Sand propagation

BucksCountyFigs

BucksCountyFigs

Well-known member
So before I discovered fig pops, I saw some videos about sand propagation. A nursery owner saw me admiring his personal gigantic 14yo fig tree with a trunk as big as my calf, and he gave me 3 tiny 3” cuttings.

I didn’t have a heating mat, so these have been in sand on my side driveway since 9/2, and making barely any progress (that I could see). So today I got fed up and didn’t want to bring the sandbox inside with the coming freeze, so I dug the cuttings up, and guess what…ROOTS!!

Way slower than fig pops, but interestingly the roots are different. Not sure if the difference is due to variety (doubt it) or because it was propped in sand. The roots are VERY sturdy. I had heard horror stories of roots tearing off when up potting from fig pops, but these roots grown in sand were super thick and rigid, like a bottle brush. Even when I hosed the sand hunk off the roots, no roots were damaged or even bent.

P.s. I was FaceTiming my daughter in CA (she also loves gardening), and she took this funny pic of me being so excited about roots! 😆
 

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BucksCountyFigs said:
So before I discovered fig pops, I saw some videos about sand propagation. A nursery owner saw me admiring his personal gigantic 14yo fig tree with a trunk as big as my calf, and he gave me 3 tiny 3” cuttings.

I didn’t have a heating mat, so these have been in sand on my side driveway since 9/2, and making barely progress (that I could see). So today I got fed up and didn’t want to bring the sandbox inside with the coming freeze, so I dug the cuttings up, and guess what…ROOTS!!

Way slower than fig pops, but interestingly the roots are different. Not sure if the difference is due to variety (doubt it) or because it was propped in sand. The roots are VERY sturdy. I had heard horror stories of roots tearing off when up potting from fig pops, but these roots grown in sand were super thick and rigid, like a bottle brush. Even when I hosed the sand hunk off the roots, no roots were damaged or even bent.

P.s. I was FaceTiming my daughter in CA (also loves gardening, and she took this funny pic of me being so excited about roots! 😆)
Click to expand...
That looks like roots that I've seen when people root them in water.
 
ETXfigs said:
That looks like roots that I've seen when people root them in water.
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Interesting. I thought water rooted cuttings had more delicate roots that don’t up pot into soil as well?

These feel SUPER robust, but we will see how they do with the transition to soil. I did up pot them to soil and inverted a clear disposable cup over them for a little humidity. I then put them on a heating mat since it’s getting chilly here.
 
Sand propagation is great if you have the heat and humidity correct when up potting. Usually if they are fresh and healthy you will see roots quick but after several weeks they do degrade much faster in sand than you would see in soil. I’ve lost many up potting after sand mid winter but the early fall cuttings were almost perfect results. I’ve been leaning towards sand propagating is best for non dormant or almost dormant but when fully dormant the results decline.
 
Yeah, I agree with cuttings rooted outdoors being tougher.

If you didn't have a cover earlier, you may not want to add a humidity dome (cup cover) now. That is one of the difficult hurdle of using the 3 cups method - the transition from high humidity to regular.

3" is usually a bit short for rooting. Good that you root them right away when they were fresh. Usually, we take 6"+, 3+ nodes sharpie sized cuttings for rooting. Shorter and/or skinnier ones are typically use for grafts.

Sand doesn't have much nutrients so you wouldn't expect the cuttings to "grow". You can use 1/2 strength of indoor fertilizer to water weekly and then gradually increases the frequency/strength when it has more than a few leaves.
 
Opiem10 said:
My experience is that cuttings rooted outdoors tend to have much sturdier roots than those rooted in water or with any other indoor method. And, since they already acclimated to the outdoor conditions, they up pot more successfully.
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That is very interesting of outdoor rooted cuttings being more robust than indoor rooted cuttings, because I can’t get over how robust these roots are. They are literally stiff and thick like a bottle brush! And I hosed the sand off them and they literally didn’t bend or break.

Yeah, they were very short, but he was the giver, so I didn’t have much choice, just happy to have them.
 
BucksCountyFigs said:
That is very interesting of outdoor rooted cuttings being more robust than indoor rooted cuttings, because I can’t get over how robust these roots are. They are literally stiff and thick like a bottle brush! And I hosed the sand off them and they literally didn’t bend or break.

Yeah, they were very short, but he was the giver, so I didn’t have much choice, just happy to have them.
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3 inch cuttings are perfect for rooting, I’ve rooted cuttings less than one inch with great luck many single node cuttings also. The warmth and the sun leads to much stronger trees early on with outdoor rooted cuttings. Indoors I’ve had the same exact roots as outdoors but the indoor lights slow the progress down considerably from what you observe under the sun.

Buying cuttings you want 6-10 inch but once I receive cuttings I cut down to 2-4 inch two node pieces if possible.

