You'll have better results with screened Turface or NAPA floor-dry (calcined diatomaceous earth). Both materials are sterile, remain well-aerated at all times, & hold lots of water. If you have cuttings you feel are important, mixing in a little chopped or milled sphagnum moss (not peat) will noticeably increase effectiveness.

Al

Ive tried pure perlite, vermiculite and combos of the 2 as well as miracle grow. Non them hold a candle to fertilome's UPM. For me if the roots dont take off in it, the cutting was not vigourous enough and or defective.

Hmmm .... wouldn't it be possible that it may not have been that the cuttings were "not vigorous enough and or defective"? It's very possible, in fact, very probable that the culpable party to the failure of the cuttings was any one of a number of fungaluglies that cause damping-off disease, and the carrier - an nonsterile medium, the UPM.

Notice please, that the Turface and floor-dry are sterile because they are calcined at extreme temperatures and the sphagnum moss can be considered sterile because it's low pH is not conducive to the growth of things fungal, and it also actually has inherent chemical antifungal properties. It was no accident that I suggested only sterile mediums.

Al

Dr. Tapla, I have been using 100 % perlite and then adding some earthworm castings straight from the back yard. Any thoughts on these? Thanks

IMO, if your question is about EWCs in a medium for cuttings or containerized plants, I would leave them out. You can have perfectly healthy plants w/o them, and they don't supply anything you can't get from either an organic or inorganic source of micro-nutrients (Microblast, Micromax, STEM, or complete fertilizers like Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 ....). If used in any appreciable volume they negatively affect the aeration that is so important to cuttings & containerized plants. Also, they are very likely to be contaminated with any of the fungi that cause damping-off disease .... additional reason not to use them for cuttings.

Al

Our temps. are not ideal for fig root development, I live in the PNW, and I think I need a warmer location to do the fig rooting, "if I try again next season".
Also, the figs were getting watered by someone else w/o my request, and some well-meaning zealot probably killed a few with too much H20 last spring.
The main point I wanted to make is that straight vermiculite, even the medium coarse, holds far too much moisture.

Well I don't have any trouble rooting figs in my 5 gal self watering bucket. The soil in it is rotted oak leaves and I have had as many as 6 starts to each bucket and they all root real easy. All I do is stick 15 inch of the root stock into the SWB about half in half out keep it moist and nsoon I have roots no problem.

Well I don't have any trouble rooting figs in my 5 gal self watering bucket. The soil in it is rotted oak leaves and I have had as many as 6 starts to each bucket and they all root real easy. All I do is stick 15 inch of the root stock into the SWB about half in half out keep it moist and nsoon I have roots no problem.

tapla, What size particle does the NAPA floor dry have in comparison to the Turface All Sport? Are they about the same price?

Price for napa is six bucks for a twenty five pound bag.

Good to know, my uncle owns a napa.

Both Turface and NAPA floor-dry vary a little in their average particle size from bag to bag, but the floor dry tends toward a slightly larger average particle size than Turface.

I should mention that Dan has been singing the praises of rotted oak leaves for years, but he conveniently forgets his admissions that his plants are not all that they could be. I think they would be a very poor choice as either a cutting media or a soil.

Al

If using the floor dry for a rooting medium, since it hold so much water, how often do you add water? Also would it work for air layering?

Thanks in advance,
"gene"

tapla, have you had success in rooting current year's green growth of figs? any hints here? thanks.

I have successfully rooted 3 fig cuttings in al's gritty mix. It may be a fluke but so far all 3 are showing strong, healthy roots. And are leafing out nicely. I use 20oz translucent cups with slits in the bottom for drainage. I was using a ziplock bag to control humidity, but because of the leaf growth, I have taken the bags off. I will be moving them to gallon pots next week with additional gritty mix

Thanks, Al. Would the NAPA floor dry be an acceptable substitute for Turface All Sport in your mix? I'm finding it's hard to reliably find the Turface.

Tapla,

I was comparing UPM to Perlite. I have rooted many cuttings in pure perlite and many in pure UPM after i scrubbed the cutting with antibacterial soap. Comparing the cuttings that make it, UPM for me has been the much better rooting medium.

F-nut - yes, NAPA floor dry is a suitable sub for Turface. Keep in mind that it holds more water, so you may wish to reduce it's presence slightly while increasing the presence of the granite.

Arigato - I have no quarrel with what method you choose to root your plants, but the fact is, the medium you are using is not sterile, which will reduce the success rate. BTW, antibacterial soap is NOT a good idea because it is phytotoxic.

