| I'm now the proud mother of 4 baby fig trees! Back in January, I attended a fruit tree propagation workshop, which I wrote about on this blog. I came home from the workshop with 6 fig tree cuttings, 4 blackberry cuttings, 2 pomegranate cuttings, and 2 dragon fruit cuttings. The goal was to wait for each of them to take root. And, so far, 4 of the figs have done so:
Fig tree cutting with roots and some vermiculite sticking to it
It took about 6 weeks to two months for it to happen, but it did. And it didn't happen like I thought it would. As you can see here, the roots grew out of the side of the cutting. I had assumed they would grow out the bottom. A few weeks ago, I found my first evidence of success. This cutting had a few roots growing from it. I tried to transplant it by sticking it into a pot of soil and I knocked the roots right off. Oops. I felt rather ashamed and disappointed, and I put the cutting back in the vermiculite, hoping it would grow some more roots.
Then about a week ago, three of the others grew roots. This time I transplanted them MUCH more carefully, gently holding them inside a mostly empty pot and adding soil around them so I wouldn't damage the roots. I moved them outdoors to a spot with very little sun. I did this for about an hour the first day, and then I brought them back in overnight before moving them back outside for good. Today I moved those three to a slightly sunnier spot. Then I checked this cutting to see if it had recovered, and it had - quite well actually! So I transplanted it as well (very gently this time!) and moved it outdoors to the same shady spot where I started the others. Cross your fingers and hope I don't kill my new baby trees!
As for the other plants, one of the dragonfruits was damaged by heavy rainfall, and one (perhaps two) of the blackberries became a cat toy. The others are just hanging out in moist vermiculate and hopefully growing some roots. |