Rooting hormone like dip n grow greatly increases the roots and speed you will see roots, not required but also there is a myth going around that root hormone will cause the cuttings to root so fast it drains all the energy and the cutting dies. Stay away from powders for sure, but dip n grow has done wonders for me.
 
Bofig said:
Sand propagation is great if you have the heat and humidity correct when up potting. Usually if they are fresh and healthy you will see roots quick but after several weeks they do degrade much faster in sand than you would see in soil. I’ve lost many up potting after sand mid winter but the early fall cuttings were almost perfect results. I’ve been leaning towards sand propagating is best for non dormant or almost dormant but when fully dormant the results decline.
Click to expand...

I’m a huge fan of green cuttings, it’s amazing how fast they root!

Taking in everyone’s (more experienced) feedback, next year I’ll try to grow the fig pops outside and see if that produces these amazingly sturdy roots like the sand roots.

I had 2 dormant cuttings of panache - one I put in the sand and one I put in a fig pop. The fig pop one grew crazy roots and quickly. The sand one has no roots and the bud is still very tiny and now just barely turning green, so I agree with you and I will probably not do the sand method with dormant cuttings again. Plus the controlling the humidity in the sand was a hassle, while the fig pop is essentially set it and forget it.

I took the Panache cutting out of the sand out it in a fig pop bag, fingers crossed.
 
@BucksCountyFigs

This is very cool. I've never tried sand before but anyone I know who has seems very pleased. @t_corey89 posted about using the sand method a while back and showed a lot of success

I've done green cuttings but using pops with ProMix HP only. Someone a while back told me they use an aeroponics kit on green cuttings and it works really well.

Good luck with the Panache... Please keep us posted on how it does.
 
BucksCountyFigs said:
I’m a huge fan of green cuttings, it’s amazing how fast they root!

Taking in everyone’s (more experienced) feedback, next year I’ll try to grow the fig pops outside and see if that produces these amazingly sturdy roots like the sand roots.

I had 2 dormant cuttings of panache - one I put in the sand and one I put in a fig pop. The fig pop one grew crazy roots and quickly. The sand one has no roots and the bud is still very tiny and now just barely turning green, so I agree with you and I will probably not do the sand method with dormant cuttings again. Plus the controlling the humidity in the sand was a hassle, while the fig pop is essentially set it and forget it.

I took the Panache cutting out of the sand out it in a fig pop bag, fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Side by side of Panache cuttings - one propped in sand + one propped in a fig pop:

1) Here is the dormant Panache cutting before I took it out of the sand - it made zero progress in the sand since 9/2. No leaves, no roots, only the tiniest swelling of a tiny, tiny bud.

2) The second pic is a different panache cutting that didn’t do sand, but instead went straight into a fig pop. Root growth is great. It used to have a tiny leaf, but I accidentally very lightly touched it and it fell off. 😭
 

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Bofig said:
3 inch cuttings are perfect for rooting, I’ve rooted cuttings less than one inch with great luck many single node cuttings also. The warmth and the sun leads to much stronger trees early on with outdoor rooted cuttings. Indoors I’ve had the same exact roots as outdoors but the indoor lights slow the progress down considerably from what you observe under the sun.

Buying cuttings you want 6-10 inch but once I receive cuttings I cut down to 2-4 inch two node pieces if possible.

Rooting hormone like dip n grow greatly increases the roots and speed you will see roots, not required but also there is a myth going around that root hormone will cause the cuttings to root so fast it drains all the energy and the cutting dies. Stay away from powders for sure, but dip n grow has done wonders for me.
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Now I’m very curious why you purposefully cut them down to 2 node pieces. Is the sole reason to get more cuttings?

Do you put one node in the soil and one node out of the soil?

Do you think that a 2 node cutting will grow as fast as a cutting with more nodes? Or that it will catch up pretty quickly?

Yup, I read a lot about what people used for rooting hormone, so I didn’t use the powder that I already had for my other plants since it apparently causes rot in fig cuttings; and I bought some clonex gel for my fig cuttings. Thanks for the recommendation of dip and grow. I will check it out.
 
BucksCountyFigs said:
Now I’m very curious why you purposefully cut them down to 2 node pieces. Is the sole reason to get more cuttings?

Do you put one node in the soil and one node out of the soil?

Do you think that a 2 node cutting will grow as fast as a cutting with more nodes? Or that it will catch up pretty quickly?

Yup, I read a lot about what people used for rooting hormone, so I didn’t use the powder that I already had for my other plants since it apparently causes rot in fig cuttings; and I bought some clonex gel for my fig cuttings. Thanks for the recommendation of dip and grow. I will check it out.
Click to expand...
Clonex gel is great but don’t put it on too thick or the same could happen as powder. A three inch two node cutting initially will be a little slower but once the roots take off and about 6-8 weeks in the difference is minimal. 3-4 months down the road results of a 10 inch or 3 inch cutting wouldn’t have any difference as long as both were healthy initially from my experience. When I get a cutting 8-10 inches full of nodes I make 4-5 smaller cuttings as higher in the media there is less chance of rotting and now I have that many more chances of success so I can plant one in ground rather than keeping all eggs in one basket and risking a death on my single long cutting. If you take the long cutting and push it deep into the container the bottom has a higher chance of rotting than something only pushed in a couple inches due to how the water sits in soil at different levels of the container.
 
