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CaneDog FigGlog 2025

CaneDog

CaneDog

eXtreme
Thanks to the generosity of @NJChilehead (much appreciated!), I'm now the proud owner of a bunch of fig cuttings, which I'm in the process of getting going for the 2025 season. I've had interest in growing figs before, but the opportunity never really fell into place. Now that it has, I've been delving into learning about the varieties and cultivation techniques and I'm pretty excited about it.

Here are the varieties (# of cuttings) I'm working with and a paraphrase of some of NJC's comments about each.

Pananas Purple (2): Mt. Etna type. Smaller fruit with delicious, mixed-berry flavor. Productive and cold hardy. Ripens to deep purple with red inside.
Kristy's (1): Unknown Mt. Etna type. Delicious and productive with cherry-strawberry flavor. Very cold hardy. Ripens to deep purple with red inside.
Dan's Italian Honey (1): Latarulla-type honey fig. Productive and cold hardy. Larger figs than the Mt. Etnas. Well suited to my Western Washington climate. Ripens to green with a white interior.
Peter's Honey (2): Dottato-type honey fig. Slightly later than Italian Honey. Well-suited to my local climate. Ripens to green with an amberish interior with a light blush.
Scott's Little Ruby (3): Small tree with dwarf figs. Very nice, sugar-berry-figgy flavor when fully ripened. Cold hardy. Ripens to a light brown with light red inside.
Smith (1): A mid-season fig. Quite cold sensitive. Ripens to a green-brown with sugar spots and deep red inside.
Mario's Pellegrino (2): Large, great-tasting figs with strong berry flavor. Ripens to a brown-green with deep red inside.

I was a little slow in getting these going on receipt, so the first thing I wanted to do was get them hydrated. I re-cut the bottoms because I'd let them dry a bit and the fresh wood looked great. My plan was to sanitize them with a brief soak in a bleach solution, so I figured pre-hydrating them would also help prevent them from soaking up too much of the bleach.

Here's some pic's of the start of the process, from yesterday.

I started by making new cuts just a little into the ends to reach fresh tissue. You can see from the top cuts how the bottom cuts were drying out some. The 5" clear pots on the left are what I'll be planting them into in a few days to root them.
20241227 FigsPepped.jpg


Each variety got a shot glass with a label and some drinking water.
20241227 FigsMarked.jpg


I put them all into a good-sized brewing kettle and sprayed it a little to increase the humidity.
20241227 FigsMoisture.jpg


Covered up and ready to rehydrate overnight.
20241227 FigsL&T.jpg
 
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After they'd rehydrated overnight, today's step was to clean them and sanitize their exteriors with a bleach solution soak.

I build a little production line, where I first used a soft sponge to clean them with a castile soap solution. Not sure it was necessary, but I figured the castile would have less of a drying affect on them and I had some handy. I was careful not to scrub them hard, especially around the growth nodes, and for the most part wiped from bottom to top to avoid rubbing against the growth direction of the nodes. After soap and rinse, they got 5 minutes submerged in a 9:1 water-to-household-bleach solution, then rinsed well again afterwards. I probably should have stated this earlier, but I'm not an experienced fig guy, so I'm just trying to do my best here based on what NJC told me and my research and share what I'm doing for anyone else who's interested.
20241228 FigCleanSink.jpg


After their cleaning and back in their kettle.
20241228 FigPot.jpg


Waiting for the next step, tomorrow
20241228 FigPotCover.jpg


Tomorrow I'll remove them from the humidity of the kettle for a few hours so the tops will dry out completely, then the plan is to wrap the tops with parafilm and get the cuttings planted. Stay tuned! :)
 
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Marturo said:
@CaneDog do you use anything like Dip & grow?
Click to expand...
I won't be using a rooting hormone. Not against it; I just don't have a good one on hand and from what I gather these do fine without. I haven't used Dip'N Grow before. Have you, and is it one that you'd recommend?

