Propagating Figs with Cuttings, Part 2

This experiment has been pretty successful so far! Isn’t it amazing what you can learn about on the internet? I had no idea how to do this until I started reading blog posts and watching youtube videos about it.

Continuing the progress of the start of the project from the first post on Oct. 23rd propagating-figs-with-cuttings, here are the next steps to propagating these baby figs.

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On October 29th, after the fig twigs had been wrapped in damp paper towels and stored in the Rubbermaid container for a few days, I layered them in this plastic shoe box with peat moss and vermiculite. I’d say it was about a 70% peat, 30% vermiculite mix. The twigs had some little bumps on them, maybe 1 or 2 had a little beginning of a root in the corners… I made sure the peat was damp, then I went away on vacation to Disney for a week! Bye bye, figgies! Survive, please!

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On November 15th, I unearthed the twigs from the shoe box and gave them each their own little plastic 18oz plastic cup. I used a metal steak knife and made the tip hot over a lit stove. I melted tiny drainage holes in the bottom of each plastic cup, filled it with the same peat/vermiculte mix around each cutting. I placed these in a big, plastic container and used a large piece of glass to cover the top so the light from the grow light would shine through.

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There’s a grow light on top of the container and a seedling heat mat plugged in underneath, wrapped in a towel so things don’t get TOO hot. I used inflated plastic packing from an Amazon shipment to fill in the holes between the glass lid and the container to cut down on evaporation – I wanted to keep the cuttings moist so the container stayed warm and steamy.

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And NOW look at them today! These babies made it through a MOVE! There have been a few leaves that have fallen off and some have yellowing so I probably need to fertilize them. I may have a couple of failures in there, but I wouldn’t count them out until I pot them up and see how the root systems are doing. Maintaining the right level of moisture seems to be the hardest part.