Bofig said:
Clonex gel is great but don’t put it on too thick or the same could happen as powder. A three inch two node cutting initially will be a little slower but once the roots take off and about 6-8 weeks in the difference is minimal. 3-4 months down the road results of a 10 inch or 3 inch cutting wouldn’t have any difference as long as both were healthy initially from my experience. When I get a cutting 8-10 inches full of nodes I make 4-5 smaller cuttings as higher in the media there is less chance of rotting and now I have that many more chances of success so I can plant one in ground rather than keeping all eggs in one basket and risking a death on my single long cutting. If you take the long cutting and push it deep into the container the bottom has a higher chance of rotting than something only pushed in a couple inches due to how the water sits in soil at different levels of the container.
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Do you put 3” cuttings in fig pops? Or how do you propagate?

I did not think about what’s essentially the water table in the fig pop bag and how that would affect longer cuttings. Thanks for that very helpful tip & for the clones tip. I actually was thinking I didn’t put it on thick enough, lol.
 
BucksCountyFigs said:
Do you put 3” cuttings in fig pops? Or how do you propagate?

I did not think about what’s essentially the water table in the fig pop bag and how that would affect longer cuttings. Thanks for that very helpful tip & for the clones tip. I actually was thinking I didn’t put it on thick enough, lol.
Click to expand...
I do direct to 4x9. I use sunshine #4 with a bunch of extra perlite so I can water heavy with less worry. I also layer perlite on top of the soil, then tape the tips of the cuttings. This has been my most efficient and successful way to root. Sometimes the cutting is buried in perlite but it still works great.
 

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BucksCountyFigs said:
So before I discovered fig pops, I saw some videos about sand propagation. A nursery owner saw me admiring his personal gigantic 14yo fig tree with a trunk as big as my calf, and he gave me 3 tiny 3” cuttings.

I didn’t have a heating mat, so these have been in sand on my side driveway since 9/2, and making barely any progress (that I could see). So today I got fed up and didn’t want to bring the sandbox inside with the coming freeze, so I dug the cuttings up, and guess what…ROOTS!!

Way slower than fig pops, but interestingly the roots are different. Not sure if the difference is due to variety (doubt it) or because it was propped in sand. The roots are VERY sturdy. I had heard horror stories of roots tearing off when up potting from fig pops, but these roots grown in sand were super thick and rigid, like a bottle brush. Even when I hosed the sand hunk off the roots, no roots were damaged or even bent.

P.s. I was FaceTiming my daughter in CA (she also loves gardening), and she took this funny pic of me being so excited about roots! 😆
Click to expand...
Experience is the best teacher. Keep experimenting.
 
My go to for summer propagation had always been air layering, but for me it takes a long time. This year I wanted to propagate some in August which might have been too late for air layers to root, so I just placed 8” green branches in water until the leaves fell off and the lenticels enlarged (due to impaired gas exchange) then I potted them in potting mix as usual and they took off. (I always thought roots formed from lenticels but apparently they just emerge near the enlarged lenticels because the bark is weakened there). Much easier than air layers.
 
scott_va said:
My go to for summer propagation had always been air layering, but for me it takes a long time. This year I wanted to propagate some in August which might have been too late for air layers to root, so I just placed 8” green branches in water until the leaves fell off and the lenticels enlarged (due to impaired gas exchange) then I potted them in potting mix as usual and they took off. (I always thought roots formed from lenticels but apparently they just emerge near the enlarged lenticels because the bark is weakened there). Much easier than air layers.
Click to expand...
It is good to experiment. I love experimenting.
 
BucksCountyFigs said:
So before I discovered fig pops, I saw some videos about sand propagation. A nursery owner saw me admiring his personal gigantic 14yo fig tree with a trunk as big as my calf, and he gave me 3 tiny 3” cuttings.

I didn’t have a heating mat, so these have been in sand on my side driveway since 9/2, and making barely any progress (that I could see). So today I got fed up and didn’t want to bring the sandbox inside with the coming freeze, so I dug the cuttings up, and guess what…ROOTS!!

Way slower than fig pops, but interestingly the roots are different. Not sure if the difference is due to variety (doubt it) or because it was propped in sand. The roots are VERY sturdy. I had heard horror stories of roots tearing off when up potting from fig pops, but these roots grown in sand were super thick and rigid, like a bottle brush. Even when I hosed the sand hunk off the roots, no roots were damaged or even bent.

P.s. I was FaceTiming my daughter in CA (she also loves gardening), and she took this funny pic of me being so excited about roots! 😆
Click to expand...
Congratulations im sure you are happy :)
 
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