NJChilehead said:
@CaneDog looks great! I'll be taking notes from you in the future! :halo:

I've got my fig pops set up, they've been going for two weeks now. A few buds and even some leaves on Kristy's unknown (which is an absolute beast), but no roots yet.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear you're off to a good start! I'm still hoping to stick mine tonight. Prepping a garage set-up for them is slowing me, so I'm thinking of just potting them in the house to get started. I should have learned my lessons about aphids by now, but given that these are basically sticks and I've sponged them with safe soap and soaked them in bleach, I'm feeling that I may risk it for a couple/few days.
 
I wasn't able to get to Home Depot to pick up Perlite, so the cuttings didn't get stuck today. Instead, I wrapped them all so they'll be ready to go when I do. I've seen a few methods used to keep the cuttings from dehydrating too much and decided to use the Parafilm method since I had some around.

Before I got to wrapping them, I decided to try a different cut on a few to see if that affects rooting. I should have taken a side view of this, but the node's on the back so the cut transverses the node behind it. Some things I read said this would help with rooting as the rooting hormones will concentrate at the nodes and this exposes the local vascular tissue.
20241229 BackSlantCut.jpg


On the rest, like this one, I scored the surface of the cutting from behind the node down to the cut end to expose more of the vascular tissue, so hopefully helping to promote root formation.
20241229 ScoredCuts.jpg


Here's a Parafilm-wrapped cutting. The info I read said when the nodes grow they'll simply break through the Parafilm, but I figured I'd expose them just the same to make it easy. Plus I thought it might help them to let them breath a bit.
20241229 NodesWrapped.jpg


A few more wrapped up and back in their glasses.
20241229 CuttingsWrapped.jpg


Group shot. All wrapped and ready for planting once I pick up the Perlite. I wish I'd gotten this all done right when they first arrived, but I think they're still in good shape and hopefully they'll do fine.
20241229 AllCuttingsWrapped.jpg
 
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CaneDog said:
I haven't used Dip'N Grow before. Have you, and is it one that you'd recommend?
Click to expand...
Yes indeed I use Dip & Grow as opposed to the dry white powder type.
The rooting power is awesome, I get great results.


 
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CaneDog said:
On the rest, like this one, I scored the surface of the cutting from behind the node down to the cut end to expose more of the vascular tissue, so hopefully helping to promote root formation.
20241229 ScoredCuts.jpg
Click to expand...

Your scoring method is the one that I used the first time I rooted fig pops, and it seemed to work well (although I have never tried no scoring at all as a control, I'm only comparing it to a second method of scoring to expose the cambium).

Looking forward to seeing how it all works for you!
 
Marturo said:
Yes indeed I use Dip & Grow as opposed to the dry white powder type.
The rooting power is awesome, I get great results.


Click to expand...

@Marturo do you use this for figs?
 
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Quick update on the fig cuttings. As I move through the process at a crawling rate, I now have them all stuck into containers. I mixed four gallons of MG moisture control container mix with about 3 quarts of perlite. The resulting mix is slightly more perlite heavy than I wanted, though not significantly so and it seems like they'll get good aeration for rooting. All 12 containers fit well into a storage tub I had in the garage.

My plan is to add a heat mat inside the tub rigged to an Inkbird controller and set the temperature to hold somewhere in the 70's. For humidity, I'd like to get individual clear plastic bags for each pot and plant combination, but I'm not sure how to easily get my hands on bags of the right size to work. Another option would be to cover all the plants with a single sheet of clear plastic over the top, perhaps tucking it in around the edges. A single sheet would likely be easier to work with as long as drying out doesn't become a problem. For now, I'm hoping that being enclosed in the tub without a direct heat source will be enough to keep them from drying out too fast.

Fig cuttings all stuck and labeled.
20241230 FigCuttingsStuck.jpg


The tub seems like a pretty good fit. It was a repurpose and a bit dirty, so I cleaned and bleached it before putting them in. There's a lid that fits pretty tightly, which should help maintain humidity.
20241230 FigCuttingsTubInside.jpg
 
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