Has anyone tried propagating figs from root cuttings? I went to move my potted figs into storage yesterday, and one variety had sent particularly hefty roots into the ground through the pot. Would these roots grow new trees if potted up?
I know that figs often grow back from the roots after being top-killed, so I wondered if I could intentionally grow out these roots. Or is this wishful (bramble) thinking?
The tree itself is small, so I don’t want to take cuttings from the “branches” yet, though I realize that would be the more obvious thing to do.
(It’s very hard to search for information about this–if it even exists–because the same keywords lead to instructions for rooting cuttings!)
No, bury figs deep so some nodes are underground in case of die off. It has been reported it does not work by experienced growers. . Didn’t work for me either.
I’ve tried 2-3 times when doing root pruning and I’ve never had a root section send up anything that survived more than just a couple weeks. Most of them never send up anything at all…
One thing you can do with those roots is to graft onto them, they should survive just fine if you bury with a few inches of soil for the winter. You can graft with just a very small piece of wood in the spring and pot them up.
That’s an interesting technique! I have a bunch of figs in pots in the back and many of them have put roots down into the soil, some of which are pretty substantial. I may have to give this a try. I imagine early spring is a good time to start?
I think 75 degrees is probably ideal for callusing, if you are going to leave the roots in the ground though there might be enough sap flow to flood the graft by the time it gets that warm so earlier would probably be better. But if you are going to dig them first I don’t think that will be a problem.
That is a common untrue belief, when trees come back from underneath the ground, that new growth comes from the tree it’s self, from underneath the ground, that is one reason that it’s good to plant fig trees deep.