pot. That was on 5/17.... Just 13 days later (this morning) I looked at the drain holes on the bottom and noticed that the roots were already growing out of the bottom.

So I decided to repot it into a much larger 16" terra cotta pot which I will now put outside. When I took it out of the nursery pot I was SHOCKED to see that in only 13 days it appeared to almost be root bound! I decided to plant them deeper now, knowing it will root quickly, much like you would with a tomato.

Is this even normal? Or do I have a super cutting? Lol

As for the rest of the cuttings they're all looking great, lots of roots, with buds but very few leaves. I've potted them all up this morning into those same 4" nursery pots.

Here's a photo of the super stick LOL

Attached Images
image.jpg (620808, 35 views)

Modal title

Insert Code

Please paste your code into the box below: