I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Now, for one more thing to be thankful for- does anyone want some fig prunings? I’ve been cutting back some figs to fit inside winter protection, so I can send out the following.
Unknown- black/purple fig brought from Italy 30-35 years ago by the former owner of a property I just purchased. Grandson of the guy who planted it says that it is his favorite fig.
described here:
Alma- it is reputed to be pretty hardy, and it certainly grows well. But those in the North will probably need to provide winter protection, as it hasn’t ripened fruit when re-growing from the ground for me. It does grow very well, which is why I have plenty of wood.
VdB- no experience with it, other than it (a young plant) grew tall enough that I had to cut it back to fit…
Gris de St Jean- just one extra cutting. This is the one which fruited for me in a 1 gal pot in the window at my office. May be mis-identified, as that indoor ripened one didn’t match the variety description (but was very good).
I’m planning to send out any wood this weekend, as my scionwood fridge is full of fruit. I’m currently keeping the wood in zip-locks in the garage (50-55F at the moment), as my understanding is that fruit and scions don’t play well together.
While I’m happy to receive interesting varieties in return it isn’t required. I’ll be OK with sending the wood to good homes.
I would be very glad to receive some fig cuttings.
While I don’t have any fig cuttings to send you, I do have some flower seeds (coneflowers, rudbeckia), probably some blackberry canes, and some seeds from common types of apples, if you are interested in any of those.
I would love some cuttings too. I don’t have anything to trade fig wise but I will pay shipping and you can have scions off any of my orchard trees if you wish.
Scions have been sent and I think I’ve sent confirmations and tracking numbers to everyone (Monday or Tuesday arrival, depending on location). Let me know if I missed you.
I’ve labeled the unknown Italian variety “Reservoir”, after the name of the road that the house is on. There was enough for me to send 4-5 sticks to each person. I’m not all that good at rooting figs myself, so I have great empathy for those who need multiple sticks to get a take
Glad to see that it may work for you. Is that wax on the tops?
Here’s one I started about 2 weeks before sending out the cuttings. I wrapped in parafilm and put it in a pot. Just a few days ago, I noticed that there were roots coming out the holes in the bottom, so I moved it to a South facing window.
Yes, that is wax. I have only rooted figs once before and they were cuttings with terminal ends , since these were open I put wax on the end to keep them from drying out as much. I keep the pot covered in plastic wrap too
I’m never sure early on. I had one (not from this batch) which grew for a while then suddenly died. When I looked at it, it had no roots. I know that the one in the above pic has roots, because I saw them coming through a hole in the pot. Also, it was wilting in the sun this past weekend and it perked right back up when I watered it. Without roots, it doesn’t come back after it starts wilting.
In fact, sometimes they die, even having roots. The one on the far left in the above pic is a Black Lebanon Beeka Valley. This is the 2nd (of the 3 potted BLBV) which has started wilting in the last day or so. All had at least some roots when I potted them, so something must be going wrong.
I will decide whether to pot them up together or separate when I pull them out of the pot and see what kind of mess I have , if not too crazy I will separate. I was thinking of washing off the dirt with a garden hose? The one almost out of the frame I used as a test stick and pulled it occasionally to see if it was rooting. I think moving them is not as good as leaving them untouched and it was starting to show roots about a week ago.
I would like to add a note here, @BobVance sent me some huge fig scion to root, one rooted quickly, one died , one rooted and I gave to a friend, the fourth stick stubbornly refused to root but it had so much stored energy in it I couldn’t give up . I started trying to root this in December, I moved it to a toca bell cup a couple of months ago, (@Drew51, thanks for the tip) and today I see roots hitting the edge of the cup, yeah!!
I suppose the question is “Did the large size also make it take longer to root?” I’ve been working under the assumption that bigger is better, but it wouldn’t shock me to find that above a certain caliper it doesn’t root as well. I had plenty of thick wood (and thin too…), as I was cutting it back to fit under the protection.
I’m glad to see you’ve done well rooting them. It seems a relatively easy one to root. I’ve got a bunch of new starts, as I tried to root most of the leftover wood. Though I did come across a few more dormant cuttings the other day when I was grafting.
I do find that with thicker cuttings of fig trees they typically take longer than thin ones to root.
Also one year the thinnest pomegranate cutting I had was the only one that rooted, I thought that they were all too thin to root so I was puzzled and pleasantly surprised when the thinnest one was the only survivor.
Not only are they relatively easy to root, but they among the earlier ones to set fruit too. In fact, some of the cuttings I started last fall have fruit on them (while still in pots).
More impressive (as in-ground often lags behind the potted ones for me), the mother plant has quite a bit of fruit on it.
Here’s a wider pic. Last fall, I cut it back to about 4’ high.
Even with my (enthusiastic but somewhat sub-par) protection, there as quite a bit of die-back, though not to the ground. It had a few fruit a month ago, but something ate them quickly, before they fully ripened. If it can bounce back to grow this much and hopefully ripen some figs, maybe I don’t need to try so hard to protect it, just to save a few branches and less than a handful of figs that the animals get anyway. Maybe just a bunch of wood-chips around the base would be enough.
