Cuttings Journal 2025

[t_corey89]

Received several cuttings on Thursday. Was able to get them into containers today. Red solo cups with holes drilled in the bottom and coco coir as the medium. Varieties are: Balafi, Stella, LSU Gold, Blue Celeste, CDD Roja, Bourjasotte Grise, Bartoun Red, Red Lebanese, Yellow Long Neck, Excel, & Uncle Corkys Honey Delight. Super excited about the Balafi, it already had a bunch of white dots just waiting to shoot out roots.

Decided to go with how my dad does his cuttings since he had a much higher success rate in his rooting trials. The sand seems to work good for getting roots to shoot out, but the transferring to either soil, or a soil mix seemed to shock them too much or something. With the coco coir in a container, he hasn’t had one fail yet from his Celeste tree.

Most of the cuttings were able to be cut in “half” and still have 3 or more nodes in each cup. So we were able to basically have 2 cuttings per cutting. Also wanted to see how they fare at his house vs mine. My back yard tends to be super hard on plants because it faces directly south. I’ll be updating as things progress on this thread, like the DFW Exchange thread.

 

[MC Dub]

How much do you moisten the coco coir? This has always been my challenge to avoid cutting rot and at the same time raising the chance of rooting. Please let me know. Thanks

 

[t_corey89]

I let my dad do this part since he has been having great success with this method. But we’d soak it down squeeze most of the extra water out. So I’m not sure how to put that into words lol. Squeeze until it’s no longer dripping, but still holds together maybe? If that makes sense.

 

[t_corey89]

Little update!

The first two to show signs of life, with green buds swelling are the Stella, and the LSU Gold.

 

[t_corey89]

April 8,2025 update:
So far LSU Gold, Bourjasotte Gris, Stella, Blue Celeste, and GXY have all sent out a few leaves. The GXY hasn’t sent out leaves, but any day now. The lsu gold had like two leaves, but one isn’t looking so good anymore. We shall see. I removed the plastic covering once the shoot/leaves reached the plastic.

So far so good. I think.

 

[ktrain]

April 8,2025 update:
So far LSU Gold, Bourjasotte Gris, Stella, Blue Celeste, and GXY have all sent out a few leaves. The GXY hasn’t sent out leaves, but any day now. The lsu gold had like two leaves, but one isn’t looking so good anymore. We shall see. I removed the plastic covering once the shoot/leaves reached the plastic.

So far so good. I think.

You may run into the issue of high humidity when sealed to very low humidity when you open them and the leaves have an adverse reaction to the sudden shift in their environment.
Could be why you see the leaf looking like it may fall off.

 

[t_corey89]

@ktrain i think you were right!

All of them are doing pretty good except the LSU Gold. Still looks like it’s forming leaves at the bud. I have them by my windowsill now. Still have hope for it though!

LSU Gold
Bourjasotte Grise
GXY
Stella
And Blue Celeste.

Stella is by far doing the best.

None of the others have sent anything out, hopefully they’re growing roots that I can’t see through the cup. Time will tell.

 

[TorontoJoe]

Dude! You're killin' this!

 

[t_corey89]

Dude! You're killin' this!

Impatiently waiting for the Balafi. I have such high hopes for it with all the white bumps on the cutting. But it’s just hanging out. truly hoping it’s just growing roots and being a good cutting. Lmao.

 

[TorontoJoe]

Impatiently waiting for the Balafi. I have such high hopes for it with all the white bumps on the cutting. But it’s just hanging out. truly hoping it’s just growing roots and being a good cutting. Lmao.

It's fig-drama, for sure!

 

[t_corey89]

It's fig-drama, for sure!

Sitting at like 40% ish or so with this batch. Need to bump those numbers rookie. Hahaha.

 

[Figgin' A]

@ktrain i think you were right!

All of them are doing pretty good except the LSU Gold. Still looks like it’s forming leaves at the bud. I have them by my windowsill now. Still have hope for it though!

LSU Gold
Bourjasotte Grise
GXY
Stella
And Blue Celeste.

Stella is by far doing the best.

None of the others have sent anything out, hopefully they’re growing roots that I can’t see through the cup. Time will tell.

I hate raining on your parade, but your cuttings don't look good. The new growth looks skinny, spindly, weak, and chlorotic. They need a good quality light ASAP and a bit of mild-strength organic liquid fertilizer.

 

[TorontoJoe]

I hate raining on your parade, but your cuttings don't look good. The new growth looks skinny, spindly, weak, and chlorotic. They need a good quality light ASAP and a bit of mild-strength organic liquid fertilizer.

