Let me first say I'm not a fan of rooting figs inside. I prefer laying them in a trench in partial shade and letting them grow that way. We have many fig tree varieties that we have planted on our property. All are on drip irrigation. I have a few fig friends in Italy and Spain, and because our climate is the same, I decided to try to mimic the way many of the old Italians and Greeks grow fig trees from cuttings.

Our property is 1.5 acres of well drained decomposed granite, studded with boulders of various sizes. It slopes steeply facing West / Northwest to a ravine with a seasonal stream, and then slopes steeply East Facing up the other hill.

My friend in Sardinia told me his father taught him to dig a slanted tunnel under the south facing side of a boulder and to put the rooting end deep under the rock with the growth tip barely buried outside the rock. The roots will form and grow in the cool dampness under the rock, and the tree will be protected and warmed by the boulder while it is young.

On March 10, 2015, we took fresh 9" cuttings from our favorite trees and planted one or two under various boulders. After ten days, today the first one has emerged.

Here is the planting site for Paradiso. The white forks mark the variety and location of the cuttings.

Here is a photo of day one of leaf emergence. It is very tiny and I don't know if it has roots. If it withers and dies back, I would assume it grew leaves prior to roots, and it just may do that, but as long as it's damp under that boulder, it could emerge again later.

Here is a photo of the little fig close-up. You can see the earth clinging to the veins in the leaf.

Remember this is just an experiment. I have plenty of fig trees with which to play. The idea here is to let the tree grow as it would do in the wild with no irrigation, fertilizer or love. I hope this works because it will be fun to compare the irrigated Paradiso figs with those of the neglected one.

I'll update this thread as time goes on and other varieties emerge IF they do.