Al

Antibacterial soap and diluted Clorox might be phytotoxic (plant poisons); however, they are excellent cleaning agents for cuttings that WILL significantly reduce any mold issues during the rooting process......without any noticeable ill effects. My research is quite clear on this.

Dan

Hi Al. I don't remember writing anything about my plants not being some of the best I have ever grown in the past in the ground. I am now 90 years young and have been exposed to growing something for about 75 of those years. I don't say that I know much about growing veg. plants, just a good many years of trying to do better next time. I just love to grow and eat what I grow. Hope you have as much fun growing and then eating it.

Great information. I am looking forward to using UPM. I hear its very light.

Hi snaglpus

I have been using UPM for about a year, I believe in it!

Great product.

Regards
Cecil

I agree with you Dan. Your findings concur with what my experience has been. In order of increasing success rate:

non treated cuttings in Perlite

Dan - please feel free to share any research you might have showing that antibacterial soaps are not harmful to plant tissues.

Dangsr_grow - We've had this conversation before and I linked you directly to your own words so you could review them. You said, about growing in rotten oak leaves: "I may not have the over saze [sic] plants and highly productive plants but I dont [sic] have to spend a fortune on soil and chemicals."

I have no dog in the fight over what anyone uses for starting their cuttings, but to use an unsterile medium and then conclude that it was the cutting's fault that it failed is not logical; sorry, but the conclusion is called a questionable cause fallacy. If it was such a great cutting medium, commercial ops would be abandoning sterile media in favor of the less expensive (and unsterile) UPM.

Additionally, what the media you root in or even the media you GROW in is made of is rather unimportant. The media's physical properties (how much air and water it holds, and for how long), that it's sterile (for cuttings), and what sort of nutrition you supply after the cutting roots is far more important than media brand or the list of materials it's made from, but I'm always glad to learn that someone is happy with what they're growing in.

Al

Al,

Once I started cleaning my cuttings using a two part process using 1) an antibacterial soapy solution and then 2) a 10% (v/v) Clorox solution..........using a toothbrush (which also can be harmful to plant tissues), I have had ZERO mold issues when rooting fig cuttings irrespective of the rooting media. There are no observable ill effects from the cleaning process. That is a fact that anyone can verify for themselves.

Dan

I would point out that what you described is not the result of research, it's simply an anecdote. Since the ZERO mold claim resulted after using a combination of antibacterial soap solution and bleach, it's within the scope of the application you mention to say that it could have been the bleach that was helpful and the antibacterial soap was useless, and it's possible that the cuttings rooted in spite of the application of anti-bacterial soap, not BECAUSE of it. It's also entirely possible that you've simply been lucky.

There is no proof in what you are saying, I'm sorry to say. You have related an anecdote that cannot be verified w/o some controls in place. Barring that, a long period of seemingly improved success by a large population of growers would suffice, but since you cannot point to that either, and because the logic in your conclusion is flawed, I'm doubting your cause/effect relationship.

Finally, anti-bacterial soaps are just that - antibacterial, they're not antifungal, or antimicrobial, and the damping-off issues we deal with in vegetative cloning are almost ALL fungal. Since this soap targets bacteria, and there are thousands of benign bacteria that help keep fungi in check, it's more likely that stripping the bacteria from cuttings and allowing things fungal and viral to remain unchecked is a mistake (lucky you used the bleach, hmm?).

As I noted, I have no dog in the fight over what any one person wants to do based on anecdote, but I can still encourage others not to follow blindly and base that encouragement on science.

Al

Al,

I no longer use bleach, just antibacterial soap these days which has worked better for me than without it.

As for growers, how many cuttings would you like to see rooted by this method before you can consider it proof? 40? 100? Maybe others can try this method (cleaning/UPM) with a greater sample size. I assume you would want to see the use a logistics model to analyze the data or do you suggest another model?

Al......I strongly disagree with you. What I have stated is a fact that anyone can verify for themselves. The two step cleaning process I have described was not one developed by chance....it was one especially designed to be effective.

What you do not know (because I did not mention it) is that I do routinely use control samples in my studies. The antibacterial soap is multi-fucntional. It does a good job of removing plant material....especially wax like materials that protect the plant tissues. Soaps remove them and effectively lower the surface tension between the plant tissues and the cleaner.........thereby allowing deeper penetration and cleansing. By first cleaning with antibacterial soap, the following Chlorox cleaning becomes much more effective. There are NO ILL EFFECTS in using either of these phytotoxins to clean cuttings.

Dan

It's not the first time I've been strongly disagreed with. ;o)

I'm perfectly happy to rest my case on what I've presented and move on to something more certain to produce light than heat.

Take care.

Al