I'm still trying to figure out what lights you're using for the explosive growth you get.

I'm still in the dark... literally!

I've rooted many a cutting in my south windows... but the growth you get is off the hook

 

[ktrain]

@ktrain i think you were right!

All of them are doing pretty good except the LSU Gold. Still looks like it’s forming leaves at the bud. I have them by my windowsill now. Still have hope for it though!

LSU Gold
Bourjasotte Grise
GXY
Stella
And Blue Celeste.

Stella is by far doing the best.

None of the others have sent anything out, hopefully they’re growing roots that I can’t see through the cup. Time will tell.

Cool man, I do agree they could use some more light and a very diluted fert.
I will attach a pic of the food I use for cuttings, seems to work pretty good, it's a small bottle with a dropper, a dropper full in a gallon of water does the trick.
I get it at home depot.
Also, as a rule I go by which seems to hold true....after green growth appears and grows, if it lasts more than 2 weeks it's pretty safe to assume there are roots.
Or most likely the growth would wilt.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Figgin' A]

I'm still trying to figure out what lights you're using for the explosive growth you get.

I'm still in the dark... literally!

I've rooted many a cutting in my south windows... but the growth you get is off the hook

Joe, you don't need super duper lights, inexpensive grow lights with enough intensity (500 PPFD) will suffice. But you do need grow lights as window light is not enough, not even close.

I mentioned the lights that I use before on this forum and on the old forum. I use KingBrite LED grow lights. These are on the more expensive side of the spectrum, but they provide a lot of coverage and plenty of quality light to even properly ripen figs if you want to. I can get 45-50 DLI, no problem. You can get them on Aliexpress or Alibaba. I like the lights in the bar format as I think they provide a more even light distribution. I also like when bars tilt. It looks like this:

Similar form factor and quality lights are sold by Mars Hydro, Spider Farmer, HLG, etc.

 

[Figgin' A]

Mine aren't perfect, but you want to shoot for something like this at this stage of development:

Hope it helps. Good luck!

 

[Figless]

@t_corey89 @Figgin' A is going to be right LOL he usually is. He's one of my teachers, and he's pointing out some essential things like the difference between the spindly growth you're currently getting and the thick vibrant growth he's getting. The good news is even if you lose these cuts you will get Replacements because you need the practice. I'm going to suggest you get a pH droplet test kit from a local hydro store they're super easy to read, and they never need to be calibrated. I've never used the fertilizer you pictured, but at this point I recommend synthetic due to the Salt impregnation of the plant cells forcing uptake of nutrient. You might be okay to double whatever you're doing fertigation wise.

 

[Figless]

This is some pictures of 120 cuttings all of them to spindly. I went with T5 lights in the orange and blue spectrums. There certainly are similarities between your pictures, and this propagation table of spindly cuttings leafing out. I finished this group out at 70% success rate. I currently am using fig pops with LED lights. As you can see not one of my starter cups had thick vibrant growth like @Figgin' A had. I do prefer transparent cups, and lids they can be purchased cheaply on Amazon. This is helpful because when you do something right you can see the growth in The Roots. The two Greenhouse pictures show the transformation after up potting with natural sunlight, and full strength synthetic fertilizer. This is the batch as I said where I lost 40 cups or 70% success rate. They definitely needed some strong doses of synthetic fertilizer. Everything was dialed into pH neutral from the very start. It's always easy to do with the pH droplet test kit.

 

[Figless]

Just to show that spindly growth can be reversed with proper lighting and fertilization. But my Trail of Tears did continue all the way into up potting. Though I didn't lose cuttings in the same quantity after up potting we still lost a few.

 

[TorontoJoe]

Joe, you don't need super duper lights, inexpensive grow lights with enough intensity (500 PPFD) will suffice. But you do need grow lights as window light is not enough, not even close.

I mentioned the lights that I use before on this forum and on the old forum. I use KingBrite LED grow lights. These are on the more expensive side of the spectrum, but they provide a lot of coverage and plenty of quality light to even properly ripen figs if you want to. I can get 45-50 DLI, no problem. You can get them on Aliexpress or Alibaba. I like the lights in the bar format as I think they provide a more even light distribution. I also like when bars tilt. It looks like this:

Similar form factor and quality lights are sold by Mars Hydro, Spider Farmer, HLG, etc.

Thanks for the reminder! I do like the look of these.