prepping fig tree cuttings

Ben nerds out when it comes to fruit and vegetable plant life; for example, he’ll visit all types of fruit and vegetable online forums. When he was looking to round out our four fig trees with two more, he visited Figs 4 Fun for guidance.

One of the figs that popularly rated high for taste was Ronde de Bordeaux. Despite having a good amount of local (well, San Diego), niche nurseries selling rare fruit tree cultivars, he had trouble finding this one.

He learned that fig trees can start out as “cuttings” so he was able to find a Ronde de Bordeaux cutting on eBay. This eBayer was really both helpful and thoughtful… so thoughtful that not only did she send cuttings from other fig trees, but a small Ronde de Bordeaux plant as well!

For the cuttings, she directed him to this string on the Figs 4 Fun site to learn about “rooting” them in coconut coir. We found some at a local soil distributor (you can also find them on Amazon and perhaps at a local nursery); we started experimenting with it as instructed.

The approach is simple: (1) moisten the dehydrated coir in a small shoebox-sized plastic container; (2) cover the cuttings with the moistened coir; and then (3) cover the container. They’re two weeks in and we don’t see any rooting yet. We might have taken too long to plant them. Because of the hustle and bustle of the holidays, Ben wasn’t able to place them in the coir until about three weeks after receiving them. They stayed refrigerated (which was recommended), but not sure if we took too long to transfer them into a rooting medium like the coconut coir. We’ll let you know! Gardening is such a learning process…