I had a really poor success rate earlier this spring with my cuttings, so when a friend sent me a new batch I decided to try the long fiber sphagnum moss.  There were three bags of cuttings, two appeared to be tip cuttings from the current season, a third was older, hardened twigs. 

I bundled them in moss, soaked and then squeezed out, then put them in the dark atop the hot water heater in a back bathroom.  Travel and a wedding intervened, and I looked at them only once in about three weeks,

This afternoon I got them out and put them in pots.  Not a single bud break, but in two of the packages there were roots from a half inch to four inches long.  The third package, the old, hardened wood, had a root starting here and there, but nothing over a half inch long.  They are all out there now in pots in a grow box in a shady spot.  We will see what happens now that they are getting a little light. 

I have no idea whether the great rooting performance was due to the moss, the vitality of the cuttings or the time and season, but there was no comparison with the great rooting performance of this group of cuttings and my past experience.  You can bet that from now on I will be rooting figs in sphagnum moss.
Ox 

Ox
That is great that you had good success with SM. Many others have mentioned good success with SM and that proves it. However, it is good that you did not promise never to come back and use the baggie method with paper wrape. Many do come back for the ease of it. Jusy moist a newspaper, wrape around the properly cleanned cutting(s), ziploc the bag and keep it away. It has good success rate if the cuttings are not too old (stored long).

I had excellent results using spaghnum moss. Thus far this season I have not used the baggie method but in recycled transparent plastic trays(salad trays) with SM. These
 trays comes with a lid. No molds or rot issues encountered. A good pt about SM is I can recycle them for multiple rootings. After that it can go on & be part of garden soil.

The only bags I used are those  where Jon call "new rooting method/option".

In my experience cuttings over a year old are harder to root.

I am more and more convinced that mold is an issue of insufficient fresh air.

This year I tried both methods (the baggie method as well as the method of going directly into cups with various rooting mediums), and have found that the method of going directly into cups, at least for me, resulted in much less mold and was much less labor intensive.  With the baggies I got much more mold and had to check the cuttings way too much for my liking.  However I realize that certain varieties are just harder to root than others.  I had success in a vase of water with a few that made it the easiest method of all.  No unwrapping the cutting every so often, and no snapped off roots that were attached to the paper towel.

Personally, I never gave the sphagnum method a fair shake. But I did have pretty good results using the baggie method and clean white paper towels. I used newspaper a couple of times but didn't like it because it seemed to be too dense and didn't permit enough air exchange for my liking.

Here's just one result I thought was worth sharing. This was a really ugly cutting left over from a local, greenhouse-grown, Italian Honey tree. This cutting looked so rough I nicknamed it Franken-cutting. I didn't even think it had a viable bud on it. Obviously, it was bent on proving me wrong.

The fuzzy white stuff you may be able to see on the roots is just paper towel stuck to them. It's better to leave a bit of paper towel stuck to the roots than the other way around.

I now have it on the front porch, in a pot. Just potted it up yesterday so we'll see how it does from here.

  

I used the baggie method with fair success. If I was having trouble in the baggie, I placed them into sphagnum moss, after cleaning them again and it seem to kill the mold. I also notice I was getting roots faster in the moss. I would say I had 80% better success in the moss than the baggie. One problem with the moss is getting the tender roots out of the moss without breaking them off.  

Jstall:
There were so many roots on my cuttings that I did not worry about breaking a root or two.  As it happened, I shook the bag they were in and shook away most of the moss and got the cuttings out without appreciable damage.  I was really pleased with the results.  The went straight into growing medium from the peat moss.  We shall see what transpires next.
Ox

I decided to test the anti-fungal properties of sphagnum moss in baggies since I've never encountered a problem with mold in my air-layers.  I only soaked the cuttings in very dilute tea (no bleach/peroxide/alcohol).  I wet the SM in a weak SuperThrive and tea solution.  I have always squeezed as much liquid from the SM as I can by hand.  I did not put my baggies in a dark area.  Instead, I put them in front of a window which gets sunlight between 8am~10am. 

The results:  I had no mold issue with the exception of five sets of cuttings that already had mold on them before going into the bag.  I put two sets in the bag without removing the mold.  In those two sets, there was no additional mold damage from the time they went into the bag (03/21) until now.  The other three sets, I cut off the moldy tips and put the cuttings into bags.  They also remained mold free.

J.A.: A toothpick or a bamboo skewer (or if you know a diabetic, the plastic plunger [minus the rubber stopper] from a syringe) work well to remove the bits of moss stuck in the roots.  It pays to be diligent.  The roots can go from 1/4" long to intertwined in a short period of time.  I checked on one variety and the roots were still nice and short, but I didn't pot them right away.  Three days later, I had to prune the roots with scissors for them to fit in the container.

~james

One other note, I noticed that on the cuttings that grew roots 2" or longer, the roots were not so delicate as the short white ones. I had cuttings with roots entwined that I just pulled apart and nothing broke. I also can say I saw no mold on the few I tried in sphagnum. "gene"

Me too;  no mold at all in the SM/baggie/warm area method. On about half of my cuttings I cleaned them with the 10% bleach, but the rest just went into baggies with moss and they were free of mold too. And EVERY ONE of my cuttings rooted just fine. At different rates, but just fine. I potted up into cups and watered at the root area with one of those long basting needle things you use to inject flavoring into meat. I wanted to have the water down where the roots were and no just soak all the soil in the cup. Worked really well.

Im glad you folks are having good results in rooting .
Its fun and as new members read these posts it gives them some confidence one does not have to be a master gardener to enjoy the world of figs.
Way to go.  ; )

Where's best place to buy the moss seems real prices is it same as moss in most yards